United States v. Daniel Goering-Runyan

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: February 9, 2024
• Docket: 22-30194
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FEB 9 2024 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 22-30194

Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No. 3:22-cr-00164-HZ-1

v. MEMORANDUM* DANIEL LYNN GOERING-RUNYAN, AKA Dan Runyan,

Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Oregon Marco A. Hernandez, Chief District Judge, Presiding

Submitted February 7, 2024** Portland, Oregon

Before: McKEOWN, BYBEE, and BRESS, Circuit Judges.

Daniel Goering-Runyan appeals his conviction on the single count of failure

to register as a sex offender under 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a). We have jurisdiction

under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm.

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). We first address whether the district court violated Goering-Runyan’s Sixth

Amendment right to self-representation. See Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806,

821 (1975). Although we have “not yet clarified whether denial of a Faretta

request is reviewed de novo or for abuse of discretion,” we conclude that the

district court did not err under either standard of review. United States v. Telles,

18 F.4th 290, 302 (9th Cir. 2021) (quoting United States v. Kaczynski, 239 F.3d

1108, 1116 (9th Cir. 2001)).

At the hearing on his Faretta motion, Goering-Runyan correctly identified

the crime with which he was charged, knew the potential imprisonment term, and

confirmed that he understood the possible financial penalties. However, during the

colloquy about supervised release, Goering-Runyan insisted both that the

supervised release statute was unconstitutional and that it did not apply to him

because he had pleaded not guilty. After considerable back-and-forth, the district

court determined that Goering-Runyan’s decision to represent himself was not

made knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently, and thus ordered his appointed

counsel to remain on the case. The court gave him an opportunity to consult with

counsel and advised him that it would consider another Faretta motion. He later

renewed the motion, but ultimately withdrew it.

We affirm because the district court correctly determined that Goering-

Runyan’s responses suggested an inability to comprehend that he faced a

2 significant potential punishment—a term of supervised release up to life. See

United States v. Balough, 820 F.2d 1485, 1487–88 (9th Cir. 1987) (explaining that

the Faretta inquiry “must focus on what the defendant understood, rather than on

what the court said”).

Goering-Runyan next takes issue with the jury instructions. Under 18

U.S.C. § 2250(a), it is a federal crime for a person who has been convicted of a

qualifying sex offense and travels in interstate commerce to “knowingly fail[] to

register or update a registration as required by the Sex Offender Registration and

Notification Act” (“SORNA”). The district court’s instructions complied with

United States v. Crowder, and were thus proper. 656 F.3d 870 (9th Cir. 2011).

The Government must prove only “that a convicted sex offender knew of a

registration requirement and knowingly failed ‘to register or update a

registration,’” not that “the sex offender also knew that the failure to register

violates SORNA.” Id. at 876–77 (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a)(3)).

Finally, the district court did not err in imposing a sentence of ten years of

supervised release under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(k). Though this sentence, in

conjunction with Goering-Runyan’s fourteen-month prison sentence, exceeds the

maximum ten-year imprisonment term authorized by Section 2250(a), we “have

expressly and repeatedly held that a sentencing court may impose a term of

supervised release which, when combined with the term of imprisonment, results

3 in a total sentence beyond the statutory maximum for the substantive offense.”

United States v. Purvis, 940 F.2d 1276, 1278 (9th Cir. 1991) (emphasis omitted).

We recently reaffirmed this precedent. See United States v. Henderson, 998 F.3d

1071, 1072 (9th Cir. 2021) (clarifying that United States v. Haymond “did not

overrule or undermine our prior opinion in [Purvis]” (citing 139 S. Ct. 2369

(2019))).

We do not countenance Goering-Runyan’s argument that the Supreme Court

struck down Section 3583(k) in its entirety in United States v. Haymond. The

Court in Haymond held unconstitutional only the last two sentences of Section

3583(k). In our view, “none of the concerns raised by Justice Breyer[’s]”

controlling concurrence apply to the first sentence of Section 3583(k)—the only

part of the statutory provision relevant to Goering-Runyan’s sentence. See

Henderson, 998 F.3d at 1075–76 (noting, in a case involving a revocation sentence

imposed under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e), that Haymond decided only the issue of

whether Section “3583(k)’s mandatory minimum [for revocation sentences]

violated [the] right to trial by jury”). The supervised release sentence was

therefore properly imposed.

AFFIRMED.