In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 22-1817 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

v.

ERNEST RUSSELL, 

Defendant-Appellant. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. 

No. 1:20-cr-680-2 — Edmond E. Chang, Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED FEBRUARY 14, 2023 — DECIDED AUGUST 31, 2023 

____________________ 

Before ROVNER, KIRSCH, and JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit 

Judges. 

KIRSCH, Circuit Judge. A jury found Ernest Russell guilty of 

distributing heroin and fentanyl in violation of 21 U.S.C. 

§ 841(a)(1). The district court sentenced Russell to a belowGuidelines sentence of 96 months’ imprisonment, followed by 

three years of supervised release. On appeal, Russell 

challenges one special condition of his supervised release: 

that he undergo a sex-offender evaluation to determine 
2 No. 22-1817 

whether sex-offender treatment is necessary. In imposing the 

condition, the district court relied on facts from a police 

report, summarized in the Presentence Investigation Report. 

The PSR reported that Russell had been convicted of an 

offense that involved the sexual assault of a minor. Because 

the district court did not abuse its discretion in imposing the 

sex-offender assessment as a condition of supervised release, 

we affirm. 

I 

In 2010, Ernest Russell was convicted of misdemeanor 

domestic battery. According to the arrest report, Russell’s 

girlfriend (now wife) and her 11-year-old daughter told police 

officers that Russell had inappropriately touched the child 

while her mother was at work. The victim told the officers that 

she was in her bed when Russell entered her room, laid in bed 

with her, and began to rub his pelvic region. The victim added 

that when she tried to get away from Russell, he turned her

on her stomach, got on top of her, and rubbed his pelvic 

region against her body. The victim screamed for help, at 

which time Russell stopped and asked her not to tell her 

mother. But the victim called her mother at work and told her 

that Russell had inappropriately touched her. At sentencing, 

Russell offered, at most, a bare denial of this information and

furnished no evidence to call the PSR into question. 

In fact, during Russell’s allocution at sentencing, he called

his 2010 conviction a “sexual assault case,” but stressed that it 

was only a misdemeanor, not a felony. Russell said the offense 

was “some he said/she said stuff,” and that although “the little 

girl” involved in the incident was his stepdaughter and it 

caused problems in his marriage, he and his wife “never 

divorced because of that situation” and had “moved on.” He 
No. 22-1817 3 

and his wife “actually removed” the girl “from the home, and 

she stayed with her sister for a while” before they “brought 

her back up into [their] home.” Russell said there were “a lot 

of things going on in that situation.” Although Russell did not 

offer any evidence to refute the facts recounted in the police 

report and, in turn, the PSR, he maintained that he was not a 

sex offender and expressed concern that imposing the 

assessment condition could cause problems for him in prison. 

The district court found that the 2010 conviction gave rise 

to the concern that Russell had committed sexual assault. The 

court inferred that, despite being a misdemeanor resulting in 

a relatively short sentence, the case may have been pleaded 

down to a lesser offense due to the victim’s young age. The 

district court also found that the facts in the PSR were quite 

detailed for the type of offense and age of the victim. 

After finding the information from the PSR credible, the

district court ordered Russell to participate in a sex-offender

assessment as a condition of his supervised release. If the

assessment provider were to deem treatment necessary, the

government or the probation officer could seek an order from 

the court requiring Russell to comply with the recommended 

treatment. The court explained that if treatment were

recommended following the assessment, maybe Russell

would agree to it, but if Russell objected, the court would then 

decide if treatment was necessary. Russell’s counsel objected 

to the imposition of the condition but did not articulate 

reasons for doing so. Russell now appeals. 

II

At the outset, we can quickly dispense with Russell’s 

argument that the district court delegated Article III 
4 No. 22-1817 

sentencing authority to a treatment provider. The condition 

does not delegate judicial authority to anyone and vests final 

decision making with the judge alone. Even if the provider 

deemed treatment necessary after an assessment, the district 

court retained exclusive control over whether treatment 

would be ordered. 

