Court Opinion

ID: 9493821
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:20:25.379797+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:03.199699
License: Public Domain

GILMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the decision of the court to affirm the district court’s imposition of the fourth special condition of Kingsley’s supervised release, which authorizes random warrantless searches of Kingsley’s person and effects in the discretion of his probation officer. But I write separately to express my view that the fifth special condition of supervised release imposed by the district court — which prohibits Kingsley from operating a motor vehicle for three years — is a very questionable imposition under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.
Section 5D1.3(b) of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines provides as follows:
The court may impose other conditions of supervised release to the extent that such conditions (1) are reasonably related to (A) the nature and circumstances of the offense and the history and characteristics of the defendant; (B) the need for the sentence imposed to afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct; (C) the need to protect 'the public from further crimes of the defendant; and (D) the need to provide the defendant with needed educational or vocational training, medical care, or other correctional treatment in the most effective manner; and (2) involve no greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary for the purposes set forth above and are consistent with any pertinent policy statements issued by the Sentencing Commission.
Of particular importance is § 5D1.3(b)(l)(A), which mandates that conditions of supervised release must be reasonably related to “the nature and circumstances of the offense and the history and characteristics of the defendant.” (emphasis added).
The court describes at great length the history and characteristics of the defendant by detailing Kingsley’s “two-decade crime spree.” Op. at 832. Although I acknowledge that Kingsley’s criminal history is hardly that of a model citizen, I believe that the court greatly overstates its case and makes a tenuous argument for the proposition that prohibiting Kingsley from driving is reasonably related to the nature and circumstances of the offense for which he was convicted. In fact, the court at one point makes the following statement, which implies that the language of § 5D1.3(b)(l)(A) can be read disjunctively instead of conjunctively: “Because special condition no. 5 was independently justified by either factor standing alone, a fortiori, it was legitimized by the aggregation of both factors.” Op. at 837-38 (emphasis in original). I find no basis in the language of the section or in the rules of statutory construction that would allow us to apply *841either factor standing alone, and the court provides no justification for doing so.
The court also reasons that because Kingsley transported his “illegal arsenal of at least eleven firearms” to the residence of the victim in his truck on December 17, 1996, prohibiting Kingsley from driving reasonably relates to his offense. Op. at 837-38. But Kingsley was not arrested for the illegal possession of firearms until more than five months later, when the police obtained a search warrant and found the weapons in his home. Furthermore, under the court’s logic, if a defendant like Kingsley had transported his “arsenal” of illegal weapons on a bus or subway, then a prohibition on the use of public transportation as a condition of supervised release would be reasonably related to the nature and circumstances of the offense. To me this makes little sense in light of the wording and purpose of U.S.S.G. § 5D1.3(b).
The court’s opinion seems to be based on the assumption that Kingsley is beyond any hope of rehabilitation. It belittles the likelihood that prohibiting Kingsley from driving will detract from the stated purpose of both U.S.S.G. § 6D1.3(b)(l)(D) (by making it more difficult for the defendant to obtain “correctional treatment in the most effective manner”) and U.S.S.G. § 5D1.3(b)(2) (by involving “no greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary”).
I believe that the incidental transportation of illegally possessed firearms is too tangential to Kingsley’s criminal offense at issue to justify a total ban on his driving. Although Kingsley’s criminal history includes five incidents of arrests for Driving While Intoxicated, his last such offense occurred over four years before the crime in question. Yet the court declares that “the vexing ‘history and characteristics.of the defendant’ establish that furtherance of the paramount governmental interest in protection of public safety, standing alone, could justify the subject driving proscription.” Op. at 837-38. I believe that such a gratuitous statement has absolutely no support under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, and none is cited by the court.
There are relatively few cases in this circuit that examine the necessary nexus between the nature and circumstances of an offense and the condition of supervised release. All of these cases affirm the linkage. See, e.g., United States v. Berridge, 74 F.3d 113 (6th Cir.1996) (upholding the prohibition on a former bank vice president who pled guilty to fraudulent loan activity from obtaining employment in the banking industry during his period of supervised release); United States v. Szenay, No. 98-1116, 1999 WL 426886, *3 (6th Cir. June 15, 1999) (unpublished table decision) (upholding the special condition of prohibiting the defendant from incurring any credit card charges without the approval of the probation officer where the conviction was for credit card fraud); United States v. Worthington, 1998 WL 279379, *17 (6th Cir. May 21, 1998) (unpublished table decision) (upholding the prohibition on possessing a pager or cell phone during supervised release for a defendant convicted of a drug conspiracy). A Fifth Circuit case, on the other hand, held that the district court abused its discretion by imposing a prohibition on the possession of a firearm as a condition of supervised release for a defendant who was convicted of unlawfully discharging a pollutant. See United States v. Voda, 994 F.2d 149 (5th Cir.1993).
I believe that the relationship between the driving prohibition imposed on Kings-ley and his firearms conviction is closer to the disconnect found in the Fifth Circuit case than to the tailored fit found in the Sixth Circuit cases set forth above. Accordingly, I would be inclined to hold that the district court abused its discretion by imposing the prohibition on driving as a condition of Kingsley’s supervised release. But Kingsley did not raise an objection to the imposition of this special condition of supervised release before the district court. We therefore cannot set aside the *842district court’s ruling unless we find that its imposition constitutes plain error. See United States v. Koeberlein, 161 F.3d 946, 949 (6th Cir.1998). “The Supreme Court and numerous federal courts have repeatedly stated that the plain error doctrine is to be used sparingly, only in exceptional circumstances, and solely to avoid a miscarriage of justice.” United States v. Gold Unlimited, Inc., 177 F.3d 472, 483 (6th Cir.1999) (quoting United States v. Hook, 781 F.2d 1166, 1172-73 (6th Cir.1986) (citations omitted)). Because I find no such exceptional circumstances in the present case, despite my disagreement with the result reached, I reluctantly concur in the judgment of the court as to this fifth special condition of Kingsley’s supervised release.