Court Opinion

ID: 9891164
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-17 18:00:34.847828+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:39:26.706644
License: Public Domain

In the

    United States Court of Appeals
                For the Seventh Circuit
                    ____________________
No. 23-2615
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                  Plaintiff-Appellee,
                                v.

VINCENT STORME,
                                              Defendant-Appellant.
                    ____________________

        Appeal from the United States District Court for the
          Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
         No. 1:20-cr-650-1 — John Robert Blakey, Judge.
                    ____________________

SUBMITTED SEPTEMBER 11, 2023 — DECIDED OCTOBER 17, 2023
                ____________________

   Before BRENNAN, SCUDDER, ST. EVE Circuit Judges.
    PER CURIAM. Federal judges grapple every day with one of
the most common but consequential decisions in our criminal
justice system: whether to detain a defendant pending trial.
Those decisions occur pursuant to the Bail Reform Act, which
embodies a careful and complementary balance of procedural
and substantive protections for those accused of crime and
presumed innocent under the Constitution. Before us is Vin-
cent Storme’s challenge to the district court’s determination
2                                                   No. 23-2615

to terminate his pretrial release and order him detained pend-
ing trial. Two factors complicate the appeal. Foremost, Storme
suﬀers from mental illness and has attempted suicide three
times, most recently threatening to take his life if the district
court declined to dismiss his pending criminal charges. So we
must consider the role suicide risk plays under the operative
provisions of the Bail Reform Act. Also complicating this ap-
peal is the choppy procedural path that this case has traveled
in the district court. So we also take care to underscore the
importance of the procedural safeguards Congress embedded
within the Act. In the end, we aﬃrm the district court’s deci-
sion detaining Storme pending trial.
                                I
    Storme awaits trial on multiple charges of cyberstalking,
18 U.S.C. § 2261A(2), and unauthorized intrusion into a cell
phone, 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2). His indictment, and the criminal
complaint leading to it, allege an extreme online campaign of
harassment against three different women. The harassment
entailed obsessive accusations and occasional physical
stalking.
   Following Storme’s arrest in September 2020, a magistrate
judge ordered him released on bond into the custody of his
mother subject to conditions of curfew, psychiatric treatment,
and restricted use of technology.
    Storme’s concerning and increasingly erratic behavior
began almost immediately. The day after his release, he
attempted suicide by overdosing on medication. In February
2021, Pretrial Services reported that Storme had not only
violated his curfew over thirty times but had also been
arrested in Arlington Heights, Illinois for allegedly stalking a
No. 23-2615                                                   3

fourth ex-girlfriend by following her home in his car. The ex-
girlfriend obtained a protective order against Storme.
   Pretrial Services also relayed that Storme had begun abus-
ing alcohol and was continuing to have suicidal ideation. On
one occasion, Storme called his Pretrial Services officer from
the shores of Lake Michigan, threatening to drown himself
until the officer talked him down. Ultimately, the district
court—then with a different judge presiding over Storme’s
case—opted to admonish Storme, prohibit him from contact-
ing the ex-girlfriend, and require that he submit to substance
abuse testing. But the district court did not revoke release. A
few months later, Storme's mother left the Chicago-
land area and moved to Virginia. The court did not appoint a
new third-party custodian in her stead.
    In July 2023, after Storme moved to dismiss a superseding
indictment, Pretrial Services provided the district court with
a report from Storme’s therapist. The therapist expressed con-
cern that Storme would kill himself if he thought the court
might deny his motion to dismiss. (Storme contends that the
charges seek to criminalize speech protected by the First
Amendment.) In anticipation of a hearing on the motion,
Storme began transferring assets to his mother—a sign of on-
going suicidal ideation. He also appeared multiple times in
the district court to watch unrelated proceedings before his
assigned judge, apparently in an attempt to learn how to pre-
dict the judge’s ruling on the motion to dismiss the criminal
charges. During the same period, Storme refused to discuss a
safety plan with his therapist or Pretrial Services officer, in-
stead continuing to hint ominously at his plans for self-harm.
   On August 3, the day of the hearing, the district court
heard argument but decided to reserve ruling on Storme’s
4                                                 No. 23-2615

