Opinion ID: 2708545
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Sex-Offender Treatment Program

Text: Baker contends that condition 8, which requires him to complete a sex-offender treatment program, is not reasonably related to the nature and circumstances of his offense, as required by 18 U.S.C. § 3583(d)(1). In support, he again directs us to Goodwin. In Goodwin, this Court sua sponte vacated a condition requiring the defendant to undergo sex offender treatment because the defendant’s offense (failure to register as a sex offender) did not have “any connection” to “the purposes that sex offender treatment and mental health No. 13-1641 19 counseling typically serve.” 717 F.3d at 525–26. The obvious difference between Goodwin and this case, however, is the restaurant incident with the two minor girls. Even Baker acknowledges this is a “plausible distinction,” which is not to be taken lightly. We are confronted with the question of whether the purposes of sex offender treatment have “any connection” to Baker’s failure to register offense. Individuals who have been convicted of sex offenses are required to register as sex offenders for a number of reasons not limited to protecting the safety of others. See 42 U.S.C. § 16901 (explaining that the purpose of SORNA is “to protect the public from sex offenders and offenders against children, and [to] respon[d] to the vicious attacks by violent predators”). Sex offender treatment may not be warranted in many cases where the base offense is a failure to register, but recent conduct demonstrating a propensity to commit sex offenses would seem to always provide a justification for the condition. See United States v. Evans, 727 F.3d 730, 733–34 (7th Cir. 2013) (“Even if there is no substantive connection between the crime of punishment and the defendant’s sexual misconduct, the sexual misconduct may be so recent or prominent in the defendant’s behavior that a sentencing court aiming to protect the public and rehabilitate the defendant would be entitled to address it.”) (emphasis added); see also United States v. Morales-Cruz, 712 F.3d 71, 74 (1st Cir. 2013) (“[S]ex offender treatment may be imposed in a case in which the underlying crime in not a sex offense.”); United States v. Hahn, 551 F.3d 977, 984 (10th Cir. 2008) (“[N]othing in [18 U.S.C. § 3583(d)] limits the special condition of sex-offender treatment to defendants under prosecution for sex crimes.”) (alteration in Hahn). The incident in late 2007 may have occurred roughly four years be20 No. 13-1641 fore the failure to register conduct and five years before Baker was sentenced, but to say that it is “outdated,” as Baker contends, is not accurate. Baker has spent most of his life incarcerated, and he engaged in the 2007 conduct not long after he was released from prison. This fact significantly increases the temporal connection between the time of the conduct and the time of Baker’s base offense here. Baker attempts to further distinguish Evans on the ground that his 2007 conduct did not result in an arrest. That is not dispositive. The facts regarding Baker’s conduct are disturbing. Baker reached out to minor girls, engaged in explicit sexual conversations with them, took them to an area of isolation, and solicited sexual activity with them at a later date. This is a prominent example of the defendant’s behavioral history. See Evans, 727 F.3d at 734. That no arrest or prosecution followed Baker’s actions does not indicate the events did not occur as the girls testified at the sentencing hearing. The judge implicitly found their testimony to be credible by relying on it when making his sentencing determinations. The judge also was not merely relying on a bare- bones, unsubstantiated police report. Accordingly, that Baker was not arrested or prosecuted for his 2007 conduct did not prohibit the sentencing judge from considering the testimony as evidence of Baker’s history and characteristics, which are important considerations when imposing a special condition. See 18 U.S.C. § 3661 (“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.”); United States v. Jones, 635 F.3d 909, 917 (7th Cir. 2011) (“In arriving at an appropriate sentence, ‘a judge may appropriately con- No. 13-1641 21 duct an inquiry broad in scope, largely unlimited as to the kind of information he may consider, or the source from which it may come.’” (quoting United States v. Tucker, 404 U.S. 443, 446 (1972))); see also Neal, 662 F.3d at 938–939 (“The district judge properly considered [the defendant’s] history and character, noting that he smoked marijuana on a daily basis in the past, had used illegal substances in 1999 and 2000 before he was arrested, and had used cocaine prior to his incarceration.”). Nor does it take this case beyond the purview of our reasoning in Evans. We find that the temporal connection between the 2007 incident and the failure to register offense (which the sentencing judge thought was “recent enough”), coupled with the gravity of Baker’s conduct, created a sufficient nexus between Baker’s conduct and the § 3553(a) factors for the sentencing judge to impose the sex-offender treatment condition. See Evans, 727 F.3d at 735. Baker’s alternative argument is that the sex-offender treatment condition involves a greater deprivation of liberty than necessary because the judge did not limit how long Baker is required to undergo treatment. This argument is grounded in the fact that the judge imposed a life term of supervised release; so conceivably, Baker could be required to attend sex-offender treatment for the rest of his life. Indeed, as we have explained, certain conditions of release “may require strong justification when extended for a lifetime.” United States v. Quinn, 698 F.3d 651, 652–53 (7th Cir. 2012) (“The judge also should consider the possibility of set- ting sunset dates for some of the more onerous terms, so [the defendant] can regain more control of his own activities without needing a public official’s advance approval, while enough supervision remains to allow intervention should [the defendant] relapse.”). But the basic premise of Baker’s 22 No. 13-1641 argument has been addressed; we have already held that Baker’s term of supervised release must be vacated because it was based on an improper guidelines range. On remand, the sentencing judge will be able to address the length of Baker’s supervised release, which in turn affects the length of the sex-offender treatment requirement. Baker’s argument on this point is moot.