United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

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No. 16-1441

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United States of America

lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee

v.

John T. Beyers

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant

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No. 16-1443

___________________________

United States of America

lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee

v.

John T. Beyers

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant

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Appeals from United States District Court 

for the Western District of Missouri - Kansas City

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Submitted: November 14, 2016

Filed: April 27, 2017

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Before RILEY, Chief Judge, SMITH and KELLY, Circuit Judges.

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RILEY, Chief Judge.

John Beyers was caught with child pornography in May 2013, less than a year

after getting out of prison for a 2007 child-pornography conviction. Beyers pled

guilty to accessing and possessing child pornography, see 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(4)(B),

and possessing child obscenity, see id. § 1466A(b)(2), and also admitted violating the

terms of his supervised release. The district court sentenced Beyers to the statutory

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mandatory minimum for each offense—ten years for the 2013 counts and five for the

supervised-release violation, see id. §§ 2252(b)(2), 3583(k)—and ran the sentences

for the new conduct concurrently to each other, but consecutively to the revocation

sentence. See id. § 3584(a) (concurrent and consecutive sentences). Beyers argues

making the sentences consecutive was an abuse of discretion and his resulting fifteenyear term of imprisonment is substantively unreasonable. See 28 U.S.C. § 1291

(appellate jurisdiction); United States v. Moore, 565 F.3d 435, 437-38 (8th Cir. 2009)

(abuse-of-discretion standard of review). Beyers’s appeal centers on how the district

court weighed different aspects of his background in reaching its decision.

The Honorable William Jay Riley stepped down as Chief Judge of the United

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States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit at the close of business on March 10,

2017. He has been succeeded by the Honorable Lavenski R. Smith.

The Honorable Beth Phillips, United States District Judge for the Western 2

District of Missouri.

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First, Beyers identifies three mitigating factors he says the district court

ignored. Two of these are childhood traumas that, according to Beyers, “have

influenced his behavior and his addiction to child pornography”: the sexual abuse

Beyers himself suffered when he was a young child and Beyers’s father committing

suicide when Beyers was a teenager. The third mitigating factor is Beyers’s

amenability to therapy and desire for treatment.

The district court did not ignore these matters—they were a major focus of

Beyers’s sentencing hearing. The district court heard about Beyers’s background,

past treatment, and wish for help “get[ting] out fromunderneath [his addiction]” from

both Beyers and a therapist who reviewed Beyers’s file and interviewed him. The

district court actively questioned both of them about the treatment options available

to Beyers during his incarceration. The district court directly responded to Beyers’s

argument about his need for treatment when it told him “this is ultimately your

responsibility and something that you have to take control of, and there’s only so

much that others can do to help you address this problem.”

“[W]here the district court heard argument . . . about specific . . . factors, we

may presume that the court considered those factors” even if the court did not address

them expressly. United States v. Keating, 579 F.3d 891, 893 (8th Cir. 2009). Here,

where the district court did expressly address the essence of Beyers’s position—that

he must recognize his problem and where it comes from and must want to overcome

it, and needs more and better help to do so—we are satisfied the district court did not

“‘fail[] to consider a relevant factor that should have received significant weight.’” 

Moore, 565 F.3d at 438 (quoting United States v. Kowal, 527 F.3d 741, 749 (8th Cir.

2008)).

On the other side of the scale, Beyers argues the district court should not have

faulted him for “argu[ing] [he had] never harmed anyone.” According to Beyers, he

misspoke when he said, in his allocution, “I’ve never hurt any person.” Beyers insists

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he fully appreciatesthe “devastating” harm caused by the production and use of child

pornography, having been sexually abused as a child himself, and just meant “he had

not physically hurt a child through actual sexual contact.” The record makes clear the

district court knew what Beyers meant and simply took issue with how he said it. In

the district court’s words: “I understand what you’re saying, but the problem is this

is a very serious offense that has devastating consequences to the victims of this

offense.” Although the district court made a point of repudiating Beyers’s literal

claim, its explanation for running the sentences consecutively focused on the severity

of what Beyers did and his history of failed treatment rather than on this isolated

statement. Further, even if the district court’s ruling was attributable in some part to

