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:
MoreLYNCH, Chief Judge. Federal habeas petitioner Ivan Hodge was convicted, along with co-defendant O'Neil Francis, by a Massachusetts jury in March 2007 of the second-degree murder of Tacary Jones and another charge, stemming from a March 2005 shooting on an MBTA bus in Boston. Hodge's convictions were affirmed on appeal by the Massachusetts Appeals Court ("MAC") in November 2010. Commonwealth v. Francis, 78 Mass.App.Ct. 1107 , 936 N.E.2d 453 (2010) (unpublished table opinion). The...
RIPPLE, Circuit Judge. Terrell Campbell and Esley Porteous both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess fifteen or more counterfeit access devices, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 371 and 1029(b)(2) (Count One), and possession of fifteen or more counterfeit access devices, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1029(a)(3) (Count Two). Mr. Campbell also pleaded guilty to the use of one or more counterfeit access devices, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1029(a)(1) (Count Six). 1 The district court sentenced...
THOMPSON, Circuit Judge. Our John Doe is a man of many names. Although there are more, we concern ourselves with only the following: "Tony"; "G"; "Theotis Leonard"; and "Rashide Campbell." A jury in Portland, Maine, convicted "Rashide Campbell" of illegally distributing a substance containing cocaine base. 1 The district court sentenced him to twenty years behind bars, the maximum jail term allowed by statute. Campbell now raises several claims of error with respect to his conviction and the...
KAYATTA, Circuit Judge. Before us now for the third time, this case focuses our attention on whether the mandate we issued last time the case was before us foreclosed an otherwise unchallenged use of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(a) to modify the judgment on remand. We are also asked to determine whether an award of $104,626.34 in attorney's fees and costs, for a suit obtaining a damages award of $7,650, is so disproportionate as to constitute an abuse of discretion. Answering no to both...
THOMPSON, Circuit Judge. Overview Today we deal with the fallout from a deadly drug conspiracy in Puerto Rico involving a small army of criminals affiliated with "the Combo of Dr. Pila" (from now on, "the Combo"), a vicious gang named after a local housing project where members ran one of their many drug points. The five defendants whose joint trial led to these consolidated appeals are Acosta, Fournier, Castillo, Rodr guez, and Guzm n (their full names and aliases appear in our case caption)....
LYNCH, Chief Judge. The question on appeal is whether the district court erred in enforcing an arbitration clause in an attorney-client engagement letter as to malpractice and unfair practice claims brought by a former client under Maine law. The client is Douglas Bezio, who sued his former law firm of Bernstein, Shur, Sawyer & Nelson (BSSN) and individual defendants, alleging malpractice and violations of Maine's Unfair Trade Practices Act, Me.Rev.Stat. tit. 5, 213, as well as a fee...
LYNCH, Chief Judge. A customer's taking advantage of her bank's mistake led to this case. Andrea Levasseur appeals from the district court's affirmance of the bankruptcy court's determination that her debt to Old Republic National Title Insurance Company ("Old Republic") was not dischargeable in bankruptcy because it was for money she obtained by false pretenses, see 11 U.S.C. 523(a)(2)(A), and because it was a debt arising from willful and malicious injury, see id. 523(a)(6)....
LIPEZ, Circuit Judge. Appellant David Mensah successfully negotiated the complexities of United States immigration law twice: first, to become a naturalized citizen under his own name and, second, to obtain a diversity visa under the false name Willberforce Appiah. His success, however, was short-lived. The government detected Mensah's double dipping, and he was subsequently found guilty by a jury on a charge of unlawful procurement of naturalization, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1425(a),...
KAYATTA, Circuit Judge. Appellee Flight Services fired Appellant Joseph Travers as he pursued a lawsuit against the company under the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA"). Flight Services says it terminated Travers for violating company policy. Travers says he was fired in retaliation for his FLSA lawsuit. Because a reasonable jury could return a verdict for Travers without relying on improbable inferences or unsupported speculation, we vacate the district court's grant of summary judgment to the...
SELYA, Circuit Judge. The outcome of this appeal is controlled by important questions of Rhode Island law and public policy as to which we have found no dispositive precedent. Because the Rhode Island Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of matters of Rhode Island law, we certify these unsettled questions to that court for guidance. See R.I. Sup.Ct. R. 6. I. BACKGROUND Joseph Caramadre believed that he had found the Holy Grail of investment strategies: a way to speculate in high-risk...