motion to dismiss. At the close of the proceeding, and without
advance notice, the court then revoked Storme’s pretrial re-
lease and ordered him detained. The court did not make sup-
porting findings or offer explanation, stating that it would do
so in a future written order.
    Upon being removed from the courtroom, Storme began
slamming his head to the floor and urging the marshals to kill
him. An hour later, while in a holding cell at the Metropolitan
Correctional Center, he tried to hang himself with his
t-shirt. A correctional officer intervened, leading to Storme
being placed on suicide watch for 48 hours.
    Storme’s counsel—a very experienced and talented crimi-
nal defense lawyer—reacted to the district court’s unexpected
detention decision by promptly seeking our review. Troubled
by the lack of any notice that bail would be revisited, oppor-
tunity to be heard, and findings in support of detention, we
entered an order on August 8 directing that Storme be re-
leased within 24 hours unless the government filed a motion
to revoke under 18 U.S.C. §§ 3145(a) or 3148(b).
    The government complied. After a lengthy detention hear-
ing on August 9, the district court granted its motion to re-
voke Storme’s release. The district court found probable cause
to believe that, while on release, Storme had both committed
crimes and otherwise violated his release conditions, render-
ing him subject to detention. On the merits of the detention
question, the district court agreed with the government that
suicide was a form of flight within the meaning of the Bail
Reform Act. The district court also determined that Storme’s
erratic behavior made him a potential danger to others that
could not be adequately mitigated by additional release
conditions.
No. 23-2615                                                    5

    Storme now appeals a second time, 18 U.S.C. § 3145(c),
once again urging us to order his release. See FED. R. APP. P.
9(a).
                               II
                               A
    The Bail Reform Act supplies the statutory framework for
making pretrial release and detention decisions in criminal
cases. Section 3148 authorizes judges to revoke prior release
orders and remand defendants into custody under specific
circumstances. Any such order must satisfy the two-part
standard Congress delineated in § 3148(b). See United States v.
Wilks, 15 F.4th 842, 848 (7th Cir. 2021).
    First, the district court must make a threshold finding un-
der § 3148(b)(1) that there exists either “probable cause to be-
lieve that the person committed a Federal, State, or local crime
while on release” or “clear and convincing evidence that the
person has violated any other condition of release.”
    Second, the district court must find that detention is neces-
sary under § 3148(b)(2), meaning either that “there is no con-
dition or combination of conditions of release that will assure
that the person will not flee or pose a danger to the safety of
any other person or the community” or that “the person is
unlikely to abide by any condition or combination of condi-
tions of release.” In making this assessment, the court must
consider the factors delineated in § 3142(g) that informed the
initial detention or release decision.
6                                                   No. 23-2615

                               B
                               1
    The district court had sufficient cause to revoke Storme’s
detention under § 3148. As a threshold matter, Storme was
subject to revocation because he met both alternative grounds
in § 3148(b)(1). The record provides probable cause to believe
Storme had committed crimes while on release, including (at
the very least) felony stalking under Illinois law. See 720 ILCS
5/12-7.3. Although the state did not press charges in response
to Storme’s stalking of a fourth ex-girlfriend, probable cause
requires only evidence “sufficient to warrant a prudent per-
son in believing that the suspect has committed an offense.”
United States v. Hammond, 996 F.3d 374, 391 (7th Cir. 2021); ac-
cord United States v. Gotti, 794 F.2d 773, 777 (2d Cir. 1986)
(holding that § 3148(b)(1) adopts this traditional definition).
The record also provides clear and convincing evidence that
Storme violated his curfew multiple times in 2020 and 2021.
    Storme does not challenge either finding. He asserts only
that those events are too dated and stale to support revocation
of his pretrial release. We cannot agree. Although staleness is
a relevant fact for a court to consider when deciding whether
to revoke release, it presents no legal barrier to doing so. Con-
gress included no revocation time limit within § 3148(b)(1).
While the Bail Reform Act generally contemplates swift revo-
cation, see 18 U.S.C. § 3142(h)(2)(B) (requiring that a release
order inform the defendant of “the consequences of violating
a condition of release, including the immediate issuance of a
warrant for the person’s arrest” (emphasis added)), it no-
where imposes consequences for delay. The absence of such a
provision has led the Supreme Court to hold that a defendant
should not be released solely because a judge or the
No. 23-2615                                                     7