Beyers’s unfortunate phrasing, we see no abuse of discretion in viewing Beyers’s

emphasis on crimes he did not commit as potentially reflecting a failure to come to

terms with the “devastating consequences to the victims of this offense.”3

We also reject Beyers’s claim that the district court improperly punished him

for “point[ing] out deficiencies in the treatment he received” before and after his 2007

conviction. He is referring to the district court’s statement: “I’m really troubled by

this consistent argument—or at least explanation, maybe, would be a better

phrase—that the treatment wasn’t sufficient.” Beyers counters with assertions about

what the record does and does not show—“[t]here is no factual support in the record

to buttress the notion that therapy would not work or that Mr. Beyers was somehow

responsible for his lack ofsuccess in his past efforts” and, to the contrary, parts of the

record affirmatively “suggest[] that there was a problem with the sex offender

Similarly, in response to Beyers’s suggestion that the fact he never physically 3

abused a child “should have been [a] mitigating factor[],” we simply observe that

Beyers was sentenced for accessing and possessing pornographic and obscene

pictures of children, see 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252(a)(4)(B), 1466A(b)(2), nothing else. Had

Beyers committed other crimes, he would have faced the possibility of other charges

and a longer sentence. In short, the hypothetical crimes Beyers did not commit do not

mitigate the real ones he did.

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treatment” Beyers received. That response aims at the wrong target. The sort of

evidence Beyers describes(or its absence) goesto whether Beyers’s explanation that

he reoffended because the system failed him was accurate, but that is not the issue the

district court addressed.

Rather, the district court thought Beyers’s proffered explanation was

significant and troubling primarily because, in the district court’s view, Beyers’s

focus on the failure of his past treatment—whoever wasto blame—implied he did not

fully accept that his new crimes were still “ultimately [his] responsibility.” The

district court’s comments also suggest Beyers’s past inability to control his conduct

through treatment (again, whatever the cause or the quality of the treatment)

contributed to the district court’s “concern” about the risk of Beyers reoffending

again and the need to protect the public. See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(C). Both lines

of reasoning and concern strike us as entirely reasonable. Neither was an abuse of

discretion.

Beyers’s last argument isthat, in making his sentences consecutive, the district

court clearly misjudged the proper balance between the various sentencing factors it

weighed. On this point, Beyers mainly just repeats his theories about which factors

the district court should and should not have considered. The only real addition is

Beyers’s suggestion that the district court should have given him more credit for

recognizing his “problem” and wanting to change, because “[a]cting as [one’s] own

mental health advocate and asking for better therapy . . . istaking responsibility.” Yet

“‘[a] sentencing court has wide latitude to weigh the section 3553(a) factors in each

case and assign some factors greater weight than othersin determining an appropriate

sentence.’” United States v. Richart, 662 F.3d 1037, 1054 (8th Cir. 2011) (quoting

United States v. Lozoya, 623 F.3d 624, 627 (8th Cir. 2010)); see also id. (“Simply

because the district court weighed the relevant factors more heavily than [a

defendant] would prefer does not mean the district court abused its discretion.”). The

district court’s decision to run the sentences consecutively was also reinforced by

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other considerations whose countervailing weight Beyers does not address at all,

notably the district court’s “concern” that accessing and possessing child

pornography “creates a danger to the public” and that “the ramifications[for violating

the terms of supervised release] have to be appropriate.”

The relevant policy statement from the U.S. Sentencing Commission

recommends making prison terms for violating supervised-release conditions

consecutive to any other sentences. See United States Sentencing Guidelines

§ 7B1.3(f) & cmt. n.(4). It was not an abuse of discretion for the district court to

follow that advice here.

Beyers’s sentences are affirmed.

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