2014 Decisions

Opinions of the United

States Court of Appeals

for the Third Circuit

6-20-2014

USA v. Boyd Stacey

Precedential or Non-Precedential: Non-Precedential

Docket No. 13-3373

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NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

_____________

No. 13-3373

_____________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

v.

BOYD DALE STACEY,

 Appellant 

___________

On Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Western District of Pennsylvania

(No. 2-12-cr-00015-001)

District Judge: Honorable Cathy Bissoon

Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a)

May 22, 2014

____________

Before: McKEE, Chief Judge, CHAGARES, and GARTH, Circuit Judges.

(Filed: June 20, 2014)

____________

OPINION 

____________

CHAGARES, Circuit Judge.

Boyd Dale Stacey entered a conditional guilty plea to a one-count indictment 

charging him with failing to register as a sex offender, and to update his sex offender 
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registration, between November 4, 2011 and January 2012 in violation of the Sex 

Offender Registration and Notification Act (“SORNA”), 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a). For the 

following reasons, we will affirm the judgment of conviction.

I.

We write solely for the parties and will therefore recount only those facts that are 

essential to our disposition. On September 25, 2000, in the State of Florida, Stacey

pleaded guilty to violating the Computer Pornography and Child Exploitation Prevention 

Act, Fla. Stat. § 847.0135(2), and to committing lewd or lascivious conduct, see Fla. Stat. 

§ 800.04(6)(a)(2) and (b). He was sentenced to 364 days of imprisonment on each count, 

to run consecutively. On January 30, 2002, Stacey registered as a sex offender at the 

Pinellas County, Florida Sheriff’s Office. Stacey provided a permanent address in Largo, 

Florida and a temporary address in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Appendix (“App.”) 122.

SORNA became effective on July 27, 2006. The statute required individuals 

convicted of sex offenses after its enactment to comply with certain federal registration 

requirements, see 42 U.S.C. § 16913, and it imposed federal criminal penalties for failure 

to register or to update a registration, 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a).1 SORNA delegated to the 

 

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Section 2250(a) provides that any person who: 

(1) is required to register under [SORNA]; 

(2)(A) is a sex offender as defined for the purposes of [SORNA] by 

reason of a conviction under . . . the law of any territory or possession of 

the United States; or 

(B) travels in interstate or foreign commerce . . .; and 

(3) knowingly fails to register or update a registration as required by 

[SORNA]; 
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United States Attorney General the authority to determine whether the Act’s registration 

requirements would apply to pre-SORNA sex offenders. 42 U.S.C. § 16913(d). On 

February 28, 2007, the Attorney General issued an immediately effective Interim Rule 

providing that SORNA’s registration requirements also applied to preenactment

offenders. Applicability of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, 72 Fed. 

Reg. 8894-01, 8894–95 (Feb. 28, 2007) (codified at 28 C.F.R. § 72.3). The Interim Rule 

was “finalize[d]” on December 29, 2010, in a Final Rule effective January 28, 2011. 

Applicability of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, 75 Fed. Reg. 81849-

01, 81849–50 (Dec. 29, 2010).

At some point, Stacey moved from Florida to Pennsylvania and from Pennsylvania 

to Ohio. Stacey failed to complete registration in Pennsylvania at the end of 2011, and he 

also did not register in Ohio. On January 25, 2012, a grand jury in the United States 

District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania returned a one-count indictment 

charging Stacey with failing to register as a sex offender and to update his sex offender 

registration, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a), from November 4, 2011 to “in or 

around” January 2012. Stacey filed a motion to dismiss the indictment, which the court 

denied in an order entered on May 6, 2013. On July 18, 2013, Stacey entered a 

conditional guilty plea to the charge. Under the terms of his plea agreement, Stacey 

reserved the right to appeal from the District Court’s denial of his motion to dismiss. The 

District Court sentenced Stacey to twenty-one months of imprisonment, with credit for 

 

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than [ten] years, or 

both.
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time served, plus twenty years of supervised release and a $100 special assessment. 

