Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-11-03077/USCOURTS-caDC-11-03077-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Robert Legg
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 5, 2012 Decided April 19, 2013

No. 11-3077

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

ROBERT LEGG,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:11-cr-00121-1)

Steven R. Kiersh, appointed by the court, argued the cause

and filed the brief for appellant.

David C. Rybicki, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause

for appellee. With him on the brief were Ronald C. Machen Jr.,

U.S. Attorney, and Elizabeth Trosman, Suzanne Grealy Curt,

and Julieanne Himelstein, Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

Before: GARLAND, Chief Judge, KAVANAUGH, Circuit

Judge, and RANDOLPH, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Chief Judge GARLAND.

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GARLAND, Chief Judge: Appellant Robert Legg pled guilty

to persuading a person to travel in interstate commerce to

engage in criminal sexual activity. He was sentenced to 30

months’ incarceration and 180 months’ supervised release. On

appeal, Legg challenges supervised release conditions that relate

to his use of computers and the Internet. We affirm the

judgment of the district court.

I

On November 11, 2010, Legg accessed a social-networking

website using the screen name “BBDCcumpig.” 5/11/11 Tr. 20. 

There, he found a person whose profile indicated interest in

sexual activity with young people and a desire to meet other “no

limit pervs” in Washington, D.C. Id. The profile in fact

belonged to Timothy Palchak, a Metropolitan Police Department

detective who has become a familiar figure in the opinions of

this circuit. See United States v. Accardi, 669 F.3d 340, 343

(D.C. Cir. 2012); United States v. Laureys, 653 F.3d 27, 29-30

(D.C. Cir. 2011); United States v. Love, 593 F.3d 1, 4 (D.C. Cir.

2010). Detective Palchak was monitoring the website in an

undercover capacity as part of a multi-jurisdictional child

exploitation task force.

Legg used the website to send a message to Palchak saying,

“no limit perv here, too,” and indicating an interest in incest and

sex with minors. 5/11/11 Tr. 20. During their online

conversation, Palchak claimed to have access to a thirteen-yearold boy, and Legg expressed interest in meeting and engaging in

anal sex with the boy. Id.; 8/11/11 Tr. 27. Legg and Palchak

exchanged telephone numbers online and then had several

telephone conversations, during which Legg identified himself

as “Aleck” and further described his fantasies about having sex

with the boy. The two made arrangements to meet with each

other and the boy (who supposedly lived in Virginia) at an

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apartment in D.C., where they planned to have sex with the boy

and take drugs together. On the afternoon of November 12,

2010, Legg met Palchak and confirmed that he was Aleck. At

that point, Legg was arrested. See 5/11/11 Tr. 21, 25, 33-34.

On May 11, 2011, Legg pled guilty to the charge of

persuading a person to travel in interstate commerce to engage

in criminal sexual activity. See 18 U.S.C. § 2422(a). On August

11, 2011, the district court sentenced Legg to 30 months’

imprisonment and 180 months’ supervised release. The court

noted that Legg had been diagnosed with a variety of mental

health problems and had a long history of illegal drug use. 

Given the defendant’s history and the nature and circumstances

of his crime, the court concluded that he posed a danger to the

community and would require mental health, drug abuse, and

sex offender treatment to “prevent any kind of recidivism.” 

8/11/11 Tr. 29; see id. at 23-25, 32-33.

The court also imposed a list of supervised release

conditions in the interest of promoting Legg’s rehabilitation and

protecting the community from potential recidivism on Legg’s

part. These included: sex offender registration, substance abuse

and sex offender treatment, a ban on the possession of

pornography of any kind, a ban on alcohol and drug use, a

requirement that the defendant neither loiter in any area where

children frequently congregate nor take (without approval of the

probation office) a job that might cause him to come into contact

with children, and a ban on possession of any type of camera or

video recording device without probation office approval. 

Judgment at 3-5.

Finally, and most relevant here, the district court imposed

a number of restrictions on Legg’s use of computers and the

Internet during his 180-month period of supervision. The court

forbade him from possessing or using a computer or any online

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service without prior approval of the probation office. It also

required him both to identify all computer systems and Internetcapable devices to which he would have access, and to allow

random searches of, and installation of monitoring programs on,

those devices. And it limited him to the possession of only one

personal Internet-capable device. Id. at 4.

