United States v. Jonathon Sainz

827 F.3d 602, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 11726, 2016 WL 3513893
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedJune 27, 2016
Docket13-3585
StatusPublished
Cited by25 cases

This text of 827 F.3d 602 (United States v. Jonathon Sainz) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh 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. Jonathon Sainz, 827 F.3d 602, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 11726, 2016 WL 3513893 (7th Cir. 2016).

Opinion

*604 HAMILTON, Circuit Judge.

Defendant Jonathon M. Sainz appeals from his sentence for transporting and possessing child pornography. Sainz presents two arguments on appeal. First, he argues that the district court ordered him to pay too much restitution to one victim of his possession crime. Second, he argues that the district court erred by imposing three special conditions of supervised release. We affirm the restitution order, but we order a limited remand to correct some issues of vagueness and overbreadth in the conditions of supervised release.

I. Restitution Order

By pleading guilty, Sainz confessed to possessing thousands of child pornography images. Six images were of a victim known as “Cindy,” unlawful images of whom have circulated widely on the internet. The government argued in presentence filings and during the sentencing hearing that Sainz should pay restitution to Cindy because she was a victim of his crime. See 18 U.S.C. § 2259(b)(4) (mandating restitution to victims of child sexual exploitation). Cindy has incurred financial losses such as future lost earnings, attorney fees, and medical and psychiatric expenses.

In the district court, Sainz argued that restitution to Cindy was not appropriate because he did not cause her losses. He possessed images of Cindy but had no role in creating or distributing them. Sainz claimed that he was not a legal cause of Cindy’s harm because hundreds or thousands of others also possessed the images, so she would have been harmed by others even if he had never possessed the images of her. The court rejected this argument because the government had shown that Sainz proximately caused harm to Cindy by viewing the images, which Cindy said re-victimized her and made her feel that the abuse was continuing.

The district court’s approach to causation was confirmed as correct by the Supreme Court’s intervening decision in Paroline v. United States, 572 U.S.-, 134 S.Ct. 1710, 188 L.Ed.2d 714 (2014). The Court interpreted 18 U.S.C. § 2259, the statute governing restitution for child sexual exploitation offenses, to require the government to show the defendant’s offense proximately caused a victim’s losses. Id. at 1722. In Paroline the Court held that the defendant was required to pay restitution to the victim depicted in images he possessed because he caused some portion of her losses: “While it is not possible to identify a discrete, readily definable incremental loss [the defendant] caused, it is indisputable that he was a part of the overall phenomenon that caused her general losses.” Id. at 1726. The Court recognized the ongoing harm possession inflicts on the victim because “every viewing of child pornography is a repetition of the victim’s abuse.” Id. at 1727.

In light of Paroline, Sainz does not challenge on appeal the district court’s ruling that he caused harm to Cindy and must pay her some amount of restitution. Instead, he challenges only the amount he was ordered to pay, which he argues is disproportionate to his relative role in causing Cindy’s losses.

We review the calculation of restitution for abuse of discretion and will set aside an order of restitution only if the district court used inappropriate factors or did not exercise discretion at all. United States v. Stein, 756 F.3d 1027, 1029 (7th Cir. 2014), citing United States v. Frith, 461 F.3d 914, 919 (7th Cir. 2006). We may find an abuse of discretion, though, where a district court “based its ruling on an erroneous view of the law.” Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S. 384, 405, 110 S.Ct. 2447, 110 L.Ed.2d 359 (1990); see *605 also United States v. Robers, 698 F.3d 937, 941 (7th Cir. 2012) (de novo review of legality of restitution order).

The government argued to the district court that Sainz should pay $8,387.43 in restitution, which is 1/136 of Cindy’s total loss for the relevant time period. The government divided the total loss by 136 because Sainz is the 136th offender who has been prosecuted and ordered to pay Cindy restitution. This calculation is known as the 1/n method, where n represents the number of defendants who have paid the victim restitution plus 1 (to count the defendant being sentenced). See United States v. Gamble, 709 F.3d 541, 554 (6th Cir. 2013) (approving a pre-Paroline restitution order using the 1/n method, calling the method a “pragmatic solution that district courts may use as a framework”). 1

The district court agreed with the government and ordered Sainz to pay Cindy $8,387.43 in restitution, citing Gamble and using the 1/n method. Sainz contends that attributing 1/136 of the total loss to him was an error under Paroline.

Paroline addressed a difficult, nearly intractable problem. The Supreme Court’s decision avoided rigid or mechanical rules, leaving district courts considerable discretion in deciding the extent of a defendant’s restitution in such cases. The Court instructed broadly that “a court applying § 2259 should order restitution in an amount that comports with the defendant’s relative role in the causal process that underlies the victim’s general losses.” 134 S.Ct. at 1727. The amount of restitution for a possessor of child pornography like Pa-roline or Sainz should be neither “severe” nor a “token or nominal amount.” Id. “The required restitution would be a reasonable and circumscribed award imposed in recognition of the indisputable role of the offender in the causal process underlying the victim’s losses and suited to the relative size of that causal role.” Id.

The Court then discussed “a variety of factors district courts might consider in determining a proper amount of restitution”:

[District courts might, as a starting point, determine the amount of the victim’s losses caused by the continuing traffic in the victim’s images ... then set an award of restitution in consideration of factors that bear on the relative causal significance of the defendant’s conduct in producing those losses.

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Bluebook (online)
827 F.3d 602, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 11726, 2016 WL 3513893, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-jonathon-sainz-ca7-2016.