IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

No. 14-11055

Summary Calendar

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee

v.

TROY E. POWELL,

Defendant-Appellant

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Texas

USDC No. 1:14-CR-7-1

Before JOLLY, JONES, and HIGGINSON, Circuit Judges

PER CURIAM:*

A court without a jury convicted Troy E. Powell of failing to register as a 

sex offender under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act 

(SORNA). Powell was convicted of the sexual assault of a child in Colorado in 

1992, and he failed to register when he moved to Texas in 2013. The court 

varied upward from the advisory guideline range and sentenced Powell to 48 

months in prison.

 

* Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not 

be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5TH 

CIR. R. 47.5.4.

United States Court of Appeals

Fifth Circuit

FILED

July 21, 2015

Lyle W. Cayce

Clerk

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No. 14-11055

2

In his first claim, Powell contends that the Government failed to carry 

its burden of proving that he was required to register in Texas under Texas 

law. He further asserts that there was no proof that his Colorado offense would 

have required registration under Texas law. Powell’s argument is 

fundamentally meritless under the plain language of the applicable federal 

statutes. A person is required to register under SORNA if he “was convicted 

of a sex offense.” 42 U.S.C. § 16911(1). A “sex offense” is expansively defined 

as “a criminal offense that has an element involving a sexual act or sexual 

contact with another.” United States v. Gonzalez-Medina, 757 F.3d 425, 428 

(5th Cir. 2014), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 1529 (2015) (quoting § 16911(5)(A)(i)).

Powell does not assert that his Colorado offense was not a sex offense as 

defined by § 16911(5)(A)(i). Powell’s obligation to register was triggered by 

that Colorado conviction for a sex offense, as defined by federal law, wholly 

apart from Texas law. See Gonzalez-Medina, 757 F.3d at 428. Powell’s 

comparison of Colorado and Texas law is irrelevant because it is based on the 

defective premise that his duty to register was required to arise from Texas 

law.

In his second claim, Powell challenges his sentence. We review the 

sentence for reasonableness under an abuse-of-discretion standard. See Gall 

v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 46 (2007); Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338, 

351 (2007). Powell argues that the district court committed “procedural error” 

by “selecting a sentence based on clearly erroneous facts.” Gall, 552 U.S. at 

51. Over Powell’s objection, the district court considered three letters written 

by Powell’s teen-aged daughter in which she recounted Powell’s sexual abuse 

of her. Powell argues that the letters were unsworn hearsay, that his 

daughter’s “intellectual capabilities are beneath her age,” and that she gave 

materially inconsistent accounts of sexual assault.

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“No limitation shall be placed on the information concerning the 

background, character, and conduct of a person convicted of an offense which 

a court of the United States may receive and consider for the purpose of 

imposing an appropriate sentence.” 18 U.S.C. § 3661; see Pepper v. United 

States, 562 U.S. 476, 490-91 (2011). The sentencing court was free to “consider 

any relevant evidence,” including “uncorroborated hearsay evidence” 

regardless of “its admissibility under the rules of evidence applicable at trial, 

provided the information has sufficient indicia of reliability.” United States v. 

Andaverde-Tinoco, 741 F.3d 509, 525 (5th Cir. 2013) (internal quotation marks 

and citations omitted), cert. denied, 134 S. Ct. 1912 (2014); see U.S.S.G. 

§ 6A1.3(a).

The district court reasoned that the letters were sufficiently reliable to 

show that Powell sexually abused his daughter and that she had conflicting 

feelings about him, so that the letters were not simply the product of 

unprovoked malice. Despite the daughter’s limited writing ability, her letter 

to the court and her two letters to Powell ably express her shame, fear, 

disappointment, and sadness arising from Powell’s sexual abuse and his 

unwillingness to change. The district court did not abuse its discretion by 

considering the letters, and Powell fails to show that the sentence was based 

on clearly erroneous facts.

The judgment is AFFIRMED.

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