Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-01129/USCOURTS-ca7-15-01129-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
James Jones
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Argued October 7, 2015 

Decided December 21, 2015 

Before 

WILLIAM J. BAUER, Circuit Judge 

MICHAEL S. KANNE, Circuit Judge

DIANE S. SYKES, Circuit Judge

No. 15-1129 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

v. 

JAMES JONES, 

 Defendant-Appellant.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 

Eastern Division. 

No. 12 CR 697-2 

Virginia M. Kendall, 

Judge. 

O R D E R 

James Jones pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, 21 

U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), and was sentenced to prison and supervised release. His plea 

agreement includes a broad appeal waiver. Despite that waiver, Jones filed this appeal 

challenging several conditions of supervised release as unconstitutionally vague and 

asking for a full resentencing. We dismiss the appeal. 

For more than two years, Jones lived at and sold drugs from his nephew’s stash 

house. Jones was arrested at the house with his nephew and another drug dealer. Two 

loaded guns and 81 grams of crack cocaine were recovered from Jones’s living space. 

Jones eventually pleaded guilty to the § 841 charge and, as part of his plea agreement, 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 

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No. 15-1129 Page 2 

waived his right to appeal “any part of his sentence (or the manner in which that 

sentence was determined).” 

A probation officer drafted a presentence investigation report that did not include 

any proposed conditions of supervised release. Counsel for Jones submitted a sentencing 

memorandum but said nothing in that document about supervised release. Neither did 

defense counsel say anything about supervised release at the sentencing hearing. 

The district court sentenced Jones to 134 months’ imprisonment (substantially below 

the guidelines range of 168 to 210 months) plus 3 years’ supervised release. The court 

orally pronounced five special conditions of supervised release, including that Jones 

“not possess a firearm or destructive device.” The court did not mention any of the 

standard conditions, yet the written judgment issued later includes all 13 of those 

conditions, 7 of which Jones seeks to challenge in this appeal. The written judgment also 

expands the condition prohibiting possession of guns and bombs to include ammunition 

and “any other dangerous weapon.” 

Appeal waivers are enforceable and may encompass conditions of supervised release 

just like any other part of a sentence. See United States v. Chapas, 602 F.3d 865, 868 (7th Cir. 

2010); United States v. Sines, 303 F.3d 793, 797–99 (7th Cir. 2002). The recognized 

limitations on appeal waivers are narrow and few: Waivers will not be construed to 

foreclose an appellate claim that a sentence exceeds a statutory maximum or rests on a 

constitutionally impermissible factor like race, or that defense counsel was ineffective in 

negotiating the plea agreement containing the waiver. See United States v. Smith, 759 F.3d 

702, 706 (7th Cir. 2014); Dowell v. United States, 694 F.3d 898, 902 (7th Cir. 2012); United 

States v. Worden, 646 F.3d 499, 502 (7th Cir. 2011); United States v. Lockwood, 416 F.3d 604, 

608 (7th Cir. 2005); United States v. Bownes, 405 F.3d 634, 637 (7th Cir. 2005). None of these 

limitations applies to Jones. 

He instead relies on United States v. Adkins, 743 F.3d 176 (7th Cir. 2014), an opinion 

that allowed a defendant to challenge a condition of supervised release as 

unconstitutionally vague despite a broad appeal waiver. Id. at 192–93. Jones reads Adkins

as “general” support for the proposition that, “notwithstanding an appeal waiver, the 

Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause allows for appellate review of any discretionary 

condition of supervised release which is so vague that no reasonable person could know 

what conduct is permissible or impermissible.” That reading is a stretch. In Adkins, 

which we have not applied since to excuse an appeal waiver, we were careful to 

“emphasize the narrowness of our holding” and to reinforce our longstanding rejection 

of a general exception to appeal waivers for constitutional claims. Id. at 193; see United 

States v. Behrman, 235 F.3d 1049, 1051–52 (7th Cir. 2000). In fact, Adkins notes explicitly 

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No. 15-1129 Page 3 

that it’s “generally unproblematic to knowingly waive a constitutional right or to lose a 

constitutional right (in a clearly demarcated way and in accord with 18 U.S.C § 3583(d)) 

via special conditions of supervised release.” Adkins, 743 F.3d at 193.

Jones principally challenges the language prohibiting him from possessing “any 

other dangerous weapon” in addition to guns, ammunition, and destructive devices. But 

that condition of supervised release and the others that Jones contests are not 

comparable to the condition at issue in Adkins. In that case the defendant could “not 

view or listen to any pornography or sexually stimulating material or sexually oriented 

material or patronize locations where such material is available.” 743 F.3d at 194. That 

language, we said, was both impossibly vague (“[H]ow can we tell which images or 

voices are sexually stimulating for Adkins?”) and immensely overbroad (“Read literally, 

this provision might preclude Adkins from using a computer or entering a 

library—irrespective of what he views in either place—because both are ‘locations’ 

where ‘sexually stimulating material ... is available.’ Indeed, he might not be able to ride 

the bus, enter a grocery store, watch television, open a magazine or newspaper, read a 

classic like Romeo and Juliet, or even go out in public.”). Id. In contrast, the prohibition 

against “any other dangerous weapon” is authorized by statute, see 18 U.S.C. 

§§ 3563(b)(8), 3583(d), and permissible, see United States v. Armour, 804 F.3d 859, 868–69 

(7th Cir. 2015). 

The appeal waiver stands, and the appeal is DISMISSED. 

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