Weekly Case Digests June 14, 2021 June 18, 2021.

Byline: Derek Hawkins

7th Circuit Digests

7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Katherine Black v. Cherie Wrigley, et al.,

Case No.: 20-2656

Officials: KANNE, ROVNER, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Court Error Exclusion of Evidence

Katherine Black sued two defendants for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Ultimately, the trial did not go as Katherine had hoped, and the jury rejected her claims.Katherine now argues that her trial was riddled with errors and asks that we overturn the jury's verdict for several reasons. Katherine maintains that the district court erred in several ways: first, by excluding numerous pieces of evidence that should have been admitted; second, by allowing improper statements by defense counsel in closing argument; third, by declining to give a jury instruction on one of her defamation claims; and fourth, by denying Katherine's request to give her own closing argument, or hire new counsel to do so, after her lead lawyer suffered some sort of breakdown after the close of evidence. However, our analysis discloses no errors warranting a reversal, and therefore, Katherine's request for a new trial is denied.

Affirmed

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Timothy B. Fredrickson

Case No.: 20-2051

Officials: BRENNAN, SCUDDER, and KIRSCH, Circuit Judges.

Focus: 1st Amendment Violation

The First Amendment does not protect child pornography. In challenging his conviction for inducing sexually explicit videos from a minor, Timothy Fredrickson asks us to reconsider this well-established principle. He contends that because he could have lawfully watched the minor where she recorded the videos (Illinois) and where he received them (Iowa), the First Amendment shields him from prosecution under 18 U.S.C. 2251(a). But child pornography's exclusion from the First Amendment's protection does not hinge on state law, so we affirm Fredrickson's conviction.

Affirmed

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Soraida Flores v. City of South Bend, et al.,

Case No.: 20-1603

Officials: RIPPLE, WOOD, and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Due Process Violation

Erica Flores's life came to an untimely end when Officer Justin Gorny of the South Bend, Indiana, police department careened through residential streets and a red light at speeds up to 98 mph to reach a routine traffic stop he was not invited to aid, crashed into Flores's car, and killed her. Flores's personal representative, Soraida Flores, sued Gorny and the City under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and associated state laws, asserting that Gorny violated Erica's substantive-due-process rights and that the City was liable under Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978), for failing adequately to train its police officers. (We refer to Flores as the plaintiff without distinguishing between the victim and the estate representative unless the context otherwise requires.) The district court dismissed the action on the pleadings. We find, however, that Flores's allegations plausibly state claims against both defendants, and thus that she is entitled to proceed with her case. We therefore reverse and remand.

Reversed and remanded

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: J.B., et al., v. Tiffany Woodard, et al.,

Case No.: 20-1212

Officials: WOOD, SCUDDER, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges.

Focus: 1st Amendment Violation Standing to Sue

This case began as a divorce and child custody dispute in state court. After an allegation surfaced that Edwin Bush had choked his son, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services launched an investigation, and Bush's then-wife Erika successfully sought a court order suspending Bush's parenting time. Bush then turned to federal court and filed this lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 on behalf of himself and his children, alleging violations of their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights and claiming that DCFS employees' conduct set off a series of events culminating in a state court order infringing on his and his kids' right to familial association. The state defendants successfully moved to dismiss the case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The district court concluded that Bush and his children not only lacked standing to bring a constitutional challenge to the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act, but also that the Younger abstention doctrine barred the court from ruling on the remaining constitutional claims. We agree on both fronts. Bush failed to allege facts sufficient to establish standing for his First Amendment claim. And adhering to principles of equity, comity, and federalism, we conclude that the district court was right to abstain from exercising jurisdiction over his remaining claims. We therefore affirm.

Affirmed

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: London Triplett v. Jennifer McDermott, Warden

Case No.: 18-2507

Officials: EASTERBROOK, RIPPLE, and ROVNER, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Habeas Relief Ineffective Assistance of Counsel

London Triplett seeks relief pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2254, for the alleged ineffectiveness of his counsel in a state criminal proceeding. Triplett contends that he would not have pleaded guilty to certain charges had he understood that other, dismissed charges could be considered by the sentencing judge when they were "read in" at sentencing. Because the decision of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals rejecting Triplett's ineffectiveness claim rests on an adequate and independent state groundTriplett's failure to allege objective facts in support of his claim of prejudice from his attorney's erroneous advicewe conclude that habeas relief is foreclosed to him. We therefore affirm the district court's judgment, but on a different ground.

Affirmed

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Dean Guenther v. Matthew Marske, Warden,

Case No.: 17-3409

Officials: SYKES, Chief Judge, and WOOD and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges.

Focus: ACCA-enhanced Sentence Saving-Clause

In 2005 Dean Guenther was convicted of a federal firearms crime in Minnesota and was sentenced as an armed career criminal based in part on his prior Minnesota burglary convictions. His direct appeal failed in the Eighth Circuit, as did his petition for collateral review under 28 U.S.C. 2255. He is currently serving his lengthy sentence in a federal prison in Wisconsin. In 2017 Guenther sought habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. 2241 in the Western District of Wisconsin. Relying on Mathis v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 2243 (2016), and United States v. McArthur, 850 F.3d 925 (8th Cir. 2017), he argued that his sentence is unlawful because his Minnesota burglary convictions are not "violent felonies" under the Armed Career Criminal Act ("ACCA"), 18 U.S.C. 924(e). The district judge denied the petition.

We reverse. A 2255 motion in the sentencing court is normally the exclusive method to collaterally attack a federal sentence, but the "saving clause" in 2255(e) provides a limited exception. The clause permits a prisoner to seek 2241 habeas relief in the district where he is confined if "the remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention." 2255(e). We have construed the saving clause to preserve a path for 2241 relief in a narrow set of circumstancesnamely, when the prisoner relies on an intervening statutory decision announcing a new, retroactive rule that could not have been invoked in his first 2255 motion and the error is serious enough to amount to a miscarriage of justice. See Chazen v. Marske, 938 F.3d 851, 856 (7th Cir. 2019) (synthesizing...