At sentencing, counsel for the defendant raised only one

objection relating to the computer- and Internet-related

conditions. Legg’s counsel conceded that most of those

conditions were “pretty standard in cases like this,” but

expressed concern about the single-device restriction in

particular, noting that “in today’s age . . . telephones [and

the] . . . tablets that have become so popular” can generally

access the Internet. 8/11/11 Tr. 49-50. The court clarified that

the single-device restriction extended only to “personal”

devices, and that this did not include workplace equipment. Id.

at 50. The court also said that the defendant could have a cell

phone, but would have to decide “whether he wants his Internet

access on the computer or on the cell phone” -- he could not

have Internet capability on both. Id. at 51. The court explained

that the purpose of the limitation was to make the probation

office’s monitoring of Legg’s Internet use feasible. Id. at 50.

Legg filed a timely appeal, challenging the conditions of

supervised release that relate to his computer access and use of

the Internet.

II

District courts are broadly authorized to impose conditions

of supervised release that are “reasonably related to the nature

and circumstances of the offense, the history and characteristics

of the defendant, deterrence of criminal conduct, protection of

the public, and treatment of the defendant’s correctional needs.” 

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Accardi, 669 F.3d at 346; see 18 U.S.C. § 3583(d)(1); id.

§ 3553(a). In addition to this “reasonable relationship”

requirement, conditions of supervised release must “involve[] no

greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary” for

the purposes of deterrence, protection of the public from further

crimes of the defendant, and effective correctional treatment. 18

U.S.C. § 3583(d)(2); see id. § 3553(a); United States v. Sullivan,

451 F.3d 884, 895 (D.C. Cir. 2006). The conditions must also

be consistent with pertinent policy statements issued by the

United States Sentencing Commission pursuant to 28 U.S.C.

§ 994(a). 18 U.S.C. § 3583(d)(3). 

Sentencing judges, although constrained by these statutory

limits, are nonetheless afforded wide discretion when imposing

terms and conditions of supervised release, see Accardi, 669

F.3d at 346; Sullivan, 451 F.3d at 895, and we review the

imposition of supervised release conditions only for abuse of

that discretion, see Love, 593 F.3d at 11; Sullivan, 451 F.3d at

895. Moreover, when a defendant fails to make a timely

objection before the district court and instead raises his

argument for the first time on appeal, we review only for plain

error. See Accardi, 669 F.3d at 346; Sullivan, 451 F.3d at 892.

On this appeal, Legg challenges all of the computer- and

Internet-related conditions of his supervised release. In the

district court, however, he objected to only one of those

conditions: the single-device restriction. Accordingly, both

Legg and the government agree that the proper standard of

review for the unobjected-to conditions is plain error, while the

standard for the single-device restriction is abuse of discretion. 

See Oral Arg. Recording at 4:38-5:00 (statement of Legg’s

counsel); Gov’t Br. 11.

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III

1. Legg’s opening argument regarding the unobjected-to

release conditions is that they are unreasonable because “the

crime to which he pled occurred through the use of a telephone

and not a computer.” Legg Br. 1. By the end of his brief, he

qualifies this factual claim, arguing only that “the significant

majority of the charged crime occurred over the telephone.” Id.

at 7 (emphasis added). But it is hardly necessary to precisely

characterize the role that a computer (and the Internet) played in

Legg’s offense. A policy statement issued by the Sentencing

Commission recommends that, for offenses including Legg’s,

the sentencing court impose “[a] condition limiting the use of a

computer or an interactive computer service in cases in which

the defendant used such items.” U.S. SENTENCING GUIDELINES

MANUAL § 5D1.3(d)(7)(B); see id. § 5D1.2, Application Note 1. 

And this court has stated that such limitations “may be

appropriate for those who use the Internet to initiate or facilitate

the victimization of children.” Love, 593 F.3d at 12 (internal

quotation marks omitted); Laureys, 653 F.3d at 35 (finding no

plain error in Internet restrictions where the defendant “used the

internet to facilitate criminal sexual conduct with minors”).

There is no dispute that Legg “used” a computer in this

case, and that he used it both to “initiate” and “facilitate” his

offense. Legg used a computer to access the social-networking

website on which he found Detective Palchak’s profile, used it

to reply to Palchak’s posting seeking “other no limit pervs in

D.C.,” used it to converse with Palchak about “young” sexual

encounters, used it to tell Palchak that he was interested in

meeting him for the purpose of engaging in anal intercourse with

a 13-year-old boy whom Palchak had mentioned, and used it to

exchange telephone numbers with Palchak to coordinate their inperson meeting. 5/11/11 Tr. 19-21, 27-29. Indeed, if Legg had

not used a computer to log into the website on which he met

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Detective Palchak, the offense for which he was convicted

would not have occurred at all.