Moving to the merits, Russell frames his challenge to the 

special condition as one of procedural error, seeking de novo 

review. But Russell does not identify a procedural error or 

develop any argument to that effect. Thus, because Russell

objected below and centers his appeal on the reasonableness 

of the court’s decision, we review the imposition of the special 

condition for an abuse of discretion. See United States v. 

Douglas, 806 F.3d 979, 983 (7th Cir. 2015) (“The sentencing 

judge is in a superior position to find facts and judge their 

import under [18 U.S.C.] § 3553(a) in the individual case and 

district courts have an institutional advantage over appellate 

courts in making these sorts of determinations.”) (cleaned 

up). 

Special conditions of supervised release must be based on 

accurate information and reasonably relate to factors 

identified in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). That is, conditions must

account for the history and characteristics of the defendant; 

involve no greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably 

necessary to achieve deterrence, incapacitation, and 

rehabilitation; and be consistent with the Sentencing 

Commission’s policy statements. United States v. Kappes, 782 

F.3d 828, 845 (7th Cir. 2015) (collecting cases). All of these

requirements were met here. 

First, the district court did not abuse its discretion in

considering the information contained in the 2010 police 
No. 22-1817 5 

report when evaluating Russell’s history and characteristics

before concluding that the condition was necessary. True, we 

“cannot simply assume that any police report ... is reliable 

without more information or corroborating evidence.” United 

States v. Jordan, 742 F.3d 276, 280 (7th Cir. 2014). But here, 

Russell’s allocution supports a finding that the police report 

was credible. Not only did Russell offer nothing to undermine 

the reliability of the report, his allocution suggested that the 

conviction was about the sexual assault of his stepdaughter 

and characterized the incident as a “sexual assault case.” 

Although Russell characterized the situation as a “he said/she 

said” situation, he offered no details or evidence to suggest 

that the “he said” portion undercut the police report. 

Second, the condition was narrowly tailored: the district 

court ordered an assessment (not treatment) to evaluate 

whether Russell might benefit from treatment. There is no 

record that Russell had received an assessment or treatment 

in the past. And a condition imposing a sex-offender 

assessment does not require the defendant to be a convicted 

sex offender. See United States v. Ross, 475 F.3d 871, 872, 875

(7th Cir. 2007) (concluding it was not plain error to impose a 

sex-offender assessment condition and possible treatment 

even when the defendant was not a convicted sex offender but 

had a history of sexual misconduct). The modest special 

condition did not deprive Russell of more liberty than

reasonably necessary. 

Third, the condition requiring a sex-offender assessment 

promoted the Sentencing Commission’s policy goals of 

deterrence, rehabilitation, and protecting the public. The 

district court proceeded carefully by only imposing a sexoffender condition and not considering whether treatment 
6 No. 22-1817 

was warranted unless and until the assessment recommended 

treatment. Russell argues that his conviction was too old to 

support any present need to rehabilitate him or protect the 

public, relying on our decision in United States v. Johnson, 756 

F.3d 532, 538–42 (7th Cir. 2014). But Johnson is inapposite, and 

Russell misses the point. At sentencing for Johnson’s drug 

crime, the district judge, without explanation, imposed a sexoffender treatment (not assessment) condition based on a 15-

year-old conviction for sexual misconduct. Id. at 540. We 

reversed, reasoning that sex-offender treatment did not 

provide just punishment for the drug offense at issue, deter 

criminal conduct, rehabilitate the defendant, or protect the 

public. Id. at 541–42. Russell may be right that sex-offender 

treatment is unnecessary to deter or rehabilitate him or to 

protect the public. But that is not what the district court 

ordered. Instead, the court carefully considered the facts of 

Russell’s past conviction and imposed a much more modest 

condition—an assessment—that may never result in sexoffender treatment. If it does, it will become mandatory only 

after the district court agrees with the recommendation and 

has considered and overruled any objection Russell might 

raise. See Douglas, 806 F.3d at 983–84 (distinguishing Johnson

from an instance where the district court explained its reasons 

and ordered only an assessment, not treatment). 

Given the reliable information in the PSR that Russell had 

sexually assaulted a minor, and the lack of any record that 

Russell had received an assessment or treatment in the past, 

the district court did not abuse its discretion by imposing the 

modest assessment condition here. 

AFFIRMED