UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 14-4623

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff - Appellee,

v.

JEAN CLAUDE ROY, a/k/a Dredd the Don, a/k/a Dreddy,

Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of 

Maryland, at Greenbelt. Paul W. Grimm, District Judge. (8:13-

cr-00249-PWG-1)

Submitted: October 30, 2015 Decided: November 5, 2015 

Before SHEDD, DUNCAN, and KEENAN, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

Gary E. Proctor, LAW OFFICES OF GARY E. PROCTOR, LLC, Baltimore, 

Maryland, for Appellant. Rod J. Rosenstein, United States 

Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, Sujit Raman, Kristi O’Malley,

Assistant United States Attorneys, Greenbelt, Maryland; Vanita 

Gupta, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Mark L. 

Gross, Teresa Kwong, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, 

Washington, D.C., for Appellee.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
2

PER CURIAM:

Jean Claude Roy was convicted by a jury of conspiracy to 

commit sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion, three 

counts of interstate transportation for prostitution, and 

witness and evidence tampering, and was sentenced to a total of 

240 months’ imprisonment. On appeal, Roy argues that 18 U.S.C. 

§ 1594(c) (2012) is void for vagueness, that the evidence on the 

conspiracy count was insufficient, that the district court erred 

by excluding certain evidence pursuant to Fed. R. Evid. 412, and 

that his sentence is procedurally and substantively 

unreasonable. We affirm.

Because Roy did not move to dismiss the conspiracy count on 

the grounds that § 1594(c) was impermissibly vague, we review 

this claim for plain error. To establish plain error, Roy must 

show that (1) an error occurred, (2) the error was plain, (3) 

the error affected his substantial rights, and (4) “the error 

seriously affects the fairness, integrity or public reputation 

of judicial proceedings.” Henderson v. United States, 133 S. 

Ct. 1121, 1126-27 (2013) (brackets and internal quotation marks 

omitted). An error is plain if, “at the time of appellate 

consideration, . . . the settled law of the Supreme Court or 

this circuit establishes that an error has occurred.” United 

States v. Ramirez-Castillo, 748 F.3d 205, 215 (4th Cir. 2014) 

(internal quotation marks omitted). The “vagueness doctrine 
3

bars enforcement of a statute which either forbids or requires 

the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common 

intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as 

to its application.” United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 266 

(1997) (internal quotation marks omitted). A statute is not 

unconstitutionally vague if the “commonsense meaning” of its 

terms is clear. United States v. Powell, 423 U.S. 87, 93 (1975)

(“[S]training to inject doubt as to the meaning of words where 

no doubt would be felt by the normal reader is not required by 

the ‘void for vagueness’ doctrine.”).

Section 1594(c) applies to “[w]hoever conspires with 

another to violate section 1591,” which in turn applies, in 

relevant part, to 

[w]hoever knowingly in or affecting interstate or 

foreign commerce, . . . recruits, entices, harbors, 

transports, provides, obtains, or maintains by any 

means a person . . . knowing, or in reckless disregard 

of the fact, that means of force, threats of force, 

fraud, coercion . . . or any combination of such means 

will be used to cause the person to engage in a 

commercial sex act.

18 U.S.C. § 1591(a)(1). Roy argues that a conspirator cannot, 

at the time of the agreement, know that the conspiracy will 

successfully coerce a then-unknown victim to engage in a sex 

act. Although we have not previously addressed this issue, the 

Ninth Circuit has held that § 1591 “does not require knowledge 

in the sense of certainty as to a future act,” but only requires 
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“that the defendant know in the sense of being aware of an 

established modus operandi that will in the future cause a 

person to engage in prostitution.” United States v. Todd, 627 

F.3d 329, 334 (9th Cir. 2010) (noting that it is impossible to 

know future events with certainty). This interpretation 

comports with the obvious, commonsense interpretation of what 

people mean when they speak of “knowing” of a future event. 

Moreover, the Supreme Court has held that a knowledge 

requirement does not raise but “alleviates vagueness concerns.” 

McFadden v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2298, 2307 (2015) 

(rejecting argument that drug statute was vague because it 

required defendant to know that possessed substance was 

controlled substance analogue). Accordingly, we find that 

settled law does not indicate that this statute is vague.

Roy also argues that § 1594 requires a defendant to know 

his victim’s background because that background is relevant to 

the definition of what acts are coercive. However, the statute 

does not require the conspirators to possess this information 

from the outset of the conspiracy, as long as they know that 

their modus operandi involves force, threats of force, fraud, or 

acts that they will devise to be sufficiently coercive to ensure 

compliance. See Todd, 627 F.3d at 334. Likewise, Roy’s

argument that § 1594 is vague as applied to the “reckless 

disregard” clause of § 1591 fails because a defendant can agree 
5

to traffic a victim when he has reason to believe that she will 

be coerced into prostitution, but recklessly disregards this 

danger. Because settled law does not render § 1594(c) void for 

vagueness, we find that the district court did not err in

failing to sua sponte dismiss the conspiracy count on this 

basis.

Roy next argues that the evidence on the conspiracy count 

was insufficient because there was no evidence that anyone was 

actually coerced into prostitution or that Roy and his 

coconspirator expected anyone to be defrauded or coerced into 

prostitution. “We review a district court’s denial of a motion 

for judgment of acquittal de novo,” and will sustain the jury’s 

verdict “if there is substantial evidence, taking the view most 

favorable to the government, to support it.” United States v. 

