Boermeester v. University of Southern California, et al. — 9th Cir. (Oct 29, 2026)

The Fourth Circuit considers an eighteen-year sentence for lies told during an FBI investigation into a teenage girl's kidnapping and murder. Angel Vause pleaded guilty to three false-statement counts arising from a single interview. The lies concerned the events surrounding the girl's disappearance, including how she entered a car and what happened to her phone. The three sentences run one after another, rather than at the same time. Vause is challenging whether the interview could support three separate punishments. The rule of lenity favors the defendant when a criminal law remains seriously ambiguous after the usual tools of interpretation have been applied. She also challenges the use of a higher statutory maximum. The false-statements law normally permits up to five years per offense, but allows up to eight for certain specified matters. The court is examining whether a charging defect involving that higher limit requires relief.

A West Virginia traffic stop leads to a dispute about a police dog's paws. Henry Rogers pleaded guilty in the resulting federal drug case, but he is challenging the refusal to exclude evidence from the stop. During the sniff, the dog repeatedly touched the outside of his car. The Fourth Circuit considers whether that contact turned the sniff into a search under the Fourth Amendment. The question involves a distinction between smelling the air around a vehicle and physically intruding on someone's property to obtain information.

The Fourth Circuit hears a Nicaraguan man's challenge to losing protection from removal. His fight over being sent back to Nicaragua has unfolded during prolonged U.S. immigration detention. An immigration judge granted him protection under the Convention Against Torture, but the government appealed and the Board of Immigration Appeals reversed. He is asking the court to review that reversal. This protection requires a more-likely-than-not risk of torture involving public officials. The dispute also concerns who gets to decide the facts. The Board must review the immigration judge's factual findings for clear error; it may not simply choose a different view of the evidence. The Fourth Circuit is examining whether the Board respected that limit.

The Ninth Circuit hears a Nevada prisoner's lawsuit over exposure to COVID-19. He sued prison officials, alleging that they knowingly moved infected prisoners into his housing unit and caused him to contract COVID. The district court refused to end the case without trial, finding a genuine factual dispute over whether officials responded reasonably to the danger. The officials have appealed the denial of qualified immunity. That doctrine protects individual officials from damages unless they violated a constitutional right that was clearly established at the time. This is an interlocutory appeal, meaning an appeal before the trial-court proceedings are finished. Such an appeal can address legal immunity questions, but generally cannot be used simply to reweigh evidence about disputed events. Recording note: The court's original file cuts off during the judge's closing, after both sides finish and the case is submitted. That original cutoff is preserved.

The Fourth Circuit considers whether later-obtained evidence justifies reopening a prisoner's civil-rights lawsuit. The inmate was stabbed by other prisoners in South Carolina and sued prison officials. After his death in a later attack, his estate continued the case. The district court dismissed the federal claims for failure to exhaust administrative remedies, meaning completion of the prison's available grievance process before suing. It later refused to reopen that judgment. The estate will argue that hospitalization, fear and records withheld during discovery show the process was unavailable. The officials will contend that the evidence was not sufficiently new or material, and that alleged discovery misconduct does not justify reopening. Rule sixty permits relief from a judgment on specified grounds, including newly discovered evidence or an opposing party's misconduct; those grounds have different requirements. This appeal concerns that reopening decision, not a direct appeal from the original dismissal.