Opinion ID: 812932
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Defendant’s Statutory Claim

Text: Section 3583(d) permits a district court to impose any special condition of supervised release described by 18 U.S.C. § 3563(b). One permitted condition is that the defendant “refrain from frequenting specified kinds of places or from associating unnecessarily with specified persons.” 18 U.S.C. § 3563(b)(6). The gang condition is such a condition. In crafting the condition, however, the district court must obey several limits imposed by § 3583(d). First, the condition must be “reasonably related to the factors set forth” in § 3553(a)(1) (“the nature and circumstances of the offense and the history and characteristics of the defendant”); (a)(2)(B) (the need “to afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct”); (a)(2)(C) (the need “to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant”); and (a)(2)(D) (the need “to provide the defendant with needed educational or vocational training, medical care, or other correctional treatment in the most effective manner”). Id. § 3583(d)(1). Second, the condition must “involve[] no greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary for the purposes set forth” in § 3553(a)(2)(B), (a)(2)(C), and (a)(2)(D). Id. § 3583(d)(2). -10- And third, the condition must be “consistent with any pertinent policy statements issued by the Sentencing Commission.” Id. § 3583(d)(3). The district court “enjoys broad discretion in setting a condition of supervised release,” so long as it abides by these statutory requirements. United States v. Begay, 631 F.3d 1168, 1174 (10th Cir. 2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). Although the court must provide reasons for the condition it decides to impose, see United States v. Edgin, 92 F.3d 1044, 1049 (10th Cir. 1996), it need not offer a detailed rationale; instead, “a generalized statement of its reasoning” is adequate, id. (internal quotation marks omitted). The district court gave the necessary statement of its reasoning in Defendant’s case. It explained that based on the testimony and exhibits presented at sentencing, it was “absolutely convinced” that the Iron Horsemen was “not some benign motorcycle club” but rather was an “outlaw motorcycle gang[]” whose ranks included people “involved in criminal activity.” R., Vol. 3 at 84–85. It noted Defendant’s drug dealing, observing that Defendant “became a distributor, or at least helped those that were trying to transact that kind of business.” Id. at 85–86. And it further explained that Defendant should not be associating with such people while under supervised release but instead should be associating “with people like Mr. Dibiase and his friends.” Id. at 89. Without disputing any of the district court’s findings, Defendant argues that the challenged portion of the gang condition flouts two of § 3583(d)’s -11- requirements: (I) that it be reasonably related to the sentencing factors enumerated in § 3583(d)(1), and (ii) that it not involve a greater deprivation of liberty than necessary to advance the purposes identified by § 3583(d)(2). As we proceed to explain, the gang condition does not plainly violate either requirement.
To be “reasonably related” to the enumerated sentencing factors, § 3583(d)(1), a condition “does not need to be reasonably related to all of the factors in § 3553.” United States v. Hahn, 551 F.3d 977, 983–84 (10th Cir. 2008). A reasonable relationship to just one factor will suffice. See id. Thus, we have upheld special conditions forbidding defendants from associating with specified groups of people even when the conditions were unrelated to the offense of conviction. In Hahn, for example, the defendant was convicted of misapplying the funds of his employer, a financial institution. See 551 F.3d at 979. But based on his earlier state conviction for a sex offense involving a child, the district court imposed special conditions of supervised release proscribing his association with children and his holding of a job with access to children without the probation officer’s consent. See id. at 982 & n.9. Although the conditions did not relate to the nature and circumstances of the defendant’s offense, they did relate to his history and characteristics as well as the need to protect the public from future crimes. See id. at 984. Similarly, in United States v. Mike, 632 F.3d 686, 689–90, 696–97 (10th Cir. 2011), we upheld a special condition forbidding the -12- defendant from having contact with children based on his past commission of a sex offense, even though the offense of conviction was a nonsexual assault on an adult. In light of these precedents, the district court committed no “clear or obvious” error under § 3583(d)(1) when it forbade Defendant from associating with members of the Iron Horsemen or allied gangs while on supervised release. Puckett, 556 U.S. at 135. Defendant has not contested the court’s finding that the Iron Horsemen was a criminal gang. And the court could properly find that his drug transactions arose out of his activities as a nomad for the Iron Horsemen. No clear precedent would prohibit the district court from concluding that the restriction on Defendant’s association was reasonably related to Defendant’s history and characteristics, deterring future criminal conduct, and protecting the public from further crimes. See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(1), (a)(2)(B), (a)(2)(C). 2. No Greater Deprivation of Liberty than Reasonably Necessary Similarly, no clear precedent from either this court or the Supreme Court compels the conclusion that the special condition “involves . . . greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary” to advance the statutorily enumerated interests. Id. § 3583(d)(2). Defendant points out that § 3563(b)(6) refers only to forbidding a defendant “from associating unnecessarily with specified persons.” Id. § 3563(b)(6) (emphasis added). He contends that this -13- language does not permit a categorical prohibition on his associating with members of the Iron Horsemen or allied gangs. This argument overlooks, however, the likelihood that a prohibition solely on membership in the Iron Horsemen and its allied gangs could have been readily evaded in the absence of an accompanying prohibition on association with gang members. Indeed, other circuits have upheld conditions that categorically forbade association with members of entire groups. For example, the Seventh and Ninth Circuits approved conditions that prohibited association with members of any neo-Nazi or whitesupremacist organization. See United States v. Ross, 476 F.3d 719, 721 (9th Cir. 2007); United States v. Showalter, 933 F.2d 573, 574 (7th Cir. 1991). This precedent establishes that the prohibition on association in this case was not “clearly” improper. Defendant does cite one case, United States v. Johnson, 626 F.3d 1085, 1091 (9th Cir. 2010), in which a special condition relating to association with gang members was struck down as overly restrictive (although under the First Amendment, not § 3583(d)). The special condition in Johnson, however, was critically different from the one imposed on Defendant in that it proscribed the defendant from associating not only with the members of a designated gang but also with persons associated with that gang. See id. at 1090. The Johnson court, after noting several cases in which it had approved special conditions that restricted association with gang members, explained that “[t]here is a -14- considerable difference . . . between forbidding a defendant from associating with gang members and precluding him from associating with persons who associate with gang members.” Id. at 1091. It therefore vacated the condition for inflicting a greater deprivation of liberty than necessary for the goals of supervised release. See id. We infer that a restriction on associating with gang members alone would have passed muster. We recognize, and emphasize, that courts should take care to observe § 3583(d)(2)’s injunction against conditions that restrict liberty more than the § 3553(a) factors demand. It is also true, however, that courts are faced with pragmatic limits on the capacity of the probation office to conduct individual background checks on a defendant’s associates. Of course, nothing we say here precludes the district court from modifying its order upon a proper showing. We conclude that even if the district court’s decision to impose the gang condition was contrary to § 3583(d)(2), the error was not plain.