Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-09-03377/USCOURTS-ca8-09-03377-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Brian Jeffries
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

1

The Honorable David M. Ebel, United States Circuit Judge for the Tenth

Circuit, sitting by designation.

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 09-3377

___________

United States of America, *

*

Appellee, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the

* District of South Dakota.

Brian Jeffries, *

*

Appellant. *

___________

Submitted: June 18, 2010

Filed: August 5, 2010

___________

Before WOLLMAN, EBEL,1

 and COLLOTON, Circuit Judges. 

___________

WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge.

Brian Jeffries pleaded guilty to one count of abusive sexual contact with a child,

in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2244(a)(5), 2246(3), and 1153. In a previous appeal, we

remanded Jeffries’ case for resentencing because the evidence was insufficient to

establish a prior conviction that provided the basis for an enhancement that the court

had relied upon in imposing Jeffries’ sentence. See United States v. Jeffries, 569 F.3d

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The Honorable Karen E. Schreier, Chief Judge, United States District Court

for the District of South Dakota.

3

The government contends that our review should be circumscribed because

Jeffries failed to raise at the sentencing hearing the argument he makes here. In

United States v. Wiley, we held that a defendant need not object to the district court’s

pronouncement of a sentence in order to preserve the issue of whether the length of

the sentence was unreasonable. 509 F.3d 474, 477 (8th Cir. 2007). Given that Jeffries

challenges not just the length of his sentence generally but also the district court’s

failure to consider a specific argument as to its reasonableness, it is questionable

whether the rule adopted in Wiley applies here. For purposes of this appeal, however,

we will assume that Jeffries has not forfeited his Adam Walsh Act argument, and thus

we will address it on the merits. 

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873 (8th Cir. 2009). On remand, the district court2

 sentenced Jeffries to 360 months’

imprisonment. Jeffries appeals, arguing that his sentence is unreasonable. We affirm.

Both Jeffries and the government agree that Jeffries’ advisory guideline range

was properly recalculated on remand as 292 to 365 months. In sentencing Jeffries, the

district court noted that, in addition to the conduct to which he had pled guilty, Jeffries

had a prior state conviction for attempted rape and had attempted to sexually assault

another young girl. The court stated that “[b]ecause of that pattern of sexual abuse

towards young girls and young women, I find that a sentence near the top end of your

advisory guideline range is what is appropriate here primarily for the purpose of

protecting the public.” 

We review the reasonableness of a sentence in light of the factors in 18 U.S.C.

§ 3553(a) and will reverse only if the district court abused its discretion.3

 United

States v. James, 564 F.3d 960, 964 (8th Cir. 2009). We may presume that a sentence

within the properly calculated guideline range is reasonable. Id. 

Jeffries argues that the district court violated the admonition in § 3553(a) to

“impose a sentence sufficient, but not greater than necessary” when it cited the need

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to protect the public as the basis for sentencing him at the top end of his guideline

range. Jeffries acknowledges the specific instruction in § 3553(a)(2)(C) that district

courts should consider the need for the sentence imposed to “protect the public from

further crimes of the defendant.” According to Jeffries, however, the court should not

have given so much weight to the need to protect the public because the government

has the ability to obtain a civil commitment order and indefinitely detain him after the

expiration of his sentence if it establishes that he is sexually dangerous to others. 

Under a recently enacted provision of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and

Safety Act of 2006, Pub. L. No. 109-248, 120 Stat. 587, the government may seek the

civil commitment of a “sexually dangerous person.” See 18 U.S.C. § 4248. A

“sexually dangerous person” is someone who “has engaged or attempted to engage in

sexually violent conduct or child molestation” and “suffers from a serious mental

illness, abnormality, or disorder as a result of which he would have serious difficulty

in refraining from sexually violent conduct or child molestation if released.” Id. §