Stacey timely appealed.

II.

The District Court had jurisdiction pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3231, and we have 

appellate jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. Our standard of review for a district 

court’s denial of a motion to dismiss an indictment is mixed. United States v. Reynolds,

710 F.3d 498, 506 (3d Cir. 2013). We review a district court’s legal conclusions de novo, 

and we review its factual determinations for clear error. Id. Our review over 

constitutional issues is plenary. United States v. Pendleton, 636 F.3d 78, 82 (3d Cir. 

2011).

III.

Stacey’s principal argument is that § 16913(d) violates the nondelegation doctrine, 

which requires Congress to provide, at a minimum, an “intelligible principle” to guide the 

Attorney General in the exercise of delegated rulemaking authority. Touby v. United 

States, 500 U.S. 160, 165 (1991) (quotation marks omitted). While Stacey’s appeal was 

pending, this Court decided United States v. Cooper, --- F.3d ---, 2014 WL 1386816 (3d 

Cir. Apr. 10, 2014), which held that SORNA does not violate the nondelegation doctrine. 

Id. at *9. We are bound by this holding. See Chester ex rel. NLRB v. Grane Healthcare 

Co., 666 F.3d 87, 94 (3d Cir. 2011) (“[A] panel of this Court cannot overrule an earlier 

binding panel decision; only the entire court sitting en banc can do so.”). Therefore, the 

District Court correctly denied Stacey’s motion to dismiss on the nondelegation ground.

IV.
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Stacey also contends that: (1) he did not receive notice of his obligation to register 

under SORNA and therefore did not “knowingly” fail to register under § 2250(a)(3), 

rendering his prosecution a violation of due process; and (2) SORNA’s application to 

pre-Act offenders violates the Ex Post Facto Clause. These arguments are similarly 

foreclosed by binding precedent. Namely, in United States v. Shenandoah, 595 F.3d 151

(3d Cir. 2010), abrogated on other grounds by Reynolds v. United States, 132 S. Ct. 975 

(2012), this Court held that § 2250(a) “is not a specific intent law” and rejected the 

defendant’s argument that his due process rights were violated based on lack of notice 

given that “every State had registration requirements for sex offenders” when SORNA 

was enacted. Id. at 159, 160. The Court also rejected the defendant’s ex post facto 

challenge to SORNA, reasoning that the statute “creates a new punishment for a new 

offense, this new offense being traveling in interstate commerce and failing to register as 

a sex offender under SORNA after July 27, 2006.” Id. at 158.2 Thus, the District Court’s 

 

2

Stacey contends that the Supreme Court’s decision in Reynolds, and this Court’s 

decision in that case on remand, “casts doubt” on whether Shenandoah remains good law. 

See Stacey Br. 25, 29, 31 n.12, 35 n.13. In Reynolds, the Supreme Court considered 

whether SORNA’s registration requirements applied to preenactment offenders between 

July 27, 2006 (when SORNA took effect) and February 28, 2007 (when the Interim Rule 

was promulgated). 132 S. Ct. at 979, 980. The Court held that SORNA’s requirements 

do not apply to preenactment offenders until the Attorney General “validly specifies” 

their applicability, id. at 980, and it remanded for this Court to consider, in the first 

instance, whether the Interim Rule set forth a valid specification, id. at 984. On remand, 

this Court held that the Interim Rule was promulgated in violation of the Administrative 

Procedure Act. 710 F.3d at 502–03. The Supreme Court’s Reynolds decision thus 

abrogated our holding in Shenandoah that SORNA’s registration requirements applied to 

pre-Act offenders from the date of SORNA’s enactment; it did not affect our due process 

and ex post facto holdings. Cf. United States v. Brown, 740 F.3d 145, 148 n.6 (3d Cir. 

2014) (citing Shenandoah in declining to address the defendant’s ex post facto and due 

process challenges to SORNA).
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denial of Stacey’s motion to dismiss on ex post facto and due process grounds was not 

erroneous.

V.

For the foregoing reasons, we will affirm the judgment of conviction.