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Posted by: Tanja Trezise on Sep 14, 2021

Aggrieved of his Hamilton County Criminal Court jury conviction of second degree murder, the defendant, Zacarias Salas-Rufino, appeals, challenging the admission of certain telephone calls and the testimony of the medical examiner on the issue of “excited delirium.” Discerning no error, we affirm.

Posted by: Tanja Trezise on Sep 14, 2021

In the underlying declaratory judgment action, an insurance company sought a judgment that an automobile insurance policy issued to a mechanic does not provide coverage for an accident involving the mechanic. After examining the mechanic under oath, the insurance company moved for summary judgment, arguing that the policy contained a business purpose exclusion for accidents occurring while road testing a vehicle, which the mechanic stated he was doing at the time the accident occurred. The mechanic responded with an affidavit asserting that he was driving the vehicle for personal errands. The trial court denied the motion, finding that there was a genuine issue of material fact as to the mechanic’s purpose for driving the vehicle. At trial, the mechanic testified that he was running personal errands at the time of the accident but offered no explanation for his contradictory sworn statements. Following the close of proof, the insurance company renewed its argument regarding the policy’s exclusion and moved for a directed verdict. The trial court denied the motion and submitted the matter to a jury, which found that the exclusion did not preclude coverage of the accident. On appeal, the insurance company contends that the trial court erred by not applying the cancellation rule. We agree and hold that if the rule had been applied, no genuine issue existed for the jury to consider with respect to the mechanic’s business purpose at the time the accident occurred. Thus, the trial court should have directed a verdict in favor of the insurance company. The judgment of the trial court approving the jury verdict is vacated and the case is remanded.

Posted by: Tanja Trezise on Sep 14, 2021

In this divorce case, a husband appeals the trial court’s denial of his motion to alter or amend, arguing that the court should not have granted the divorce on the ground of irreconcilable differences or approved the parties’ marital dissolution agreement when the husband purportedly withdrew his consent to the divorce, lacked the capacity to enter into a marital dissolution agreement, and was under duress at the time he executed it. He also argues that his due process rights were infringed. Upon our review, we affirm the judgment of the trial court. We also award the wife her attorney’s fees for this appeal and remand to the trial court for a calculation of those fees.

Posted by: Tanja Trezise on Sep 13, 2021

KAREN NELSON MOORE, Circuit Judge. Edmer Eudulio Barrios Garcia, Doublas Arguijo, Ardiles Yasdami Mendez Mendez, and Sudhaben Pankajkumar Patel are noncitizens. They were victims of grave crimes; they cooperated with law enforcement. They applied for U-visas and authorization to work; Mendez Mendez and Patel sought derivative U-visas and work authorization for some of their family members. These noncitizens have waited years for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)—a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—to adjudicate their applications. Plaintiffs have been and remain unable to obtain lawful employment, to visit their family members who live abroad, or to attain deferred-action status that would protect them from removal from this country. Plaintiffs sued USCIS and DHS, alleging that the agencies have unreasonably delayed placing the principal applicants on the U-visa waitlist and adjudicating Plaintiffs’ work-authorization applications. While this appeal pended, USCIS announced a new program for persons with pending U-visa applications known as the “Bona Fide Determination Process.” The parties contest whether this nascent program moots Plaintiffs’ claims.

To that end, we conclude that Plaintiffs have pleaded sufficient facts that the principal petitioners’ delayed waitlist determinations have harmed Plaintiffs’ health and welfare; Plaintiffs’ waitlist claim should thus survive the Government’s motions to dismiss. Although we cannot review Plaintiffs’ work-authorization claim, the implementation of the Bona Fide Determination Process during this appeal compels us to conclude that Plaintiffs should be permitted to amend their complaints should they wish to challenge any delayed “bona fide” determinations. We thus REVERSE and REMAND.

Posted by: Tanja Trezise on Sep 13, 2021

GRIFFIN, Circuit Judge. In many respects, we have seen this case before. When a motorcycle club shifts gears from sharing a fraternal interest in Harley-Davidsons to peddling drugs through violent means, convictions and lengthy sentences under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) usually follow. See, e.g., United States v. Odum, 878 F.3d 508 (6th Cir. 2017); United States v. Deitz, 577 F.3d 672 (6th Cir. 2009); United States v. Lawson, 535 F.3d 434 (6th Cir. 2008). These consolidated criminal appeals are no exception.

The federal government successfully prosecuted multiple members of the “Devils Diciples [sic] Motorcycle Club” (DDMC) for their role in a RICO enterprise that trafficked large quantities of drugs (namely methamphetamine) and engaged in numerous other illegal acts (like violent crimes, illicit gambling, thefts, and obstruction of justice). The district court imposed sentences that ranged from twenty-eight years to life in prison. Defendants have raised over seventy issues on appeal, none of which have merit. We affirm their convictions and sentences.