4247(a). In order to obtain a civil commitment, a hearing must be held and the

government must produce clear and convincing evidence that an individual is a

sexually dangerous person. Id. § 4248(d). The individual whose mental condition

is at issue has the right to be represented by counsel and is given the opportunity to

testify, present evidence, subpoena witnesses, and confront and cross-examine

witnesses who appear at the hearing. Id. § 4247(d). Thereafter the committed

individual remains entitled to periodic review of his status and release if his mental

condition changes such that he is no longer dangerous to others. Id. §§ 4247(e);

4248(e). The Supreme Court recently held that Congress acted within its authority

under Article I of the Constitution in providing for the civil commitment of sexually

dangerous prisoners. See United States v. Comstock, 130 S. Ct. 1949 (2010); see also

United States v. Tom, 565 F.3d 497 (8th Cir. 2009) (reaching the same conclusion).

Jeffries argues that because this procedure would be available to prevent his release

if he posed a threat to society, it was an abuse of the district court’s discretion to

consider public safety as a basis for imposing a lengthier sentence. We disagree.

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Jeffries’ argument is based on the incorrect assumption that the recently enacted

civil commitment provisions shifted the responsibility for protecting the public from

district courts at sentencing to the Department of Justice at the time a prisoner is

released. Jeffries has cited nothing in the language of the statute or its legislative

history that supports this conclusion. Rather, the new provisions are “a modest

addition to a longstanding federal statutory framework, which has been in place since

1855” for the civil commitment of the mentally ill. Comstock, 130 S. Ct. at 1961. 

The original federal civil commitment provisions were generally designed to

close a loophole in the federal prison system—specifically, individuals who would

have been subject to state civil commitment regimes if they had been state prisoners

had nowhere to go upon the completion of their federal prison terms. “These federal

prisoners, having been held for years in a federal prison, often had few ties to any

State; it was a matter of speculation where they would choose to go upon release; and

accordingly no State was enthusiastic about volunteering to shoulder the burden of

civil commitment.” Id. at 1970 (Alito, J., concurring). Federal civil commitment

statutes were designed to address this problem, and the recently enacted provisions

simply extended civil commitment to sexually dangerous prisoners, many of whom

“were likely already subject to civil commitment” under preexisting statutes providing

for “postsentence detention of federal prisoners who suffer from a mental illness and

who are thereby dangerous (whether sexually or otherwise).” Id. at 1961. Thus, the

possibility of civil commitment has long existed alongside a district judge’s discretion

to consider potential dangerousness in sentencing a defendant. There is no support

for Jeffries’ contention that the recently enacted provisions worked a significant

change in the law. 

Moreover, Jeffries’ argument is unpersuasive for the additional reason that it

makes an unwarranted assumption about the scope and application of the civil

commitment provisions. Jeffries’ argument implicitly assumes that any person whose

release might pose a danger to the public would necessarily manifest the serious

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mental illness, abnormality, or disorder required to trigger civil commitment. We

decline to accept the assertion that the new provisions will prove to be such a

completely effective screening mechanism. Given the procedural strictures and

exacting standard of proof that the government must meet in order to secure civil

commitment of a sexually dangerous prisoner, a district court’s reliance on such a

tenuous and uncertain eventuality would constitute an abdication of its statutory duty

to impose a sentence that will protect the public from a defendant’s further crimes.

In short, there is no reason to conclude that the provisions at issue were meant

to displace a district court’s initial discretion to consider potential danger to the public

in choosing a defendant’s sentence. This is particularly true given the long-standing

role that such considerations have played in courts’ sentencing decisions and the

absence of any indication that Congress intended for the civil commitment of sexually

dangerous prisoners to have any effect on sentencing. We believe that the civil

commitment statutes are best viewed as a complement to the district court’s

sentencing discretion. Accordingly, we conclude that the district court did not abuse

its discretion by considering the need to protect the public when it imposed Jeffries’

sentence. The 360-month sentence that the district court imposed was within the

properly calculated advisory guideline range and it was not substantively

unreasonable. 

The judgment is affirmed. 

______________________________

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