United States v. Brown, No. 13-10354 (9th Cir. 2015)
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Defendant appealed the denial of his motion for judgment of acquittal or for a new trial based in part on the district court's denial of his attorney's motion to withdraw. United States v. Rivera-Corona held that an indigent criminal defendant need not establish a conflict with his attorney amounting to the constructive denial of counsel as a prerequisite to substituting
appointed counsel for his retained attorney. The court reiterated Rivera-Corona's intertwined rules: (1) A defendant enjoys a right to discharge his retained counsel for any reason “unless a contrary result is compelled by ‘purposes inherent in the fair, efficient and orderly administration of justice,’” and (2) if the court allows a defendant to discharge his retained counsel, and the defendant is financially qualified, the court must appoint new counsel for him under the Criminal Justice Act (“CJA”), 18 U.S.C. 3006A. In this case, the district court abused its discretion in denying defendant's motion to discharge retained counsel where the district court prevented defendant from discharging his retained lawyer and so refused to appoint counsel. Neither the reasons the district court offered after its own detailed inquiry, the additional reasons the government has suggested in its briefing, nor any reason the court can infer from the record, provide any ground necessary to the fair, efficient, and orderly administration of justice to justify the denial of the motion. The court concluded that there was sufficient evidence to support defendant's transportation and advertising convictions. The court vacated the convictions and remanded for a new trial.
Court Description: Criminal Law. The panel vacated convictions for advertising, transporting, receiving, and possessing child pornography, and remanded for a new trial, in a case in which the district court denied the defendant’s motion to discharge his retained counsel. The panel reiterated the intertwined rules of United States v. Rivera-Corona, 618 F.3d 976 (9th Cir. 2010): (1) A defendant enjoys a constitutional right to discharge his retained counsel for any reason “unless a contrary result is compelled by the ‘purposes inherent in the fair, efficient and orderly administration of justice,’” and (2) if the court allows a defendant to discharge his retained counsel, and the defendant is financially qualified, the court must appoint new counsel for him under the Criminal Justice Act. The panel held that the district court abused its discretion in denying the defendant’s motion to discharge retained counsel and in refusing to appoint new counsel, where neither the reasons the district court offered after its own detailed inquiry, the additional reasons the government has suggested in its briefing, nor any reason the panel could infer from the record, provide any ground necessary to the fair, efficient, and orderly administration of justice to justify the denial of the defendant’s motion to discharge retained counsel. The panel therefore vacated the convictions. UNITED STATES V. BROWN 3 The panel rejected the defendant’s arguments that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to support his transportation and advertising convictions, and therefore remanded for a new trial. The panel held that a conviction for transportation or advertising of child pornography does not require evidence that the material actually crossed state lines. The panel also held that a reasonable jury could conclude that the actions taken by the defendant, the proprietor of a computer business with substantial technical computer knowledge – designating a non-default folder on his external hard drive to be shared by a peer-to-peer file-sharing program – are not materially different from those of a bulletin board operator, which United States v. Mohrbacher, 182 F.3d 1041 (9th Cir. 1999), suggested could be charged with transportation.
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