United States First Circuit

Defendant pleaded guilty to one count of failing to register as a sex offender and was sentenced to twenty-one months in prison and seven years of supervised release, with various supervised release special conditions that prohibit him from contact with minors and require him to undergo sex offender treatment, conditions that were not imposed as part of defendant's sentence for the underlying sex offense. Importantly, these conditions were imposed in a boilerplate fashion, devoid of any explanation by the district court, and defendant has not been charged with any sex offenses in the eighteen years since his underlying 1997 sex offense conviction. A waiver of appeal bars defendant's appeal of his conviction, as well as his appeal of most of the special conditions, but the court declines to enforce the waiver as it applies to defendant's appeal of conditions that would interfere with defendant's relationship with his son, to avoid a miscarriage of justice. Those conditions that would prevent defendant from contact with, or residing with, minors is vacated and the case is remanded as to the supervised release term for de novo resentencing so that the district court can revisit the conditions and explain their justification.

Appellate Information

• Decided 04/06/2015
• Published 04/06/2015

Judges

• Thompson

Court

• United States First Circuit

Counsel