Court Opinion

ID: 9352475
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-01-06 18:00:53.021007+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:03:26.646185
License: Public Domain

Appellate Case: 21-2106     Document: 010110793923       Date Filed: 01/06/2023     Page: 1
                                                                                   FILED
                                                                       United States Court of Appeals
                       UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                          Tenth Circuit

                              FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT                          January 6, 2023
                          _________________________________
                                                                          Christopher M. Wolpert
                                                                              Clerk of Court
  UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

        Plaintiff - Appellee,

  v.                                                    Nos. 21-2106 & 22-2026
                                                     (D.C. No. 1:19-CR-02853-JB-1)
  JOSEPH MOISES ORTIZ,                                          (D. N.M.)

        Defendant - Appellant.
                       _________________________________

                              ORDER AND JUDGMENT*
                          _________________________________

 Before BACHARACH, BALDOCK, and CARSON, Circuit Judges.
                  _________________________________

       Following his conviction and incarceration for a gun crime, Joseph Moises

 Ortiz has twice had his supervised release revoked. After each revocation, the

 district court imposed additional incarceration followed by supervised release. And

 each term of supervised release included a special condition requiring Mr. Ortiz to

 participate in outpatient substance-abuse treatment, a condition that he challenges in

 each of these consolidated appeals. He is no longer serving the supervised-release

       *
         After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined
 unanimously to honor the parties’ request for a decision on the briefs without oral
 argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(f); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore
 submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is not binding precedent,
 except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It
 may be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.
Appellate Case: 21-2106    Document: 010110793923         Date Filed: 01/06/2023    Page: 2

 term underlying his first appeal (No. 21-2106), so we dismiss that appeal as moot. In

 his second appeal (No. 22-2026), we affirm because the district court did not abuse

 its discretion by requiring substance-abuse treatment.

                                    I. Background

       Mr. Ortiz pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and

 ammunition. The district court sentenced him to a prison term followed by

 supervised release. His probation officer later petitioned to revoke Mr. Ortiz’s

 supervised release, alleging he had violated three conditions. Mr. Ortiz admitted the

 violations, and the court again imposed incarceration followed by supervised release.

 One condition of the supervised release required Mr. Ortiz to participate in outpatient

 substance-abuse treatment. Mr. Ortiz challenges that condition in Appeal

 No. 21-2106.

       While Appeal No. 21-2106 has been pending, the probation officer again

 petitioned to revoke Mr. Ortiz’s supervised release, alleging he had violated a

 condition requiring him to complete a term in a residential reentry center. Mr. Ortiz

 admitted the violation, and once again the court ordered incarceration and supervised

 release. Over Mr. Ortiz’s objection, the court again included a special condition

 requiring him to participate in outpatient substance-abuse treatment. Mr. Ortiz

 challenges the condition again in Appeal No. 22-2026.

                                            2
Appellate Case: 21-2106    Document: 010110793923          Date Filed: 01/06/2023   Page: 3

                                      II. Discussion

 A. We lack jurisdiction in Appeal No. 21-2106.

       We first consider whether Appeal No. 21-2106 is moot “because the existence

 of a live case or controversy is a constitutional prerequisite to federal court

 jurisdiction.”1 Ind v. Colo. Dep’t of Corr., 801 F.3d 1209, 1213 (10th Cir. 2015)

 (internal quotation marks omitted). To decide if a case is moot, we ask “whether

 granting a present determination of the issues offered will have some effect in the

 real world. When it becomes impossible for a court to grant effective relief, a live

 controversy ceases to exist, and the case becomes moot.” Id. (internal quotation

 marks omitted).

       A decision in Appeal No. 21-2106 will have no real-world effect. The district

 court has revoked the supervised release associated with Appeal No. 21-2106, so

 Mr. Ortiz is no longer subject to that term of supervised release. Nor did a violation

 of the condition he challenges—the one requiring outpatient treatment—serve as a

 basis for his second revocation. For these reasons, Appeal No. 21-2106 is moot. See

 United States v. Wynn, 553 F.3d 1114, 1119 (8th Cir. 2009) (holding that because the

 defendant’s “term of probation was revoked, his appeal of the conditions of probation

 is moot except to the extent that he alleges the revocation was based on a purported

 violation of an invalid condition” (citation omitted)).

       1
         Although the parties do not raise mootness, we have an independent
 obligation to determine whether subject-matter jurisdiction exists. See Collins v.
 Daniels, 916 F.3d 1302, 1314 (10th Cir. 2019).
                                             3
Appellate Case: 21-2106     Document: 010110793923        Date Filed: 01/06/2023    Page: 4

 B. The district court did not abuse its discretion in Appeal No. 22-2026.

        The propriety of the outpatient-treatment condition remains a live issue

 in Appeal No. 22-2026, however, because Mr. Ortiz is still subject to the

 supervised-release term associated with that appeal. We review the district court’s

 decision to impose the condition for an abuse of discretion. See United States v.

 Richards, 958 F.3d 961, 965 (10th Cir. 2020). A district court abuses its discretion if

 it relies on a clearly erroneous factual finding or an erroneous legal conclusion, or if

 its ruling “manifests a clear error of judgment.” Id. (internal quotation marks

 omitted).

        District courts enjoy broad discretion to impose special conditions of

 supervised release. Id. But that discretion has limits. See id. A special condition

 must satisfy three criteria:

       1. It must be reasonably related to certain sentencing factors, including the
          defendant’s history and characteristics.

