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MIA BENNETT,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
HURLEY MEDICAL CENTER,
Defendant-Appellee. |
No. 23-1162 |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan at Detroit.
No. 2:21-cv-10471—Paul D. Borman, District Judge.
Argued: October 19, 2023
Decided and Filed: November 9, 2023
Before: SUTTON, Chief Judge; CLAY and LARSEN, Circuit Judges.
_________________________
OPINION
_________________________
CLAY, Circuit Judge. Plaintiff Mia Bennett appeals the district court’s grant of summary
judgment in favor of Defendant Hurley Medical Center (“Hurley”). Plaintiff claims that Hurley
violated her rights under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), 42 U.S.C.
§ 12131 et seq.; Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794; and Michigan’s Persons
with Disabilities Civil Rights Act (“PWDCRA”), Mich. Comp. Laws § 37.1101 et seq., when it
stopped permitting her service dog, Pistol, to accompany her while working as a student nurse.
For the reasons set forth below, we AFFIRM the district court’s grant of summary judgment. |
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
MUSTAFA DEVILLE REYNOLDS,
Defendant-Appellant. |
No. 22-1431 |
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Michigan at Grand Rapids.
No. 1:20-cr-00024-1—Paul Lewis Maloney, District Judge.
Argued: July 26, 2023
Decided and Filed: November 9, 2023
Before: McKEAGUE, GRIFFIN, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.
_________________________
OPINION
_________________________
MURPHY, Circuit Judge. A jury convicted Mustafa Reynolds of selling a fentanyl-heroin
mixture that killed two young men. Investigators connected Reynolds to these fatal drugs in part
through cellphone records, including records showing the general locations of several phones.
Reynolds now raises four issues on appeal. First, he argues that the government introduced
insufficient evidence to convict him. Second, he argues that a government expert identified the
phones’ general locations using a software program that flunks the reliability standards from
Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993). Third, he argues that the
district court violated the Constitution by excluding text messages that allegedly supported his
innocence. And lastly, he argues that the prosecutor improperly “vouched” for a key government
witness during closing arguments. Disagreeing on all fronts, we affirm. |
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
DAVID ALLEN (22-1698); MICHAEL DAVIS (22-1717),
Defendants-Appellants. |
Nos. 22-1698/1717 |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan at Detroit.
No. 2:18-cr-20085—Paul D. Borman, District Judge.
Decided and Filed: November 9, 2023
Before: STRANCH, BUSH, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.
_________________________
OPINION
_________________________
PER CURIAM. Michael Davis and David Allen pleaded guilty to using a facility of
interstate commerce (their cellphones) in a murder-for-hire scheme, in violation of 18 U.S.C.
§ 1958(a). But they reserved the right to raise two constitutional issues on appeal, one involving
the Commerce Clause and the other involving the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial.
Davis and Allen first argue that the government could not constitutionally apply the
federal murder-for-hire statute to their conduct. Although the statute rests on Congress’s power
to regulate interstate commerce, Davis and Allen never left Michigan or even made calls outside
the State when committing the murder. At most, some of their intrastate calls required the
telephone company to use out-of-state switches. This interstate connection, they say, does not
suffice to give Congress the power to regulate their crime. Our binding precedent requires us to
reject this claim. The Supreme Court has held that Congress may regulate the “instrumentalities
of interstate commerce” even when used only within a State, and we have long treated an
ordinary telephone as one such “instrumentality” within Congress’s control. See United States v.
Windham, 53 F.4th 1006, 1013 (6th Cir. 2022); United States v. Weathers, 169 F.3d 336, 341–42
(6th Cir. 1999).
So Davis and Allen turn to their speedy-trial claims. Before they pleaded guilty, the
district court had postponed their trial for nearly four years. Davis and Allen allege that this
lengthy delay violated the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial, and Allen also claims that it
violated the Speedy Trial Act. But the delay arose in part from their own repeated requests for
more time and in part from the COVID-19 pandemic. Because the district court found that both
reasons justified the delay, it saw no speedy-trial problem. We agree and affirm. |
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