The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (in case citations, 1st Cir.) is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:
MoreLIPEZ, Circuit Judge. Appellants Juan Mieses 1 and Jose Reyes-Guerrero were arrested in a reverse sting operation after they drove to a sham drug deal, with a third co-defendant, in a vehicle containing $100,000 in cash. 2 A jury found both appellants guilty of a single drug conspiracy count. On appeal, the pair claim that their convictions must be vacated because of three significant errors at trial: (1) the government's use of improper overview testimony from the lead law enforcement agent...
LYNCH, Chief Judge. Brian and Linda Milward brought negligence claims against defendant chemical companies alleging that the rare type of leukemia that Brian Milward suffers, Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia (APL), was caused by his routine workplace exposure to benzene-containing products that had been manufactured or supplied by defendants. Milward worked as a refrigeration technician and asserted that he was exposed to benzene from 1973 until the time he filed this complaint and jury demand in...
BOUDIN, Circuit Judge. In December 2003, Robert Brown III was serving the tail end of a federal sentence for a prior cocaine trafficking offense at Pharos House, a Bureau of Prisons community corrections facility in Portland, Maine. Another resident, after testing positive for cocaine use, told federal agents that one of those supplying him drugs had said that Brown was the dealer's supplier. In January 2004, that resident, cooperating with federal agents, made a controlled purchase of 2.4...
ORDER OF COURT The appellees' petition for panel rehearing is denied. The petition largely rehashes arguments that were made to, and rejected by, the panel in its earlier opinion. One aspect of the petition does require comment. The appellees assert that the panel opinion gives rise to a circuit split in light of the decision in Libertarian Party of Ohio v. Blackwell, 462 F.3d 579 (6th Cir.2006). That is plainly incorrect: nothing in the panel opinion is inconsistent or irreconcilable...
HOWARD, Circuit Judge. A jury convicted Durrell Williams on numerous drug and gun charges. The district court sentenced him to twenty-five years in prison. On appeal Williams contends that his court-appointed attorney was given inadequate time to prepare for trial and that the government's evidence was insufficient to convict him. He also asserts that his sentence was unreasonable and suffered from computational errors. After careful review, we affirm in all respects. I. BACKGROUND 1 An...
THOMPSON, Circuit Judge. This appeal pivots on the intriguing interplay between ex post facto principles and the now-advisory Sentencing Guidelines. 1 Guided by the light of controlling caselaw, we vacate Ricardo Rodriguez's sentence and remand for resentencing. Setting the Stage Caught selling two sawed-off guns to an undercover police officer in 2006, Rodriguez pled guilty to a multi-count indictment charging him with various firearms offenses. See 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1); 26 U.S.C....
SELYA, Circuit Judge. This appeal requires that we perform two separate but related tasks. First, we must clarify the effect of United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 , 125 S.Ct. 738, 160 L.Ed.2d 621 (2005), on our pre- Booker case law that narrowly circumscribed the reviewability of sentencing courts' discretionary departure decisions. Second, we must assess the bona fides of a sentence that the defendant claims is too harsh, even though it embodies a downward departure from the guideline...
LYNCH, Chief Judge. This appeal by Southern Union, a natural gas company convicted by a jury of storing hazardous waste without a permit, raises two issues of initial impression. First, the case tests whether federal criminal enforcement may be used under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), 42 U.S.C. 6928(d), where certain federally approved state regulations as to hazardous waste storage have been violated. Second, the case also raises the important question of whether a...
LYNCH, Chief Judge. Pat Godin, the former principal of the Fort O'Brien Elementary School in Machiasport, Maine, brought suit against the Machiasport School Department Board of Directors ("Machiasport") and School Union No. 134 in March 2009, alleging a violation of her due process rights under 42 U.S.C. 1983. She also sued three individual school system employees who had separately stated in meetings with officials their views that Godin had acted abusively toward students at the school....
LYNCH, Chief Judge. The issue presented is whether, within weeks of the Madrid commuter rail bombings in 2004, Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) police had reasonable suspicion of a terrorist plot on a major Boston bus and rail station permitting an officer to open the door of a van, which was, unusually, sitting stationary but with a driver and passengers inside, in the station's commuter parking lot. The prosecution and defendant agree that this action of the MBTA police, for Fourth...
