United States Tenth Circuit

In a criminal matter involving defendants who had directed severely mentally ill residents of their treatment center to perform sexually explicit acts and farm labor in the nude, allegedly as psychotherapy, their convictions for forced labor and involuntary servitude are affirmed where: 1) even if the trial court plainly erred in ordering defendants to avoid eye contact with former residents who testified against them at trial, they failed to establish that the error affected their substantial rights; 2) there was no plain error in instructing the jury on the meaning of "labor" and "services" under statutes of conviction; and 3) the evidence was sufficient to support the convictions for involuntary servitude. However, on cross-appeal, defendant-wife's sentence is remanded for resentencing where it was procedurally unreasonable because: 1) the evidence supported applying certain enhancements, and the district court failed to make findings sufficient to justify its refusal to apply them; and 2) an obstruction of justice enhancement was supported by the record as well.

Appellate Information

• Decided 11/12/2008
• Published 11/13/2008

Judges

• HENRY, Chief Judge., Before HENRY, Chief Judge, and BRORBY and McCONNELL, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Tenth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Tanya J. Treadway, Assistant United States Attorney, District of Kansas, (Eric F. Melgren, United States Attorney, District of Kansas, and Wan J. Kim, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, United States Department of Justice, with her on the brief), for the Plaintiff/Cross-Appellant United States of America.


• For Appellees:
  
• Howard A. Pincus, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Denver, Colorado (Raymond P. Moore, Federal Public Defender, Denver, Colorado, with him on the briefs), for the Defendant-Appellant Arlan Dean Kaufman., Richard A. Hostetler, Esq., Denver, Colorado, for the Appellant/Cross-Appellee Linda Joyce Kaufman., Lisa J. Stark (Eric F. Melgren, United States Attorney, District of Kansas;  Tanya J. Treadway, Assistant United States Attorney, District of Kansas;  Grace Chung Becker, Acting Assistant Attorney General, United States Department of Justice;  Jessica Dunsay Silver and Conor B. Dugan, Attorneys, United States Department of Justice, with her on the brief), for the Plaintiff-Appellee United States of America.