The fact that the final communications arranging the inperson meeting took place over the telephone does not detract

from this conclusion. In Laureys, a case in which the defendant

had likewise fallen for Detective Palchak’s online ruse, we

found no plain error in a challenge to extensive computer-related

conditions of supervised release. 653 F.3d at 29-30, 35. That

case cannot meaningfully be distinguished from this one along

the lines Legg suggests, as there, too, the final meeting

arrangements were made in a telephone call between Palchak

and the defendant. Id. at 30.

Legg tries to analogize his case to United States v.

Burroughs, in which this circuit vacated as plainly erroneous a

requirement that the defendant submit to probation office

monitoring of his computer use and keep a daily log of his

personal Internet activity. 613 F.3d 233, 242-44 (D.C. Cir.

2010). But in Burroughs, the defendant -- who sexually abused

a teenage girl and introduced her to prostitution -- “did not use

a computer to facilitate his crimes” in any way. Id. at 242. 

Because Legg did use a computer, Burroughs is simply

inapposite.

It is true, as Legg points out, that the district court declined

to increase his sentence by imposing a two-level Sentencing

Guidelines enhancement for use of a computer, see U.S.

SENTENCING GUIDELINES MANUAL § 2G1.3(b)(3), noting that

the “meat of the offense w[as] done on the phone,” 8/11/11 Tr.

8-9. (Although the court did characterize its decision not to

impose the enhancement as “a little close.” Id. at 9.) At the

same time, however, the court noted that “the decision to meet

[wa]s on the computer,” id., and told Legg that it was

“appropriate to have these restrictions” because he had “use[d]

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. . . the computer to communicate and initiate the offense,” id. at

36. See also id. at 37 (“I am restricting you based on the fact

that that is the way you communicated with the undercover

officer.”). Since the Supreme Court’s decision in United States

v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 245 (2005), the Guidelines have been

advisory only, and there is no abuse of discretion in declining to

increase a defendant’s sentence on account of his computer use

while simultaneously concluding that such use warrants the

imposition of limits on the defendant’s access to a computer

after his release. A fortiori, there is no plain error.

2. In the district court, Legg objected to the condition

limiting him to only one Internet-capable device on the ground

that it was too restrictive. On appeal, he adds no texture to that

objection. We understand the objection, however, to constitute

a claim that the limitation fails the requirement that conditions

of supervised release must “involve[] no greater deprivation of

liberty than is reasonably necessary” for the purposes of

deterrence, protection of the public from further crimes of the

defendant, and effective correctional treatment. 18 U.S.C.

§ 3583(d)(2).

The district court explained that the one-device limit was

necessary to ensure that the probation office would be able to

effectively monitor Legg’s Internet use at reasonable cost. 

8/11/11 Tr. 50-51. Given that the Internet was Legg’s avenue of

choice for seeking out a victim, there is no doubt that such

monitoring is itself reasonably related to the nature and

circumstances of Legg’s offense, to deterring criminal conduct,

and to protecting the public from further crimes. Cf. Love, 593

F.3d at 12 (another “Palchak” case in which the court found a

prior approval requirement for Internet access “properly tailored

to the circumstances of the offense and . . . reasonably necessary

to deter future misconduct and to protect children”). Such

monitoring would plainly be more difficult if the defendant had

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multiple Internet-capable devices at his disposal. And Legg

offers no argument at all against the district court’s

determination that, if it did not restrict the number of devices to

which he had access, it would be too difficult for the probation

office to monitor him.

The single-device limitation does not, of course, bar Legg

from using computers or the Internet altogether. Moreover, the

court made clear that, although Legg is limited to only one

“personal” Internet-capable device, the limitation does not apply

to computers or other devices he might use at work. 8/11/11 Tr.

50. Nor, the court said, does it bar him from having a cell phone

in addition to a home computer, as long as only one of them is

Internet-enabled. Id. And while the day may soon come when

it is impossible to obtain a telephone that is not Internet-enabled,

that time has not yet arrived. See id. (statement by probation

officer that “there are plans that can be set up so he can have a

[cell] phone that does not have Internet capabilities”).

Although sentencing courts can and should seek to tailor

computer-related supervised release conditions with an eye to

the possibility of technological change, the fact remains that

judges are not oracles of technological development. “An

Internet restriction that today imposes ‘no greater deprivation of

liberty than is reasonably necessary’ to deter illegal conduct

may, by the time [the defendant] is released, be either wholly

inadequate or entirely too burdensome.” Love, 593 F.3d at 12. 

If the latter transpires, Legg remains free throughout his term of

supervised release to ask the district court to modify the

challenged conditions in light of changed circumstances, which

the court is statutorily authorized to do. 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(2). 

But there are no grounds for finding that the district court

abused its discretion in imposing the single-device restriction on

the record the court had before it.

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IV

For the foregoing reasons, the sentence imposed by the

district court is 

Affirmed.

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