LIPEZ, Circuit Judge. Petitioner John Smith seeks review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) denying his motion to reopen his removal proceedings so that he could apply for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). In his motion, Smith cited changed country conditions and new evidence that was unavailable to him during the proceedings on his initial application for adjustment of status. Because we conclude that the BIA...
SELYA, Circuit Judge. In the last half-century, Congress has enacted a safety net of antidiscrimination laws designed to protect workers' rights. These laws serve salutary purposes, but they are not intended to function as a collective panacea for every work-related experience that is in some respect unjust, unfair, or unpleasant. This case, which involves the introduction of an abrasive supervisor into a workplace accustomed to a kinder, gentler way of doing business, illustrates the point....
LYNCH, Chief Judge. This case concerns a client's failure to pay for an expert's expedited services in an underlying litigation. Central Florida Investments, Inc. (CFI) appeals from a Massachusetts jury verdict on a breach of oral contract claim awarding Analysis Group, Inc. (AGI) fees for expert services it provided to CFI in connection with a Florida case between CFI and its competitor, the Bluegreen Corporation (Bluegreen). CFI unsuccessfully argued to the jury in this case that AGI was...
DiCLERICO, District Judge. Omar Mohamed entered a conditional guilty plea to a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition, reserving his right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress. On appeal, Mohamed contends that the manner in which he was detained constituted a de facto arrest without probable cause. As a result, Mohamed argues, the gun discovered when he was pat-frisked was fruit of an illegal search. We conclude that the gun was found during a valid...
BOUDIN, Circuit Judge. A jury found Winston McGhee guilty of possession of cocaine base (at least five grams), 21 U.S.C. 844(a) (2006), and of possession of cocaine base with intent to distribute (less than five grams), id. 841(a)(1). 1 He now appeals on three grounds: that the search of his person violated the Fourth Amendment; that the court impermissibly allowed a testifying chemist to rely in part on another chemist's test results as to one drug sample (the sale of which was not...
STAHL, Circuit Judge. On February 8, 2005, Plaintiffs-Appellants Irwin J. Barkan and D & D Barkan LLC (collectively "Barkan") filed suit against Defendants-Appellees Dunkin' Donuts, Inc. and Baskin-Robbins USA, Co. (collectively "Dunkin' Donuts") in the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island. Barkan alleged, among other claims, 1 that Dunkin' Donuts breached a contract in which it had promised to work with Barkan and the CIT Group ("CIT") to refinance Barkan's debt to...
HOWARD, Circuit Judge. This civil rights action involves competing accounts of an arrestee's weekend stay in Maine's Hancock County Jail. Plaintiff David Harriman, although he remembers virtually nothing that occurred over the entire weekend, contends that one or more correctional officers beat him until he sustained a lasting brain injury. Defendants Hancock County, its sheriff and several correctional officers assert that Harriman fell on his head. Harriman appeals the district court's...
ORDER OF COURT Plaintiff-appellant's petition for rehearing is granted. The opinion of this court which issued August 4, 2010 is withdrawn, and the judgment of even date is vacated. A new opinion is to issue this day. LIPEZ, Circuit Judge. Appellant Marc Jadlowe raises multiple issues of substance in challenging his conviction on drug conspiracy charges. Most significantly, he argues that the district court committed structural error by instructing the jurors that they could discuss the case...
BOUDIN, Circuit Judge. This appeal by several defendants convicted of drug trafficking—Epifanio Matos-Luchi, Manolo Soto-Perez, and Ramon Carrasco-Carrasco—requires the interpretation of the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act ("MDLEA"), 46 U.S.C. 70501 et seq. (2006), which inter alia delineates federal enforcement authority over drug crimes carried on at sea outside U.S. territorial limits. The factual background and proceedings in the district court are as follows. In May 2007, Petty...
HOWARD, Circuit Judge. These three consolidated appeals arise out of the improper use of a model's image to package and promote a home entertainment system. The model, plaintiff Ting Ji (Ji), although successful at trial as to liability, insists that a new trial as to damages is necessary to cure the district court's purported errors in refusing to compel discovery and instructing the jury. The maker of the entertainment system, defendant Bose Corporation (Bose), and Ji's photographer,...
