Opinion ID: 2745815
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Payment Special Condition

Text: The payment condition, special condition four, requires Hinds to pay “a portion of the fees of substance abuse testing and treatment.” As a threshold matter, Hinds challenges the district court’s authority to impose this condition. As he puts it, “When Congress wants a defendant to pay for something, Congress explicitly says so.” He cites various statutes that expressly authorize special assessments, fines, and restitution, 16 No. 13-3543 see 18 U.S.C. § 3013(a)(2)(A) (special assessments); 18 U.S.C. § 3571 (fines); 18 U.S.C. § 3663 (restitution); 18 U.S.C. § 3663A (restitution), and contrasts those statutes with the probation and supervised release statutes, see 18 U.S.C. § 3563 (probation); 18 U.S.C. § 3583, which he notes are silent on the issue of payment for treatment and testing services. This silence, in Hinds’s view, is dispositive. He argues it means the condition is prohibited. The government answers with its own statute, 18 U.S.C. § 3672. That statute provides in pertinent part: The Director of Administrative Office of the United States Courts … shall have the authority to contract with any appropriate public or private agency or person for the detection of and care in the community of an offender who is an alcohol-dependent person, an addict or a drug-dependent person … . This authority shall include the authority to provide … testing; medical, educational, social, psychological and vocational services; corrective and preventive guidance and training; and other rehabilitative services designed to protect the public and benefit the alcohol-dependant person, addict or drug-dependent person … . Whenever the court finds that funds are available for payment by or on behalf of a person furnished such services, training, or guidance, the court may direct such funds be paid to the Director. 18 U.S.C. § 3672. This statute is directly on point. It authorizes a district court to impose a payment condition for substance No. 13-3543 17 abuse treatment and drug testing. At least one other circuit court has agreed with this conclusion. See United States v. Bull, 214 F.3d 1275, 1278 (11th Cir. 2000) (holding district court did not clearly err in imposing a payment requirement for mental health treatment relating to violence and anger control). Accordingly, we find the district court acted within its authority when it imposed the payment condition. Of course, just because a court can do something does not mean that it should. Our next inquiry, then, examines the applicability of the payment condition to Hinds. Because the district court made no findings regarding the connection of this condition to Hinds’s offense (or person) under section 3553(a), we are left with an undeveloped record on appeal. More troubling, the part of the record that is developed appears inconsistent with itself. For example, the district court expressly found Hinds lacked the ability to pay the interest requirement on the restitution amount. So it waived it. The district court also did not order a fine “based on the defendant’s financial resources.” Yet, despite Hinds’s indigence, the district court imposed the payment condition—a condition, we note, that can be imposed and reimposed up to eight times per month. And unlike in Bull, 214 F.3d at 1279, the district court here did not make this payment condition contingent on Hinds’s ability to pay. Absent this contingency, the district court’s payment condition is not only unsupported, but also inconsistent with its previous findings regarding Hinds’s indigence. 18 No. 13-3543 We recently vacated a similar payment condition in United States v. Siegel, 753 F.3d 705 (7th Cir. 2014). In that case, a district court imposed a requirement that the defendant bear the cost of substance abuse treatment, sex-offender treatment, and the installation of filtering software for his computer. Id. at 714. There, like here, the district court set no contingency and offered no explanation as to what would happen if the defendant were unable to pay. Id. This silence concerned us because “[r]evoking a defendant’s supervised release and recommitting him to a prison for mere inability to pay would constitute imprisonment for debt.” Given those facts, we remanded the case for re-sentencing. Id. at 717. Here, we are compelled to do the same. The district court did not explain why it imposed this special condition. The findings the district court did make—namely, that Hinds is indigent—reveal a sentence demonstrably at odds with itself. For these reasons, the district court erred in imposing the payment condition. We will vacate it. We now turn to the final issue on appeal.