U.S.A. v. Kramer

• Citation: 225 F.3d 847
• Decision Date: 05 September 2000
• Docket Number: No. 99-2262,99-2262
• Parties: (7th Cir. 2000) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ROBERT HERBERT KRAMER, Defendant-Appellant
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit)

Page 847

225 F.3d 847 (7th Cir. 2000)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ROBERT HERBERT KRAMER, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 99-2262

In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Argued November 12, 1999

Decided September 5, 2000

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division. No. 98 CR 140--Sarah Evans Barker, Chief Judge.

Before FLAUM, Chief Judge, and RIPPLE and ROVNER, Circuit Judges.

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge.

Robert Herbert Kramer was found guilty of the willful failure to pay a past due child support obligation in violation of the Child Support Recovery Act ("CSRA"), 18 U.S.C. sec. 228. On appeal, Mr. Kramer claims that he did not receive service of process in the state action seeking the child support order and that his federal conviction based on his noncompliance with that state order is therefore invalid. For the reasons set forth in the following opinion, we reverse Mr. Kramer's conviction and remand to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I BACKGROUND

A.

Mr. Kramer, while a resident of Minnesota, worked as an over-the-road truck driver for Mayflower Van Lines, Inc. ("Mayflower"). In January 1980, when he first started working for Mayflower, he attended three weeks of training sessions in Indianapolis, Indiana. While in Indianapolis, he had a brief sexual relationship with Janice Jacobs, a resident of Indiana. By January 30, at the latest, Mr. Kramer left Indiana to return to Minnesota. On November 25, 1980, Ms. Jacobs gave birth to a son, and she claims that Mr. Kramer is the father. When the child was born, Mr. Kramer received a call from his dispatcher, telling him that he was a father.

In late 1982, Jacobs informed Mr. Kramer that she intended to file a paternity suit against him. She then filed a paternity action in the Marion County Circuit Court of Indiana. Mr. Kramer never appeared at any of the proceedings; Mr. Kramer submits that he never received either formal service of process or informal notification of the paternity proceedings. The state court file does not show that process was served, and neither party asserts that Mr. Kramer received service of process. In December 1982, the Indiana court established Mr. Kramer's paternity by default and directed him to pay $25 per week in child support.

Mr. Kramer insists that he first learned of the Indiana child support order in the fall of 1990. At that time, Mayflower informed him that an Indiana court had ordered it to withhold $50 from each two-week paycheck. This was required, Mayflower told Mr. Kramer, because of an outstanding child support order. Due to the attachment of his wages, Mr. Kramer hired an attorney to contest the default judgment establishing his paternity. Mr. Kramer failed to appear at his hearing dates, and his attorney eventually withdrew from representing him. After his attorney's withdrawal from representation, Mr. Kramer did not pursue this collateral attack on the default judgment. Then, in January 1992, Mr. Kramer stopped working for Mayflower. He left Mayflower because he had failed to renew his trucker's license and because he was suffering from both asthma and self-diagnosed depression. This depression, he claims, was caused in part by his worries over the outstanding child support order.

Starting in June 1993, Mr. Kramer worked for Lenneman Transport. While at Lenneman Transport, none of his wages were attached due to the child support order. However, he injured his back while at work and left Lenneman Transport in February 1994. Since that time, Mr. Kramer has not worked at all because he does not believe that he could pass a physical examination due to his bad back, his asthma, and his depression.

Mr. Kramer moved to the State of Washington in September 1996. Then, in July 1998, he was visited by an FBI agent about the outstanding child support order. Mr. Kramer informed the agent that, although he might be able to return to work, he did not see any reason to do so until the support order was cleared up because he would "just be attacked all the time." Tr.I at 41. A federal grand jury thereafter indicted Mr. Kramer on October 15, 1998, for the willful failure to pay, between October 1993 and December 1995, a past due support obligation with respect to a child residing in Indiana.

B.

The United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana conducted a bench trial on the criminal charge against Mr. Kramer. At the close of the Government's case, Mr. Kramer moved for a judgment of acquittal, asserting that the Government had failed to prove that the underlying child support order was valid. He claimed that the order was invalid because he did not receive service of process and that the state court therefore did not have personal jurisdiction over him. The district court reserved its decision until the completion of the trial.

