United States v. Edwin James

792 F.3d 962, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 11629, 2015 WL 4080101
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedJuly 7, 2015
Docket14-2756
StatusPublished
Cited by26 cases

This text of 792 F.3d 962 (United States v. Edwin James) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Edwin James, 792 F.3d 962, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 11629, 2015 WL 4080101 (8th Cir. 2015).

Opinion

SMITH, Circuit Judge.

Edwin James appeals his sentence of lifetime supervised release and certain conditions of supervised release imposed by the district court after James pleaded guilty to failing to register as a sex offender, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2250, as is required by the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 16901-16991. We affirm in part and reverse in part.

I. Background

In 1979, James pleaded guilty in Washington state to one count of statutory rape in the first degree for having sexual intercourse with a four-year-old girl. Soon after his conviction, James was declared to be a sexual psychopath. The court sentenced him to a suspended sentence of twenty years at a psychiatric hospital contingent on his completion of a sexual psychopathy program. During his treatment at the hospital, James admitted to hospital staff that he sexually abused three of his children and his nephews on several occasions. The treatment also elicited a confession from James that he sexually abused a six-year-old girl when he was seventeen years old, and that he sexually abused a 12- or 13-year-old girl when he was in his twenties. Hospital staff also believed that James’s dependence on alcohol exacerbated his deviance and “aggravate[d] his potential for acting out in a predatory fashion.”

In 1985, James decided to leave the sexual psychopathy program short of completion because of a domestic dispute with his wife. Hospital staff strongly warned against James leaving the program because they did not believe James had overcome his sexual deviance. In a letter to the court, hospital staff called attention to “[h]is deviousness, attempts to shift accountability and to manipulate others” even after several years of treatment. After James left the program, the court revoked his suspended sentence and sentenced James to prison. James was paroled in 1988. Soon after his release, James began a sexual relationship with Linda Hance, a mentally handicapped woman. James and Hance share a child together who was born in 1993. Additionally, James was convicted twice in California for failing to register as a sex offender in 1995.

James and his family moved to De Queen, Arkansas in early 2013. James last registered as a sex offender on May 17, 2012, in Sacramento, California, where he was then living. Coordination between law enforcement in Sacramento and De Queen lead to James’s location and arrest in October 2013. James was indicted on one count of failing to register under SOR-NA, to which he pleaded guilty.

The district court sentenced James to 15 months’ imprisonment and a lifetime term of supervised release. Upon James’s objection to lifetime supervised release, the court stated the following:

18 United States Code 3[853(k) ] states, the authorized term of supervised release under section 2250 is, any term *966 of years not less than 5 or life. Guidelines [§ ] 5D1.2 [ (b)(2) ] ... says, not withstanding or in spite of [section 5D1.2(a)(l)-(3),] if [the] offense is a sex offense the term is then five years to life. Now, [James’s counsel] explains that failure to register is not, and it’s supported by the law, a sex offense. It’s merely a violation of the law.
I think circumstances like this and maybe the 8th Circuit or somebody will be corrected, but administrative violations of law can’t trump what you were originally convicted of. Supervised release, I think under these conditions should be for life. Although, the defendant’s crime initially was the rape of a four year old child ... on about November 18, 1979. And, sexual intercourse with another child, age four, in October or November of '79. Aso, another child, three years old, in November '79. A1 of these terrible offenses. As a result you were committed to the Western State Hospital in Washington state for sexual psychopath[y].... [You] [ultimately pled guilty to being a sexual psychopath.
The records of the defendant’s hospital stay in the sentence clearly reflected that you were in need of continuing treatment and evaluation. In the opinion of [t]he Court this should have been for life.... The state of Washington defines [a] sexual psychopath as any person who is affected in a form of psychoneuroses, or in a form of psychopathic personality. Which form predisposes such person to the commission of such sexual offenses in the degree constituting him or her a menace to the health and safety of others.... The defendant [was] also diagnos[ed] as having a schizoid personality with several deviations. Psychopathfy], pedophillia and severe alcohol addiction. And, the discharge ... notes described you as devious, shifting] accountability, and trfying] to manipulate others. It’s these things that under the law I am going to find that you should be placed on supervised release, rather than five years, but for life.

The court revisited its rationale when pronouncing its sentence. When discussing James’s sentence, the court stated that “the law says ... five years, but then I can impose a term of supervised release more than that five years if I explain the circumstances, and we’ve done that.” The court continued to explain that it thought James needed the lifetime supervised release because “he’s adjudged a psychopath.... He is also deemed [to have a] schizoid personality, sexual deviation, [and] severe alcoholism.” Additionally, the court noted that hospital staff described James’s posi-treatment personality as “devious, shifting accountability[,] and manipulative.”

The court also considered James’s objections to many of his special conditions for supervised release. James objected to the child-proximity restriction that precluded him from being around children without the consent of the probation office. James argued that this special condition should be modified to accommodate visitation with his grandchildren because he has not been convicted of a sex offense in 35 years. James used the same reasoning to argue that the special condition that he attend sex-offender counseling was unnecessary because he showed no signs of recidivism. The district court was not convinced. The court found that the challenged conditions of supervised release were justified when taking into account James’s history of sexual deviance and his untreated mental health diagnoses.

When announcing James’s sentence, the court orally announced each of the special conditions it was imposing, including a re *967 striction on using computers. James objected to a special condition restricting his use of computers, to which the court responded that “[a] lot of times on the computer you can get some things that are more ... objectionable than your objection .... I’m going to uphold [it].” When the court issued its written judgment, many of the written special conditions were materially different from the oral sentence.

II. Discussion

James appeals the district court’s lifetime sentence of supervised release and contends that the district court erred in imposing written special conditions that are more restrictive than the oral pronouncement.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
792 F.3d 962, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 11629, 2015 WL 4080101, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-edwin-james-ca8-2015.