Take the Fifth

Designated for publication

• United States v. Hackney, 25-10690, appeal from N.D. Tex.
  • Smith, J. (Higginbotham, Smith, Oldham) (oral argument), criminal, sentencing, guilty plea
  • Dismissing appeal of supervised release conditions in sentence, on basis that appeal was barred by appeal-waiver in plea agreement.
  • Jamie Hackney pleaded guilty to production and transportation of child pornography. Per his plea agreement, he waived his right to appeal his conviction and sentence but reserved the right to appeal “a sentence exceeding the statutory maximum punishment.” The district court sentenced him to 50 years of imprisonment and 15 years of supervised release, conditioned on having no contact with minors and providing complete access to financial information to his probation officer.
  • At issue on was whether an appeal challenging supervised release conditions as unreasonable under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(d) constitutes an appeal of “a sentence exceeding the statutory maximum punishment” and thus falls within the exception to an otherwise valid appellate waiver.
  • The court reviewed de novo whether the appeal waiver barred the appeal, applying the two-step inquiry from United States v. Bond: (1) whether the waiver was knowing and voluntary, and (2) whether it applies to the circumstances at hand based on the plain language of the agreement. Hackney did not contest that the waiver was knowing and voluntary, nor did he dispute that “sentence” unambiguously includes supervised release and its conditions as a matter of law.
  • Relying on Bond and United States v. Yiping Qu, the court held that “statutory maximum” means “the upper limit of punishment that Congress has legislatively specified for violation of a statute”—a quantitative concept. As the court quoted from Yiping Qu: “That the term ‘statutory maximum’ generally denotes a period of time seems obvious,” and “‘Maximum,’ or its counterpart ‘minimum,’ generally refers to something that can be quantified.” A § 3583(d) challenge targets the qualitative conditions of release, not the quantitative or temporal element of the sentence.
  • The court rejected Hackney’s argument that Higgins conflicted with Yiping Qu under the rule of orderliness, explaining that Higgins held only that the defendant had not advanced any theory that his appeal fell within the statutory-maximum exception—at most, Higgins was silent on what constitutes “punishment in excess of the statutory maximum.”

Unpublished decisions

• United States v. Scott, 25-10916, appeal from N.D. Tex.
  • per curiam (Richman, Southwick, Willett) (no oral argument), criminal
  • Granting Anders motion to withdraw, and dismissing appeal.

• United States v. Arredondo, 25-11326, appeal from N.D. Tex.
  • per curiam (King, Haynes, Ho) (no oral argument), criminal
  • Affirming revocation judgment, modified to correct clerical errors.

• Mayes v. Galveston County, 25-40307, appeal from S.D. Tex.
  • per curiam (Elrod, Ho, Ramirez) (oral argument), Title VII, employment discrimination
  • Affirming summary judgment for county employer dismissing Title VII claims.
  • Alfy Mayes, a jailer for the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office, brought a Title VII retaliation claim alleging that the County disciplined him on three occasions—a one-day suspension, a five-day suspension, and a termination recommendation—in retaliation for filing a prior federal discrimination lawsuit. The case turned on whether Mayes could show that the County’s legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for the disciplinary actions were pretextual under the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework. Mayes also raised a cat’s paw theory of liability for the first time on appeal.
  • The court found that Mayes offered nothing more than disagreement with the County’s assessment of his conduct and failed to produce substantial evidence that the County’s stated reasons were false or pretextual. The cat’s paw argument was deemed forfeited because counsel admitted it was not raised in the district court.

• United States v. Chimezir-Onyejiaka, 25-50576, appeal from W.D. Tex.
  • per curiam (Richman, Southwick, Willett) (no oral argument), criminal
  • Granting Anders motion to withdraw, and dismissing appeal.

• United States v. Hazzard, 25-10749, appeal from N.D. Tex.
  • per curiam (Jones, Duncan, Douglas) (no oral argument), criminal, sufficiency of evidence, speedy trial, Commerce Clause
  • Affirming conviction of kidnapping resulting in death, and life sentence.
  • Naasson Hazzard was convicted of kidnapping resulting in death under 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a) and sentenced to life in prison. He raised three challenges on appeal: (1) sufficiency of the evidence, arguing no rational juror could have found him guilty; (2) a constitutional speedy trial violation, raised for the first time on appeal; and (3) a Commerce Clause challenge to § 1201(a)(1)’s application to intrastate activity involving instrumentalities of interstate commerce.
  • The court found sufficient evidence that Hazzard kidnapped the victim for the purpose of killing her and that the victim was held against her will. The speedy trial claim failed under plain error review because Hazzard was tried within five months of the filing of the complaint. The Commerce Clause challenge was rejected based on established precedent holding that Congress may regulate instrumentalities of interstate commerce even when the underlying activity is intrastate, and Hazzard did not dispute that he used such instrumentalities.

• United States v. Boswell, 25-30668, appeal from W.D. La.
  • per curiam (King, Haynes, Ho) (no oral argument), criminal, sentence reduction
  • Affirming denial of motion for sentence reduction.
  • Joseph Boswell, Sr., a federal prisoner serving a 60-month sentence for tax evasion, moved for a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2), arguing that Amendment 821 to the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines reduced offense levels for tax-related offenses under U.S.S.G. § 2T1.1 and limited upward adjustments for “sophisticated means” and “aggravating role” enhancements that had been applied in his case.
  • The court found that none of Amendment 821’s three parts “even remotely amend or affect the guideline provisions covering tax offenses or the guideline enhancements for ‘sophisticated means’ and ‘aggravating role.'” The court agreed with the government that Boswell was ineligible for a sentence reduction and held the district court did not abuse its discretion.