Unpublished Decisions

U.S. v. Serrano-Rodriguez, 2015 WL 5519797 (9/21/15) (Okl.) (unpub'd) - Answering "no" to the court's question: "Do you know any legal reason why the sentence cannot be imposed as stated?" is not a waiver of any issue unraised in district court. It's just a forfeiture, triggering plain error review. It was not a plain error for the district court to fail to justify as an upward departure its imposition of supervised release on a deportable alien, even though § 5D1.1(c) contemplates no supervised release for such a person. Mr. Serrano-Rodriguez cited no case law in his favor and there are 3 circuits that don't require departure treatment.

Martin v. The County of Santa Fe, 2015 WL 5559414 (9/22/15) (N.M.) (unpub'd) - The 10th affirms a dismissal of a § 1983 suit on qualified immunity grounds. Officers responded to a call that a man had been shot in the leg. Officers found Mr. Martin at an apartment complex in the dark except for the lighting from the headlights of Mr. Martin's car. He had been shot several hours earlier at a grocery store. He returned to his girlfriend's apartment because he didn't want medical attention. But the officers thought the shooting occurred at the complex and the shooter was still around. Mr. Martin acted intoxicated and belligerent and never informed the officers he had been shot earlier somewhere else. So things did not go well for him. When Mr. Martin did not comply with a request to get on his belly, officers forced him onto his belly, handcuffed him, and restrained him on the ground for 9 minutes. and then sent him off to the hospital against his will. The 10th holds, it was not clearly established this was a violation of the 4th Amendment because the officers reasonably felt they needed to secure a dark and chaotic scene where they reasonably believed the shooter was somewhere at the scene and then reasonably believed they needed to facilitate Mr. Martin's nonconsensual custodial transport to the hospital.