government violated even explicit time limits elsewhere in
the Act. See United States v. Montalvo-Murillo, 495 U.S. 711,
716–17 (1990). We see no reason why an implicit deadline—if
indeed one exists—should be more strictly enforced.
    The cases Storme cites are not inconsistent with this inter-
pretation. Read in context, the decisions treat delay as a non-
dispositive factor informing whether revocation is appropri-
ate in the totality of circumstances leading to the detention
decision. See United States v. Hamilton, 708 F.2d 1412, 1415 (9th
Cir. 1983) (“Three years is beyond that point under the cir-
cumstances of this case.”); United States v. Sciuto, 531 F.2d 842,
847 (7th Cir. 1976) (“Whether the delay was unreasonable de-
pends upon whether [the defendant] deceived the probation
officer.”). But § 3148(b)(1) merely asks whether a defendant is
eligible for a revocation of pretrial release. Clear and convinc-
ing evidence of violations of release conditions establishes
such eligibility and thereby exposes a defendant like Vincent
Storme to the risk of pretrial detention.
                                2
    Turning to the application of § 3148(b)(2), we do not be-
lieve that Storme’s likelihood of violating release conditions
is sufficiently high to justify detention. See 18 U.S.C.
§ 3148(b)(2)(B). Although Storme repeatedly violated curfew,
each violation was only by a few minutes, and after the dis-
trict court admonished him over two years ago, he never vio-
lated his curfew again. Indeed, before the district court or-
dered him detained on August 3, 2023, Storme had been re-
leased subject to conditions for nearly three years while gen-
erally remaining compliant. Based on the record before us, we
cannot conclude that Storme is “unlikely to abide by any
8                                                    No. 23-2615

condition or combination of conditions of release.” Id.
§ 3148(b)(2)(B).
    That brings us to a more difficult question: whether de-
taining Storme pending trial is necessary to “assure that the
person will not flee or pose a danger to the safety of any other
person or the community.” Id. § 3148(b)(2)(A). We conclude
that, although the mere existence of suicide risk is not itself
sufficient to justify pretrial detention, the unique circum-
stances of this case nonetheless warrant detention. Storme’s
suicidal ideation, the district court reasonably determined, is
but one manifestation of a broader pattern of erratic, obses-
sive, and unpredictable behavior presenting a danger to
others.
    Suicide risk is distinct from a risk of flight or nonappear-
ance. The text of the Bail Reform Act provides no indication
that the term “flight” encompasses suicide. To the contrary,
the plain import of the term “flight” connotes an intentional
act by a defendant to evade criminal prosecution by leaving
the jurisdiction. See United States v. Ailon-Ailon, 875 F.3d 1334,
1337 (10th Cir. 2017) (concluding that immigration removal
does not qualify as flight because flight must involve an ele-
ment of volition). That explains why magistrate and district
judges routinely impose travel restrictions and require de-
fendants to surrender passports—all to mitigate the risk of
flight. Common definitions of flight support this conclusion.
See Flee, WEBSTER’S II NEW RIVERSIDE UNIVERSITY DICTIONARY
(1984) (“To run away”); Flee, AMERICAN HERITAGE
DICTIONARY (2d Coll. Ed. 1982) (“To run away from or as from
danger”). And the Bail Reform Act’s legislative history, to the
extent it is relevant, provides no hint that Congress contem-
plated “flight by suicide” as a cognizable basis for detention.
No. 23-2615                                                   9

    The same goes for nonappearance. In the bail context, non-
appearance refers to an attempt to avoid submitting to a
court’s jurisdiction, not to death. Judges “assure the appear-
ance” of criminal defendants by imposing release conditions
and adopting precautionary measures to prevent them from
evading prosecution. But a defendant’s death terminates a
pending criminal proceeding “from its inception” as if
charges had never been brought. See United States v.
Volpendesto, 755 F.3d 448, 452–53 (7th Cir. 2014). The need to
secure a defendant’s appearance ceases to have meaning if a
defendant dies and the criminal case terminates by operation
of law.
    Consider the practical implications of a contrary conclu-
sion. If a defendant’s death constituted a form of nonappear-
ance, judges could detain upon a showing of a sufficient risk
of death, including one created by age, poor health, or inade-
quate access to medical services. We have a difficult time see-
ing how Congress intended the Bail Reform Act to operate
with such breadth.
                               3
    Moving beyond flight and nonappearance, we turn to the
question whether suicide risk alone poses a sufficient danger
to justify detention. We hold that it cannot. The Act is clear
that a revocation of pretrial release must be based on a risk to
“the safety of any other person and the community.” 18 U.S.C.
§ 3148(b)(2)(A) (emphasis added). By its terms, then, the stat-
ute requires a finding that the defendant’s conduct poses a
danger to some person other than themselves.
   The government urges a broader construction, pointing to
one of the § 3142(g) factors that judges must consider when
10                                                  No. 23-2615