TORRUELLA, Circuit Judge. Defendant-Appellant Matthew J. Kuc ("Kuc") was indicted for fraudulently obtaining computer parts and selling them for profit. After a four-day jury trial, Kuc was convicted of four counts of wire fraud, one count of possession of stolen property, and one count of aggravated identity theft. On appeal, Kuc presents two claims: 1) the search warrant was defective because it violated the Fourth Amendment's particularity requirement, and 2) the evidence was insufficient...
LYNCH, Chief Judge. We are invited in this case to change our circuit law on the type of intent needed by a defendant to communicate "true threats" under 18 U.S.C. 875(c). We note there is a circuit split on the question of intent in the aftermath of Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343 , 123 S.Ct. 1536, 155 L.Ed.2d 535 (2003). The issue was not raised before the trial court, and on plain error review we see no reason to depart from this circuit's law that an objective test of defendant's...
LYNCH, Chief Judge. In June 2010 Dr. Helen Ge originally filed these two qui tam actions against her former employer, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. and its subsidiary Takeda Pharmaceutical North America, Inc. (collectively, "Takeda"), under the federal False Claims Act ("FCA"), 31 U.S.C. 3729 et seq., and various analogous state statutes. The two actions concern different drugs. She has since amended each of her complaints twice. The United States has declined to enter the case as...
SELYA, Circuit Judge. The practice of giving gifts as a means of securing favors is as old as the hills. In ancient Greece, for example, legend has it that Zeus asked Paris, a Trojan prince, to decide which of three goddesses was the fairest of them all. Paris chose Aphrodite, rejecting proffered bribes of kingly power from Hera and military might from Athena. But Aphrodite too had tendered a bribe, agreeing to help him win the hand of the most beautiful woman alive. A modern-day commercial...
TORRUELLA, Circuit Judge. Facing a five count indictment on narcotics and firearm charges, Jorge Rivera-L pez ("Rivera") entered into a plea agreement containing a waiver-of-appeal provision. Pursuant to that agreement, he was sentenced to sixty months of imprisonment and a five-year term of supervised release. For the first six months of his supervised release, Rivera's sentence also included a nighttime curfew and twenty-four-hour electronic monitoring. He now seeks to appeal these two...
KAYATTA, Circuit Judge. Ruling on motions for summary judgment in a bankruptcy proceeding, the bankruptcy court made two determinations that are the primary subject of this appeal. First, the court ruled that the debtor failed to maintain his profit-sharing plan in substantial compliance with the applicable tax laws. This ruling meant that assets in the profit-sharing plan and two IRAs funded with plan assets were part of the bankruptcy estate, available to satisfy the claims of creditors....
LYNCH, Chief Judge. The question in this case is whether comments in the government's closing argument at a second criminal trial were improper and whether they accordingly warranted a new trial, as the district court held. See United States v. Carpenter , 808 F.Supp.2d 366 , 380-85 (D. Mass. 2011). Defendant Daniel Carpenter has now been tried twice on charges of wire fraud and mail fraud. Both times, the jury returned a conviction. After the first trial in 2005, the district court upset...
SELYA, Circuit Judge. This bi-coastal case requires a Boston-based federal court to make an informed prophesy as to whether the Washington Supreme Court, if squarely confronted with the question, would recognize a cause of action for breach of a contract to negotiate. Applying the methodology that federal courts have developed to vaticinate how state courts are likely to rule on unsettled questions of state law, we find spoor for the cognoscenti and answer the question before us in the...
STAHL, Circuit Judge. Petitioner Yoderny Pena was convicted of first-degree murder in Massachusetts state court. After the state court upheld his conviction on appeal, Pena filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court, based on alleged violations of his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. The district court denied the petition. For the following reasons, we affirm the district court's decision. I. Facts & Background On March 8, 2004, Pena killed his girlfriend by...
LYNCH, Chief Judge. Michael R. Thomas conditionally pled guilty to a series of criminal charges brought in 2011, including for sending letters to public officials threatening murder. He appeals from the district court's 2011 denial of his motion to suppress the fruits of the use of his 2005 DNA profile in securing a 2011 warrant. United States v. Thomas, 815 F.Supp.2d 384 (D.Me.2011). The DNA was obtained during a 2005 postal service investigation of a different matter which resulted...
