United States v. LeCompte
| Decision Date | 01 September 2015 |
| Docket Number | No. 14–2200.,14–2200. |
| Citation | 800 F.3d 1209 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Paul LeCOMPTE, Defendant–Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit |
Caleb Kruckenberg, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Office of the Federal Public Defender for the District of New Mexico, Las Cruces, NM, appearing for Appellant.
David N. Williams, Assistant United States Attorney (Damon P. Martinez, United States Attorney, with him on the brief), Office of the United States Attorney for the District of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, appearing for Appellee.
Before LUCERO, TYMKOVICH, and MATHESON, Circuit Judges.
In 2003, Paul LeCompte pled guilty in state court to a sex offense involving a minor female and was required to register as a sex offender. In 2010, after having traveled in interstate commerce, Mr. LeCompte failed to register. In 2011, he pled guilty in federal court to failing to register under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (“SORNA”). As part of the sentence on this conviction, the district court imposed several conditions, including one prohibiting any association with minors except in the presence of an adult approved by the U.S. Probation Office (“Probation”).
In 2014, a probation officer visited Mr. LeCompte's home and found him sitting outside with several adults (none of them approved by Probation) and his then-girlfriend's1 three-year-old granddaughter. Because Mr. LeCompte had associated with a minor—the granddaughter—in the absence of an approved adult, Probation filed a petition to revoke Mr. LeCompte's supervised release. Mr. LeCompte moved to dismiss, challenging the supervised release condition as applied. The district court denied his motion, revoked his supervised release, and sentenced Mr. LeCompte to a prison term. It also imposed six standard sex offender conditions.
Mr. LeCompte appeals the district court's denial of his motion to dismiss. He also challenges the procedural and substantive reasonableness of the six sex offender conditions imposed. Exercising jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3742(a), we reverse the denial of the motion to dismiss and remand for further proceedings. We do not reach his challenges to the six conditions.
A. Factual and Procedural History
On July 21, 2003, Mr. LeCompte pled guilty to five counts of criminal sexual penetration in the fourth degree in violation of New Mexico law. He was 29 years old. The offense arose from Mr. LeCompte's engaging in sexual encounters with a minor female approximately 15 times, aware she was 14 years old. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison and was required to register as a sex offender.
After traveling from New Mexico to Nevada in 2010, Mr. LeCompte failed to register. On May 26, 2011, Mr. LeCompte pled guilty to failing to register as a sex offender after having traveled in interstate commerce, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a), a SORNA provision. Before sentencing, Probation prepared a presentence report (“PSR”). The PSR recommended the imposition of several special conditions, including one titled “Minor Prohibition”: “You shall not associate with persons under the age of eighteen (18), except in the presence of a responsible adult who is aware of the nature of your background and current offense, and who has been approved by the probation officer.” ROA, Vol. 2 at 42.
On September 12, 2011, the district court sentenced Mr. LeCompte to 21 months in prison and five years of supervised release. The court also imposed 22 conditions of supervised release, including the minor prohibition condition recommended by Probation. Mr. LeCompte did not appeal the minor prohibition condition.
On August 28, 2014, Probation Officer Chris Pena visited Mr. LeCompte at his residence. Upon arrival, he saw Mr. LeCompte sitting outside with his grandparents, his then-girlfriend, her adult daughter, and her three-year-old granddaughter. There was no approved adult on the premises. The incident presented a technical violation of the minor prohibition condition.