deciding whether to revoke pretrial release under § 3148. We
recognize that Congress worded that factor in terms of “the
danger to any person or the community,” notably omitting
the term “other” before person. But this language does not
supply the operative standard for deciding whether detention
is appropriate. It is simply one factor among many that a court
should consider when evaluating what is the controlling
standard: whether the defendant poses a risk to the “safety of
any other person and the community.” 18 U.S.C.
§ 3148(b)(2)(A). At best, therefore, § 3142(g) suggests that su-
icide risk is relevant only to the extent that it presents a risk
of harm to others—for example, with a defendant who threat-
ens to shoot himself and anyone else who seeks to monitor his
whereabouts or well-being. But the mere risk of self-harm is
not itself enough.
    Congress’s inclusion of the phrase “or the community” in
§ 3148(b)(2)(A) is consistent with our conclusion. It is well un-
derstood that harms to the “community” refer not to the de-
fendant but to crimes without specific victims. See, e.g., United
States v. Ramirez, 843 F.2d 256, 257–58 (7th Cir. 1988) (applying
the Bail Reform Act to vacate a release order based on evi-
dence of a drug trafficking conspiracy that presents a danger
to the community); United States v. Munchel, 991 F.3d 1273,
1283 (D.C. Cir.), judgment entered, 844 F. App'x 373 (D.C. Cir.
2021) (observing that a danger to a community need not be
tied to a risk of physical violence to justify detention under
the Bail Reform Act).
   So we conclude that the mere existence of a risk of suicide
does not provide grounds to detain a defendant under the
Bail Reform Act in any and every case. But this is no routine
case.
No. 23-2615                                                   11

    Revoking release based on dangerousness requires a care-
ful assessment of the facts and circumstances relevant to the
broad factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3142(g). See 18 U.S.C.
§ 3148(b)(2)(A) (directing courts to consider these factors
when deciding whether to revoke release in light of flight risk
or dangerousness). Considering those factors in totality, we
agree with the district court that Storme’s continued release
would pose a danger to other persons or the community. The
allegations against Storme paint a picture of a defendant who
responds unexpectedly, dangerously, and obsessively to ad-
versity in potentially escalatory ways. Shortly after Storme
was charged with electronically stalking one ex-girlfriend,
police arrested him for physically stalking another, even
while he was under strict supervision. The facts identified by
Pretrial Services leading to the August 3 hearing suggest that
Storme’s condition was worsening rapidly.
    The evidence presented to the district court demonstrates
that, as of at least July 2023, Storme was preparing for things
to escalate again, whether through self-harm or some other
unpredictable, desperate action that mere conditions of re-
lease could not prevent. By that point, Storme’s mother had
left the state, leaving him without a third-party custodian to
help monitor him. For months, Storme came to the federal
courthouse and sat through unrelated hearings conducted by
his assigned judge in an attempt to predict how the court
would rule on the pending motion to dismiss. Viewed in this
light, his suicide threats created more than a mere risk of self-
harm. Tied explicitly to his charges, they were essentially
threats of unpredictable violence if the district court ruled
against him.
12                                                  No. 23-2615