Reed, 780 F.3d 260, 269 (4th Cir. 2015) (internal quotation 

marks omitted). 

In this case, there was ample evidence that Roy’s 

coconspirator used fraudulent promises to recruit prostitutes 

and that Roy engaged in threatening behavior towards the 

prostitutes. Indeed, one victim, K.M., testified that Roy 

intimidated her into continuing to work for him when he 

mistreated another prostitute who left and he stated that the 
6

next person who left would not be able to leave so easily.1 

Further, the jury could easily have found that Roy and his 

coconspirator expected these tactics to succeed. Accordingly, 

we conclude that the evidence, taken in the light most favorable 

to the Government, was sufficient to support Roy’s conspiracy 

conviction.

Roy also argues that the district court erred by excluding 

evidence of a coconspirator’s later sexual conduct pursuant to 

Fed. R. Evid. 412. Any error was harmless because the minimal 

impeachment value that this evidence provided could not possibly 

have affected the verdict. United States v. Johnson, 617 F.3d 

286, 292 (4th Cir. 2010).

Finally, Roy argues that his sentence was procedurally and 

substantively unreasonable. Roy first claims that the district 

court failed to adequately explain his sentence. Most of his 

arguments on this point concern the substance of the court’s 

reasoning, not the adequacy of its explanation. Moreover, the 

court discussed in great detail how Roy’s conduct removed him 

 1 Although the jury ultimately acquitted Roy of the 

substantive § 1591 counts, this acquittal does not require us to 

disregard these victims’ testimony in determining whether the 

evidence was sufficient to support the conspiracy count. See

United States v. Louthian, 756 F.3d 295, 305 (4th Cir.) (“[I]t 

is well-settled that a defendant cannot challenge his conviction 

merely because it is inconsistent with a jury's verdict of 

acquittal on another count.” (internal quotation marks 

omitted)), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 421 (2014).
7

from the heartland of the applicable Sentencing Guidelines and 

how these facts informed its application of the § 3553(a) 

factors. Accordingly, we find that the district court provided 

“an ‘individualized assessment’ based on the particular facts of 

the case before it [and] . . . a rationale tailored to the 

particular case at hand and adequate to permit ‘meaningful 

appellate review.’” United States v. Carter, 564 F.3d 325, 330 

(4th Cir. 2009) (footnote and citation omitted) (quoting Gall v. 

United States, 552 U.S. 38, 50 (2007)).

As to Roy’s assertions of error in the district court’s 

Guidelines calculation, “rather than review the merits of each 

of [Roy’s] challenges, we may proceed directly to an assumed 

error harmlessness inquiry.” United States v. Gomez-Jimenez,

750 F.3d 370, 382 (4th Cir.) (internal quotation marks omitted), 

cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 305 (2014). “A Guidelines error is 

considered harmless if . . . (1) the district court would have 

reached the same result even if it had decided the [G]uidelines 

issue the other way, and (2) the sentence would be reasonable 

even if the [G]uidelines issue had been decided in the 

defendant’s favor.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).

Because the district court stated that it would have 

imposed an identical sentence as a variance if the Guidelines 

range were different, the first prong of the harmlessness 

inquiry is satisfied. Our review of substantive reasonableness 
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examines “the totality of the circumstances to see whether the 

sentencing court abused its discretion in concluding that the 

sentence it chose satisfied the standards set forth in 

§ 3553(a).” Id. 

The district court correctly noted that Roy coerced and 

emotionally manipulated his victims, taking advantage of their 

emotional vulnerability, youth, and desperation.2 The court 

cited Roy’s use of a gun when recruiting one of his prostitutes, 

his sexual assault of two of them, and his humiliation of anyone 

who disobeyed him as proof that he was different from a typical 

defendant subject to the same Guidelines. The court also found 

that the need to protect the public from coercive sex 

trafficking was great, and that Roy’s prior murder charge had 

not made him respect the law, but that he instead used that 

charge to threaten his victims. 

We conclude that the totality of the circumstances supports 

a finding that Roy’s conduct and the circumstances of the

offenses far exceed those of a typical defendant subject to the 

 2 To the extent Roy argues that the district court erred by 

relying on conduct of which he was acquitted, this argument is 

foreclosed by our precedent. United States v. Jinwright, 683 

F.3d 471, 484 (4th Cir. 2012) (holding that acquittal does not 

preclude consideration of underlying facts at sentencing). See 

generally United States v. Rivers, 595 F.3d 558, 564 n.3 (4th 

Cir. 2010) (“A panel of this court cannot overrule, explicitly 

or implicitly, the precedent set by a prior panel of this 

court.” (alteration and internal quotation marks omitted)).
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Guidelines he proposes. Accordingly, we find that the district 

court did not abuse its discretion in its sentencing 

determinations, that Roy’s sentence is substantively reasonable, 

and that any error in the district court’s Guidelines 

calculations is harmless.

We affirm the judgment of the district court. We deny

Roy’s motion for leave to file a pro se brief. See United 

States v. Penniegraft, 641 F.3d 566, 569 n.1 (4th Cir. 2011). 

We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal

contentions are adequately presented in the materials before 

this court and argument would not aid the decisional process.

AFFIRMED