Take the Fifth

Unpublished decisions

• United States v. Willis, 25-11061, appeal from N.D. Tex.
  • per curiam (Jones, Ho, Wilson) (no oral argument), criminal, sentencing
  • Affirming 136-month sentence following a guilty plea for possession with intent to distribute cocaine.
  • The defendant challenged the quantity of drugs attributed to him for calculating his base offense level. He argued that statements from multiple confidential sources were unreliable and that the drug-quantity calculation based on one source’s statement was “patently incorrect.”
  • The Fifth Circuit found no reversible plain error in the district court’s drug-quantity calculation.

• United States v. Hood, 25-60092, appeal from N.D. Miss.
  • per curiam (Jones, Ho, Wilson) (no oral argument), criminal, sufficiency of evidence
  • Affirming conviction for conspiring to traffic firearms in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 922(a)(5), and 924(a)(1)(A).
  • The defendant argued the government failed to prove that he had entered into a conspiracy agreement at the time he completed firearms-purchase paperwork and that any alleged false statement was made in furtherance of the conspiracy.
  • Reviewing de novo with substantial deference to the jury’s verdict, the court found that trial evidence — including testimony from law enforcement and co-conspirators, store surveillance video, and recovered text messages — was sufficient for a rational trier of fact to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

• Knight v. Methanex USA, L.L.C., 26-30178, appeal from M.D. La.
  • per curiam (Davis, Stewart, Duncan) (no oral argument), workers’ compensation
  • Affirming dismissal of employee’s intentional tort and negligence claims against employer arising from workplace injury.
  • Albert Knight, an employee of Turner Industries, was injured when a 2,500-pound check valve slipped and crushed his hand while he was working at a Methanex methanol plant. He sued Methanex under intentional tort and negligence theories, alleging Methanex provided inadequate scaffolding. The appeal raised two issues: (1) whether the district court properly dismissed the intentional tort claim under the Louisiana Workers’ Compensation Act’s (LWCA) “intentional act” exception, and (2) whether the district court correctly granted summary judgment on the negligence claim by finding Methanex was Knight’s statutory employer under the LWCA.
  • On the intentional tort claim, the court held that Knight’s allegations of undersized scaffolding amounted to a safety-standard violation, which under Louisiana Supreme Court precedent (Reeves v. Structural Preservation Systems) is insufficient to show the employer knew injury was “substantially certain” — i.e., “inevitable” or “incapable of failing.” Knight alleged no prior accidents, past worker complaints, or other facts courts have found sufficient to establish the exception.
  • On the statutory employer issue, the court found that the maintenance turnaround work was integral to Methanex’s business and that the contract expressly provided Methanex was the statutory employer of Turner’s workers, triggering LWCA exclusivity. Knight failed to identify any missing evidence that further discovery would reveal.

• Chavarria v. Sam’s Real Estate Business Trust, 26-10262, appeal from N.D. Tex.
  • per curiam (Davis, Stewart, Duncan) (no oral argument), personal tort, summary judgment
  • Vacating summary judgment dismissal of pro se plaintiff’s slip-and-fall claim.
  • Pro se plaintiff Virginia Chavarria slipped and fell on an oily substance inside a Sam’s Club. She failed to respond to defendants’ summary judgment motion by the extended deadline. After a magistrate judge recommended granting summary judgment, Chavarria filed objections attaching security camera footage showing employees passed by the hazard approximately 23 times over roughly 40 minutes before her fall, along with other evidence bearing on defendants’ constructive knowledge. The district court adopted the magistrate’s recommendation, characterizing the objections as “unintelligible” and noting the evidence was untimely.
  • The Fifth Circuit held that the district court’s characterization was “contradicted by the face of the photographic and video evidence” and that Chavarria’s objections were coherent, especially when liberally construed as required for pro se litigants. Under Freeman v. County of Bexar, untimeliness alone does not automatically warrant exclusion of evidence submitted with objections to a magistrate’s report; the district court must balance four equitable factors before deciding whether to accept the evidence. The district court failed to engage any of the Freeman factors. The court vacated and remanded for the district court to consider whether to accept Chavarria’s untimely evidence under the Freeman balancing test.

• United States v. Wilkerson, 25-50549, appeal from W.D. Tex.
  • per curiam (King, Smith, Ramirez) (no oral argument), criminal, sentencing
  • Affirming supervised release conditions imposed as part of sentence.
  • Antonio Wilkerson pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute at least 50 grams of methamphetamine and was sentenced to 72 months’ imprisonment and five years of supervised release. He challenged two discretionary supervised release conditions requiring him to participate in a mental health treatment program and take all prescribed mental health medications, arguing the record lacked evidence of mental health challenges. Reviewed for plain error because Wilkerson did not raise the objection below.
  • The court distinguished the Alvarez and Bree line of cases, where trauma or substance abuse alone was insufficient to justify mental health conditions. Here, the record showed Wilkerson had been under the care of Heart of Texas Behavioral Health Network for thirteen years, had abused Xanax (a medication prescribed for mental health conditions), and had experienced significant childhood trauma — factors that collectively indicated a “questionable mental health history” under the Gordon standard. The court also noted the conditions were modifiable and that the presentence report specifically recommended mental health treatment.

• United States v. Galeas-Mejia, 24-50888, appeal from W.D. Tex.
  • per curiam (Davis, Stewart, Duncan) (no oral argument), criminal, sufficiency of evidence
  • Affirming convictions for conspiracy to transport illegal aliens, conspiracy to harbor illegal aliens, and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments.
  • Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, the court found sufficient evidence supported all convictions.

• Palacios-Ayala v. Blanche, 25-60374, petition for review of BIA order
  • per curiam (Jones, Duncan, Douglas) (no oral argument), immigration
  • Denying Salvadoran citizen’s petition for review of BIA decision that rejected multiple claims: (1) that he was grandfathered for adjustment of status under INA § 245(i); (2) that upheld the IJ’s finding of proper service and his abandonment of a special cancellation-of-removal application under NACARA; and (3) that affirmed the denial of a new hearing on his asylum application and the denial of asylum and withholding of removal.
  • The court found that Palacios-Ayala had forfeited or failed to exhaust virtually every issue: he did not present his de novo hearing argument to the BIA; he forfeited the withholding-of-removal issue by not raising it in his opening brief; he forfeited the service and § 245(i) grandfathering issues by omitting them from his statement of issues; and he forfeited other claims by failing to cite legal authority. On the merits of the asylum claim, the court held that his conclusory arguments regarding nexus — i.e., that he was persecuted because of his status as a former Salvadoran military officer rather than for actions taken while on active duty — were insufficient to show the BIA’s decision was unsupported by substantial evidence.