       2. It must involve no greater liberty deprivation than reasonably necessary to
          deter criminal activity, protect the public, and promote rehabilitation.

       3. And it must be consistent with any pertinent Sentencing Commission policy
          statements.

 See id.; 18 U.S.C. § 3583(d). These criteria are met by the condition requiring

 Mr. Ortiz to participate in outpatient treatment.

        First, the outpatient-treatment condition is reasonably related to Mr. Ortiz’s

 history and characteristics. The record contains evidence that he drank and used

 cocaine before going to prison for a different crime in 1991. After his release, he

                                             4
Appellate Case: 21-2106    Document: 010110793923         Date Filed: 01/06/2023      Page: 5

 used alcohol for a few years but stopped in 2000. He felt tempted to use cocaine

 again after his release from the earlier prison term, but he resisted, helped in part by

 participating in Narcotics Anonymous. He also felt urges to use drugs during his

 original prison term in this case, but again he resisted. During his first term of

 supervised release in this case, his probation officer filed a report saying that he had

 tested positive for marijuana and had failed to report using a Suboxone prescription.2

 All this information supports the district court’s decision to require substance-abuse

 treatment.

       At the same time, though, Mr. Ortiz marshals information that, in his view,

 shows he does not abuse drugs. He highlights, for example, that most of his

 substance use occurred many years ago, that neither his revocations nor his

 underlying offense involved drugs, and that his criminal history includes no drug

 offenses. These are fair points. Yet we still must conclude that the condition

 requiring outpatient treatment is reasonably related to Mr. Ortiz’s history and

 characteristics. In this situation, with information pointing in different directions, the

 discretion given to the district court makes all the difference. Perhaps it would have

       2
          The record contains inconsistent information about Mr. Ortiz’s Suboxone
 use. Although a filing says that the probation officer’s report claimed that Mr. Ortiz
 failed to report using a Suboxone prescription, the officer said at the second
 revocation hearing that Mr. Ortiz had used Suboxone without a prescription. This
 inconsistency does not affect our analysis; either scenario supports the court’s
 decision.

                                             5
Appellate Case: 21-2106     Document: 010110793923        Date Filed: 01/06/2023   Page: 6

 been reasonable not to require outpatient treatment. But we ask only whether

 requiring treatment amounted to a clear error of judgment. It did not.

       We are not persuaded otherwise by Mr. Ortiz’s argument that the district court

 “acknowledged that drugs were not Mr. Ortiz’s problem at the first revocation

 hearing.” 22-2026 Opening Br. at 12. True enough, the court opined that drug abuse

 was “not the problem right now.” R. vol. 2 at 52.3 Coming on the heels of several

 outbursts from Mr. Ortiz, however, this statement appears merely to recognize that

 Mr. Ortiz’s primary problem was anger.

       Contrary to Mr. Ortiz’s argument, Richards supports the district court’s

 decision. In Richards we upheld a special condition requiring the defendant to

 participate in substance-abuse treatment even though his substance abuse had

 occurred nearly twenty years earlier. 958 F.3d at 965–66. We did so in part because

 the record showed that he had used “child pornography rather than alcohol to deal

 with his frustration.” Id. at 966. As Mr. Ortiz underscores, the record in his case

 does not show precisely the same risk articulated in Richards—that the defendant

 might “trade one vice for another.” Id. But, as in Richards, the record does provide

 reason to think that substance-abuse treatment might be necessary to ensure the

 defendant “will remain on the path to rehabilitation during his supervised release.”

 Id.

       3
           Record citations in this decision refer to the record in Appeal No. 22-2026.

                                             6
Appellate Case: 21-2106    Document: 010110793923        Date Filed: 01/06/2023     Page: 7

       Second, requiring substance-abuse treatment does not impose a liberty

 deprivation greater than reasonably necessary to deter criminal activity, protect the

 public, and promote rehabilitation. Arguing that drug testing alone would have been

 sufficient, Mr. Ortiz points out that his probation officer recommended testing but not

 treatment. And, according to his probation officer, after he tested positive for

 marijuana, they “worked past it” and there had not “been any issues with that since.”

 R. vol. 2 at 82. Even so, taken as a whole, the record does not allow us to conclude

 that the treatment condition restricts Mr. Ortiz’s liberty more than reasonably

 necessary.

       Third, the condition requiring substance-abuse treatment is consistent with the

 pertinent Sentencing Commission policy statement. The Sentencing Commission

 recommends a treatment condition if “the court has reason to believe that the

 defendant is an abuser of narcotics, other controlled substances or alcohol.” U.S.

 Sent’g Guidelines Manual § 5D1.3(d)(4) (U.S. Sent’g Comm’n 2021). And even if

 there is no reason to believe the defendant is a controlled-substance abuser, treatment

 “may otherwise be appropriate in particular cases.” Id. § 5D1.3(d); see Richards,

 958 F.3d at 966. The information we outlined above gave the district court reason to

 think Mr. Ortiz struggles with substance abuse, so the treatment condition is

 consistent with the pertinent policy statement. See United States v. Bear, 769 F.3d

 1221, 1231 (10th Cir. 2014) (explaining that “§ 3583(d)(3) mandates only that the

 conditions not directly conflict with the policy statements”).

                                            7
Appellate Case: 21-2106   Document: 010110793923     Date Filed: 01/06/2023   Page: 8

                                 III. Conclusion

       We dismiss Appeal No. 21-2106. We affirm the district court’s judgment in

 Appeal No. 22-2026.

                                         Entered for the Court

                                         Joel M. Carson III
                                         Circuit Judge

                                         8