At the end of the trial, the court found Mr. Kramer guilty of the willful failure to pay a past due support obligation in violation of 18 U.S.C. sec. 228. The court first stated that the Government needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt (1) that Mr. Kramer acted willfully, (2) in failing to pay, (3) a past due support obligation, (4) with respect to a child who resided in another state. The court found that, although "Kramer may not have learned of the lawsuit or the entry of the default judgment in 1982, it is clear that he understood by at least 1990 that such an order had been entered against him." R.20 at 7. Next, the court found that Mr. Kramer had failed to pay the $25 per week mandated by the court order during the period of the indictment. The court also found that, during the time stated in the indictment, the child covered by the support order resided in Indiana and Mr. Kramer resided in Minnesota. "Therefore," the court concluded, "the evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Kramer knew prior to October 1993 that an Indiana state court had ordered him to pay child support for a child that resided in a different state than him and that he failed to do so." Id. at 8.

The court next discussed the element of willfulness and stated: "We harbor no hesitancy in concluding that Kramer acted willfully in not paying the support amount due." Id. The court noted that Mr. Kramer had challenged the support order when it served his interest to do so. But then, when he left Mayflower and was no longer subject to the attachment of his wages, he no longer believed that he owed support. "Indeed," the court stated, "we do not credit Kramer's assertion that he simply forgot that an outstanding support order existed, as other testimony he provided revealed that the outstanding matter caused him such discomfort as to contribute to his ongoing 'depression.'" Id. at 9.

The court also addressed Mr. Kramer's argument that the underlying support order was invalid because the state court lacked personal jurisdiction over him. The court characterized Mr. Kramer's defense as a collateral attack on the state court default judgment. First, the court held that federal courts do not need to question the validity of support orders issued by state courts before entering a judgment of conviction under sec. 228. The court relied upon United States v. Bailey, 115 F.3d 1222, 1232 (5th Cir. 1997), for the proposition that the language of sec. 228 does not require a federal court to look beyond the four corners of the state child support order or permit a collateral attack on the state court order in federal court. Mr. Kramer, the court explained, should have challenged the state court default judgment through state channels, of which he was aware, as evidenced by his attempted collateral attack in 1991. His failure to complete that process, continued the court, does not invalidate the support obligation element of sec. 228.

Next, the court held that Mr. Kramer had been afforded sufficient due process in his federal prosecution. According to the court, Mr. Kramer had argued that, because he did not receive due process in the state default judgment, he was denied due process in the federal conviction because it relied on the state default judgment. According to the court, the Supreme Court in United States v. Mendoza-Lopez, 481 U.S. 828 (1987), required the availability of meaningful review of a decision of an administrative proceeding as a necessary condition before a court imposed criminal sanctions based on that administrative decision. The court stated, however, that Mr. Kramer possessed an opportunity to seek review of the state default judgment before the imposition of his criminal sanction. Moreover, the court explained, "[a]ny putative due process violation occurring in 1982 was cured by the Indiana state court's granting Kramer a hearing to challenge that default judgment in late 1991." R.20 at 12.

For these reasons, the court found Mr. Kramer guilty of the willful failure to pay a past due child support obligation for the period between October 1993 and December 1995. The court sentenced Mr. Kramer to one year of probation, with 60 days community confinement as a condition of his probation, and it ordered him to pay $19,750.00 in restitution.

II DISCUSSION

A.

Mr. Kramer submits that he cannot be found guilty under the CSRA because the Government did not establish that the Indiana court that issued the support order had personal jurisdiction over him. He contends, as he did in the district court, that he was never served process nor notified of the state paternity proceeding which produced the support obligation. Without such notice and opportunity to be heard, he submits, the Indiana court did not have personal jurisdiction over him, see Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank, 339 U.S. 306, 313 (1950), and the default judgment issued by the Indiana state court does not constitute a valid "support obligation" under the CSRA.

The Government has another...