In response to this incident, Officer Pena administered a polygraph examination to Mr. LeCompte. Officer Pena determined he would not petition for a violation of supervised release if the polygraph test indicated this incident had been Mr. LeCompte's only contact with a child. During the polygraph examination, Officer Pena asked Mr. LeCompte about any other contact with children. He denied having any such contact. But when the polygraph examination indicated that Mr. LeCompte's response was deceptive, he revealed having had two other interactions with minor children. He explained that earlier in August 2014, he had met his girlfriend at her house and her minor granddaughter had been present, but he and his girlfriend promptly left the house. Mr. LeCompte also reported that he was at church when his “step-brother ['s] kids [came] up to [him] and [gave him] a hug before church started.” Id. at 148.2
On September 18, 2014, Officer Pena filed a “Petition for Revocation of Supervised Release,” which alleged that Mr. LeCompte had violated the minor prohibition condition based on all three incidents. On October 9, 2014, Mr. LeCompte moved to dismiss the petition, challenging the minor prohibition condition as applied to the conduct underlying the alleged violation of supervised release. The Government filed a response in opposition.
On November 3, 2014, the district court held a hearing on the motion. Mr. LeCompte's counsel first argued the court was ROA, Vol. 5 at 4. The Government contended the court could not hear the motion. The district court concluded Mr. LeCompte could raise an as-applied challenge to the condition's validity during the revocation proceedings.
The court then heard testimony from Officer Pena. He testified, in part, that “any contact,” even a “chance encounter,” with a child could “potentially” be a violation of the minor prohibition condition. Id. at 19, 25. He described the approval process for a “responsible adult” as potentially “lengthy,” id. at 28, involving the adult in individual sessions with Mr. LeCompte in sex-offender treatment and then determining “as time goes on” whether to approve the person “based on [his or her] willingness to participate [and] based on the defendant's progress in treatment and assessments,” id. at 29–30.
After hearing this testimony and the parties' arguments on the merits of the as-applied challenge, the district court orally denied Mr. LeCompte's motion to dismiss and revoked his supervised release. The court chose to address Mr. LeCompte's as-applied challenge to the minor prohibition condition on the merits, and concluded the condition was “reasonably related to the circumstances that gave rise to the offense of conviction and to the history and characteristics of the defendant.” Id. at 39–40. The court also said the motion to dismiss could be denied under a heightened scrutiny standard, id. at 40, presumably because it believed the minor prohibition condition implicated Mr. LeCompte's fundamental right to familial association, as Mr. LeCompte had argued.
The district court rejected Mr. LeCompte's as-applied challenge to the minor prohibition condition, considering only the August 28 incident when he was found outside his home with his girlfriend's granddaughter. The court enumerated three similarities between the violation and Mr. LeCompte's 2003 offense. First, the alleged supervised release violation and his prior offense involved females. Second, the alleged violation and the prior offense involved minors. Third, the prior offense involved “the potential to exploit an adult relationship in order to have access to the minor female child,” and the condition was intended to prevent that type of behavior. Id.3
For Mr. LeCompte's violation of his supervised release condition, the district court calculated a Guidelines range of 6 to 12 months. The court sentenced Mr. LeCompte to six months in prison and five years of supervised release. It imposed six sex offender conditions. Mr. LeCompte objected generally to the imposition of sex offender conditions and to several of the conditions in particular. The court overruled the objections.
Mr. LeCompte now appeals the denial of his motion to dismiss. He also challenges the procedural and substantive reasonableness of the six sex offender conditions imposed.
Because we reverse and remand for further consideration on the motion to dismiss, we need not reach Mr. LeCompte's remaining challenges to the conditions imposed after his supervised release was revoked.
A. Motion to Dismiss
The parties agree that the incident at Mr. LeCompte's residence was a violation of the minor prohibition condition. But Mr. LeCompte moved to dismiss the revocation petition based on an as-applied challenge to the condition itself. We consider (1) whether the district court properly considered Mr. LeCompte's motion to dismiss and, if so, (2) whether the district court properly analyzed the as-applied challenge.
At the revocation hearing, the district court first determined that it had authority to rule on Mr. LeCompte's motion to dismiss, which challenged the supervised release condition as applied:
On that issue, really, the jurisdictional question, I'm going to, in effect, grant the motion ... for the narrow holding or at least narrow authority to raise this issue at the district court level, that the argument is that the condition is unconstitutional as applied.... It's a narrow enough issue relating to the...
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