In this published opinion, we address two issues of first impression for our court: (1) the district court’s use of future-tense language in its RICO conspiracy jury instructions; and (2) its application of a two-level sentencing enhancement for maintaining a drug premises under U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(b)(12) via § 1B1.3(a)(1)(B)’s relevant-conduct provision. For the reasons set forth below, we hold that the future-tense RICO conspiracy jury instructions accurately stated the law. In addition, we conclude that on these facts, the district court correctly applied the drug-premises enhancement through relevant conduct in United States v. Castano. We address all other issues in the unpublished appendix to this opinion.

Posted by: Tanja Trezise on Sep 13, 2021

The Wilson County Grand Jury charged Defendant, Clarence Willis Moore, Jr., with four counts of selling 0.5 grams or more of cocaine within 1,000 feet of a child care agency in violation of the Drug-Free School Zone Act. Following trial, a jury convicted Defendant in counts one and three of sale of “Schedule II, cocaine, within 1,000 feet of a school zone.” The jury found Defendant not guilty in counts two and four. At the sentencing hearing, the trial court determined that Defendant’s Class B felony convictions were not subject to a one classification increase under Tennessee Code Annotated section 39-17- 432(b)(1) because the offenses occurred within the prohibited zone of a childcare center. See Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-17-432(b)(3) (2016). The court sentenced Defendant as a Range III persistent offender to twenty-five years in Count 1 and twenty-two years in Count 3, ran the sentences consecutively, and imposed a fine of $2,000 on each count. Pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated section 39-17-432(c), the court ordered Defendant to serve the minimum twenty-year sentence on each count. Following a thorough review of the record and applicable law, we conclude that the evidence was insufficient to prove that the offenses occurred within 1,000 feet of a childcare center or a child care agency. Because the evidence was insufficient to establish a violation of section 39-17-432(b), the court erred in ordering Defendant to serve the minimum sentences for the two Class B felonies. Accordingly, we affirm the judgments of conviction and the total effective sentence of forty-seven years with a release eligibility of forty-five percent but modify the sentence to exclude the harsher penalty requiring service of the twenty-year minimum sentence on each count. We remand for entry of new judgments of conviction for Counts 1 and 3 consistent with this opinion.

Posted by: Tanja Trezise on Sep 13, 2021

The pro se Petitioner, Michael Bailey, appeals the denial of his petition for post-conviction relief in seven cases that resulted in his convictions for eight counts of aggravated robbery and one count of aggravated assault and an effective sentence of two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. Based on our review of the record and the parties’ briefs, we affirm the judgment of the post-conviction court.

Posted by: Tanja Trezise on Sep 13, 2021

After being denied parole, Fred Auston Wortman, III (“Plaintiff”) filed suit against the State of Tennessee (the “State”), the Tennessee Board of Parole (the “Board”), several board members and other state employees, and two assistant district attorneys in the Chancery Court for Davidson County (the “trial court”). Several defendants moved for dismissal for failure to state a claim for which relief can be granted. The trial court granted the motion to dismiss and Plaintiff appealed to this Court. Because the trial court’s order is not final, however, we lack subject matter jurisdiction to hear this appeal. The appeal is therefore dismissed.

Posted by: Tanja Trezise on Sep 13, 2021

This is the third appeal in a dispute among a general contractor, a subcontractor, and an equipment supplier. Each party blamed the others for delays in a construction project. After the first appeal was dismissed for lack of a final judgment, the trial court held each party partially responsible for the delays and partially responsible for liquidated damages assessed by the owner. In the second appeal, this court modified the judgment in part, reversed it in part, and remanded for further proceedings. On remand, the subcontractor sought to recover from the general contractor discretionary costs of $10,962.42, attorneys’ fees of $220,724.53 under the Prompt Pay Act of 1991, Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 66-34-101 to -704, and “[a]dditional charges.” The trial court awarded some of the requested fees but excluded $100,350 of attorneys’ fees attributed to legal services rendered during the first and second appeal because the subcontractor’s request for appellate attorneys’ fees was untimely, i.e., the relief had not been requested in the pleadings in the prior appeals. The trial court also denied $29,685 in fees incurred in the trial court proceedings for legal services that were “unrelated to [the general contractor].” The trial court also found the subcontractor was not entitled to recover the “[a]dditional charges” because the remand from the Court of Appeals did not authorize such expenses. This appeal followed. The principal issues in this appeal concern the subcontractor’s claims for attorneys’ fees and additional expenses and whether the general contractor’s surety is secondarily liable for one of the judgments. Finding no error, we affirm the trial court’s judgment in all respects.

Posted by: Tanja Trezise on Sep 13, 2021

This case concerns the termination of a father’s parental rights to his son. The trial court predicated termination of parental rights on the ground of abandonment by failure to visit and found termination of the father’s parental rights was in the child’s best interest. We have determined that the record contains clear and convincing evidence to support the trial court’s findings and affirm the termination of the father’s parental rights.


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