The case involved defendant John Henry Gill, who had been convicted of a sex offense in Idaho in 2003 and was later charged in Utah with failing to register as a sex offender under 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a) of SORNA between September and October 2006 after moving to Utah. Gill moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that SORNA did not apply to him at the time of his alleged failure to register. The court granted the motion to dismiss, holding that SORNA's requirements for pre-enactment offenders were not effective until the Attorney General issued an Interim Rule in February 2007. The core reasoning was that applying the criminal provisions of SORNA to Gill's pre-rule conduct would violate the Ex Post Facto Clause, as the statute delegated to the Attorney General the authority to determine its applicability to earlier convictions.
The case arose after Upstream Images filed a federal copyright action over an elk image and recorded lis pendens on real property, prompting Pebble Creek Homes to sue in Utah state court to quiet title and nullify the liens under state law. Pebble Creek moved to remand the state action to Utah court and to void a state-court order denying their petition. The district court denied both motions. It held that the quiet-title claim was completely preempted by the Copyright Act and therefore created federal-question jurisdiction supporting removal of the entire case. It further ruled that the state judge’s entry of a written order two weeks after an oral bench ruling was only a ministerial act that did not affect the merits or violate removal statutes.
The case involved Geraldo Planells-Guerra, charged with possessing at least 500 grams of methamphetamine with intent to distribute, who filed a motion to suppress evidence seized from his car after a warrantless arrest for driving with a suspended license. The court denied the motion to reconsider, holding that the arrest was valid under Utah law because it occurred in the officer's presence based on direct observations and credible witness statements, and that probable cause satisfied the Fourth Amendment. The court further reasoned that the federal exclusionary rule is governed by federal constitutional standards rather than state law violations, and that the good-faith exception would independently bar suppression due to the officer's objectively reasonable belief in the arrest's validity.
In this qui tam action, relator Morris Told alleged that Interwest Construction Co. violated the False Claims Act by wrongfully retaining subcontractor funds and failing to make timely payments during a 1990-1994 Veterans Administration hospital project, along with related Utah state-law claims for fraud and unjust enrichment. The court granted Interwest's motion for summary judgment, holding that all claims were time-barred. The False Claims Act's six-year limitations period (with tolling available only to the United States) and Utah's three- and four-year periods for fraud and unjust enrichment, respectively, had expired well before the 2003 filing, and Told provided no evidence of later violations or timely discovery.
This case involved defendant Landsafe removing a civil action from Utah state court to federal district court on diversity grounds. After the removal notice, other parties continued filing pleadings and the state court issued substantive orders, but Landsafe neither objected nor informed the federal court of these proceedings. The court held that Landsafe had impliedly consented to state court jurisdiction by standing silent while the case advanced in state court, in a manner analogous to parties who voluntarily invoke and then attempt to disclaim a forum's authority. It therefore remanded the case nunc pro tunc to the state court to prevent duplicative litigation and preserve the principle that only one court exercises jurisdiction at a time, while also observing that the removal was procedurally defective because not all defendants joined.
In United States v. Garcia, the defendant pleaded guilty to aggravated identity fraud after stealing personal information from victims, including H.F., and using it to obtain and misuse fraudulent credit cards, resulting in over $6,000 in unauthorized charges. The court sentenced Garcia to the mandatory two-year prison term and ordered her to pay restitution to the affected banks for their financial losses. However, the court held that it lacked statutory authority to order restitution for H.F.'s non-pecuniary harms, such as time spent clearing her credit and emotional distress, because federal restitution laws limit recovery to direct pecuniary losses and do not extend to indirect or consequential harms like lost time. The opinion concludes that this gap in the restitution statutes prevents full compensation for victims in identity theft cases and calls for legislative reform.