   The district court properly revoked Storme’s detention on
the ground that no conditions would assure that he does not
pose a danger to the safety of other persons or the community.
                               III
    In the ordinary case, this conclusion would end our
analysis. But this is not an ordinary case, in no small part be-
cause it traveled a rocky path to our court. In these circum-
stances, then, we close by underscoring the importance of ad-
herence to the procedural protections Congress incorporated
into the Bail Reform Act.
     Recall that the district court concluded the August 3 hear-
ing on Storme’s motion to dismiss by revoking his pretrial re-
lease and ordering him detained pending trial. We have zero
doubt the district court made the decision not only believing
it legally sound but also grounded in the compassionate per-
spective that detaining Storme may save his life. By all
measures, the record shows Storme to be suffering from grave
mental illness, and the district court, upon learning from Pre-
trial Services that his suicidal ideation was intensifying, re-
acted by determining that detention may help bring im-
portant stability to an unpredictable and precarious situation.
    If given the chance to redo the August 3 proceeding, we
also have zero doubt the district court would have adhered
more closely to the revocation process delineated in § 3148(b).
The court could have done so by informing the parties of the
recent findings of Pretrial Services and otherwise supplying
advance notice (if only at the outset of the motion to dismiss
hearing itself) that it was considering modifying Storme’s re-
lease status. See 18 U.S.C. § 3153(c)(1) (“Each pretrial services
report shall be made available to the attorney for the accused
No. 23-2615                                                  13

and the attorney for the Government.”); N. D. ILL. L. CRIM. R.
46.4(a) (requiring that attorneys receive any report “in con-
nection with” detention, release, or modification proceed-
ings). For its part, the government—as § 3148 contemplates—
could have unambiguously moved to revoke Storme’s
release.
   A process along those lines would have informed Storme
that the district court was considering modifying his release
while providing him sufficient opportunity to prepare for a
hearing on the matter, as Congress has determined is essential
to affording a defendant a full and fair opportunity to
respond. See 18 U.S.C. § 3148(b) (stating that a revocation of a
defendant’s release must come after a “proceeding for
revocation” that includes a “hearing”); id. § 3142(f) (stating
that a defendant must have the opportunity to testify, cross-
examine, and present witnesses at a detention hearing).
Process matters with detention decisions precisely because it
protects the liberty interest of persons presumed innocent
under the Constitution. Or, as the Supreme Court has put the
same point, “[i]n our society liberty is the norm, and detention
prior to trial or without trial is the carefully limited
exception.” United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 755 (1987).
   Other aspects of the August 3 proceeding give us consid-
erable pause too. The Bail Reform Act requires express find-
ings to support even temporary detention decisions. See 18
U.S.C. § 3142(d) (permitting temporary detention of a person
on release for up to 10 days if a judicial officer “determines
that … such person may flee or pose a danger to any other
person or the community”). The district court did not accom-
pany its August 3 detention decision with such findings, un-
derstandably leading Storme’s counsel to promptly seek our
14                                                 No. 23-2615

review and leaving the government to file rushed and unclear
motion papers requesting a more orderly revocation of
Storme’s pretrial release.
    To the district court’s credit, though, a formal detention
hearing ensued promptly on August 9. The transcript of that
proceeding is not easy to read, for it is clear that the
circumstances leading to the hearing escalated everyone’s
anxiety and resulted in some tough exchanges of words. We
make this observation believing with complete certainty that
all involved—the government, Storme’s counsel, the district
court—were acting in the best of faith and working through
the tense and difficult circumstances presented by Storme’s
ongoing mental illness and acute risk of suicide.
    Our overarching point is not one of criticism but of
positive reinforcement: sound process often matters most in
pressure-packed, consequential decisions. Recognizing those
moments and taking care to adhere to the requirements
prescribed by rule or statute will ensure the protections of the
parties’ rights and interests and maximize the chances of
clean transcripts containing clear findings and leaving no
doubt everyone enjoyed a full and fair opportunity to convey
their positions.
    In the end, the district court reached the right conclusion.
Before the court was a defendant suffering from mental illness
and charged with very serious crimes marked by danger, ob-
session, and persistence. Twice before, Vincent Storme’s men-
tal illness manifested itself in unsuccessful suicide attempts,
with Pretrial Services informing the district court that the su-
icidal ideation was only intensifying in anticipation of an ad-
verse ruling on a pending motion to dismiss all criminal
charges. Though scattered and disjointed in places, the record
No. 23-2615                                                    15

supports the district court’s conclusion that Storme’s unpre-
dictable and erratic pattern of behavior presented a danger to
others sufficient to justify a revocation of his pretrial release.
   For these reasons, we AFFIRM the district court’s order re-
voking Storme’s release from pretrial detention.