United States v. Rendelman

495 F. App'x 727
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedNovember 7, 2012
DocketNo. 11-3604
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 495 F. App'x 727 (United States v. Rendelman) 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. Rendelman, 495 F. App'x 727 (7th Cir. 2012).

Opinion

By the Court.

ORDER

Scott Rendelman was convicted after a jury trial of contempt of court, 18 U.S.C. § 401(3), retaliating against federal officials for the performance of their duties, id. § 115(a)(1)(B), and threatening the President, id. § 871. On appeal he challenges the district court’s refusal to authorize a psychological evaluation, the court’s exclusion of evidence, the sufficiency of the evidence, and his overall prison sentence, among other things. We affirm the judgment.

Rendelman has been writing obscene, threatening letters to prosecutors, judges, and sitting Presidents for over 20 years. This case started after a federal jury in Maryland found him guilty of threatening public officials in 2007. Rendelman reacted by writing the prosecutor and judge who had been involved in that case. Though his communications were to be monitored and managed once he arrived at the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, he successfully sent several threatening letters before he arrived there. At Marion, the staff screened his mail, notified his victims of the threats, and faxed copies of the letters if the victims wanted to see them. Rendelman also wrote threatening letters to the President, which prison staff intercepted and gave to the Secret Service.

A Secret Service agent told a federal prosecutor about the letters to the President, and the prosecutor opened a grand jury investigation. Rendelman refused to comply with two grand jury subpoenas for handwriting exemplars, even after the district court ordered him to comply with the second subpoena. After Rendelman’s second refusal, the prosecutor informed Ren-delman that he would charge Rendelman with contempt of court. Shortly thereafter, Rendelman wrote a letter threatening to murder and sexually assault the prosecutor if the prosecutor didn’t “get off my case immediately.”

Rendelman was charged with contempt. When he still refused to provide the exemplar, appointed counsel retained a psychologist to evaluate his mental state and competence to stand trial. Dr. Kevin Miller concluded that Rendelman was competent to stand trial and also had understood that his refusal to provide the exemplars was wrong. Dr. Miller diagnosed Rendel-man with an unspecified disorder similar to Asperger’s syndrome, based on Rendel-man’s stubbornness, lack of empathy, and [729]*729refusal to take responsibility. Although Rendelman’s mental state when he wrote the letters was not the focus of the evaluation, Dr. Miller noted that Rendelman “feels fully aware and in control when writing” and that his letter writing is “not clearly compulsive in the sense of OCD.” After this evaluation Rendelman elected to proceed pro se, though the district court appointed a new attorney to act as standby counsel.

The government arranged for a second psychologist, Dr. Christina Pietz, to evaluate Rendelman. She shared Dr. Miller’s view that Rendelman was competent to stand trial and had understood that refusing to provide a handwriting sample was wrong. She diagnosed Rendelman with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (which is distinct from obsessive-compulsive disorder) based on Rendelman’s rigidness and need to be in control, and also noted his narcissistic personality traits. She opined that Rendelman “has complete control over his letter-writing behavior.”

Before trial on the contempt charge, the government used handwriting samples from past cases to link Rendelman to his new round of letters and obtained a superseding indictment adding three counts of retaliating against federal officials and two counts of threatening the President. Rendelman requested authorization to retain Dr. Miller again to offer an opinion about his mental state when he wrote the threatening letters, which the psychologist had not focused on in his first evaluation. The district court denied the request. The court reasoned that Dr. Miller’s initial report already included enough discussion about Rendelman’s mental state when he wrote the letters and that Rendelman had not adequately explained why another evaluation was necessary.

The government moved in limine to curtail the evidence that Rendelman could present at trial about his mental state. The government argued that Rendelman should not be allowed to introduce psychological evaluations from past prosecutions because none establishes that he suffers from a mental disease that could have affected his culpability and would simply confuse the jury. The government also contended that Dr. Miller’s anticipated testimony should be limited to prevent the jury from being confused. The district court agreed with the government that the prior evaluations were irrelevant and would be confusing and decided that Ren-delman could not present them. The court reserved deciding whether Dr. Miller’s testimony would be admitted until Rendelman could speak with Dr. Miller and make an offer of proof to the court.

At trial the government presented the letters that Rendelman had written, evidence that DNA on the envelope flaps matched his DNA, and evidence that the handwriting in the letters matched Rendel-man’s. The letters included threats to rape, murder, disembowel, burn alive, and dismember his victims and their families. Rendelman’s victims testified that the letters had frightened them and caused them to take security precautions, even knowing that Rendelman had never acted on previous threats. They were aware that in past cases Rendelman had obtained personal information about his victims and shown up at the office of one of his victims, as he said he would in a threatening letter.

As the trial progressed, Rendelman and the government agreed on the handling of evidence about Rendelman’s mental state. Rendelman promised not to call Dr. Miller, and in return the prosecutor would let Rendelman testify extensively about his mental state when he wrote the letters and would not call Dr. Pietz in rebuttal.

In his defense Rendelman started by calling the assistant federal defenders who had advised him during the grand jury investigation. Those lawyers had said he [730]*730could not refuse to provide the exemplars because handwriting samples are not testimonial and therefore not protected under the Fifth Amendment from compelled disclosure. Then Rendelman took the stand and testified that he wrote the letters to protest being raped and beaten while in prison about 20 years earlier and that he had wanted to demonstrate that incarceration does not rehabilitate or deter offenders. His conscience compelled him to write the letters, he said, because otherwise he would feel complicit in the sexual assaults that occur in prison. He noted that he had felt the compulsion to write letters only while imprisoned, and that while on supervised release he had not written any letters. (Rendelman indeed had not written any letters while on supervised release; he ended up back in prison, however, because of letters he had written several years earlier while he was imprisoned, and the cycle started anew.)

The jury returned a guilty verdict on all counts. At sentencing Rendelman presented letters and testimony from family and friends about his gentle, nonviolent nature. He testified, as he had at trial, that his conscience compelled him to write the letters. Dr. Miller testified that Ren-delman was unlikely to follow through on any of his threats because he had never been physically violent before.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
495 F. App'x 727, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-rendelman-ca7-2012.