United States v. Holiday, No. 20-50157 (9th Cir. 2021)
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The Ninth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction and sentence for seven instances of armed robbery and three instances of attempted armed robbery. Defendant raised three alleged trial errors: (1) denial of his motion to suppress body camera footage of him taken during an unrelated police encounter; (2) denial of his motion in limine to exclude video evidence of his flight from police; and (3) denial of his motion to sever the offenses. Furthermore, defendant argued that cumulative errors affected the fairness of his trial; the mandatory minimum term of imprisonment violated the Eighth Amendment; and a Hobbs Act robbery case should be overturned.
The panel concluded that the police violated the Fourth Amendment when they opened the door to defendant's residence without a warrant on February 7, 2017, and the fruit of that search should not have been introduced at trial. However, given the strength of the other evidence that defendant committed the ARCO robbery, the panel concluded that the district court's error in admitting the body camera evidence was harmless. The panel rejected the remainder of defendant's challenges to his conviction and his 85-year sentence as meritless.
Court Description: Criminal Law. The panel affirmed a defendant’s convictions and sentence for seven instances of armed robbery and three instances of attempted armed robbery. The panel held that the district court erred by denying the defendant’s motion to suppress body camera footage taken during an unrelated police encounter at the defendant’s home in connection with the report of child abuse in a vehicle registered to the defendant’s home. In the footage, the defendant was wearing shoes that matched the description of the shoes the suspect was wearing at an ARCO gas station in one of the robberies. The Government conceded that an officer’s opening the front door of the home constituted a search, but contended that the warrantless search was constitutional pursuant to the emergency exception to the warrant requirement. The panel held that the officers’ conduct did not fall within the scope of the emergency exception to the warrant requirement because the officers had no reason to believe that the child victim was in the home at the address where the vehicle was registered. The panel concluded, however, that the error in admitting the body camera evidence was harmless because of the strength of the other evidence that the defendant committed the ARCO robbery. UNITED STATES V. HOLIDAY 3 The panel affirmed the district court’s denial of the defendant’s motion in limine to exclude video evidence of his flight from police pursuant to Fed. R. Evid. 404(b). The panel explained that the car chase video was not subject to Rule 404(b)(1), which sets forth prohibited uses. The panel wrote that even if the evidence would have been excluded under Rule 404(b)(1) if the Government had used it to prove the defendant’s character, (a) the video was admissible under Rule 404(b)(2) to prove the defendant’s identity as the person who committed several robberies while wearing the same sweatshirt he wore in the video, and, in one robbery, using the same gun that was found near where he was sitting in the fleeing car; and (b) admission of the video was not an abuse of discretion because it was relevant and not more prejudicial than probative. Affirming the district court’s denial of the defendant’s motion to sever the offenses, the panel explained that under its plain text, Fed. R. Crim. P. 8(a) lists the three criteria for when joinder of multiple offenses is permitted in the disjunctive. The panel held that United States v. Harris, 154 F.3d 1082 (9th Cir. 1998), compels the conclusion that the defendant’s 85-year prison sentence for his role in ten robberies does not violate the Eighth Amendment. The panel wrote that it is not at liberty to overrule the three-judge panel’s decision in United States v. Dominguez, 954 F.3d 1251 (9th Cir. 2020), which, as the defendant acknowledged, rejected the argument that attempted robbery under the Hobbs Act is not a “crime of violence” that triggers 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) and its accompanying penalties. 4 UNITED STATES V. HOLIDAY The panel held that there is no basis for a holding of cumulative error requiring a new trial.
The court issued a subsequent related opinion or order on November 22, 2022.
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