United States v. Lyte

• Decision Date: 11 March 2021
• Docket Number: No. CR-20-01859-TUC-JGZ (JR),CR-20-01859-TUC-JGZ (JR)
• Parties: United States of America, Plaintiff, v. Shawn Christopher Lyte, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Arizona

United States of America, Plaintiff, v. Shawn Christopher Lyte, Defendant.

No. CR-20-01859-TUC-JGZ (JR)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA

March 11, 2021

ORDER

Pending before the Court is Magistrate Judge Jaqueline Rateau's Report recommending that the Court deny Defendant Shawn Lyte's Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Probable Cause. (Doc. 41.) Defendant filed an Objection to the Report (Doc. 42), and the Government filed a Response to the Objection. (Doc. 46.). After de novo of the parties' filings, the Court will adopt the Report and deny the Motion to Dismiss.

On October 7, 2020, Defendant was charged by indictment with failure to register as a sex offender in violation of Title 18, United States Code, section 2250(a). The Indictment alleges that beginning on or about May 26, 2020 until on or about June 8, 2020, in the District of Arizona, Defendant, a person required to register under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), knowingly failed to register and update a registration as required by SORNA, after relocating and traveling in interstate commerce from Michigan to Arizona. (Doc. 18.)

Under Title 18, United States Code, Section 2250(a), it is a crime for a sex offender who is required to register under SORNA to knowingly fail to do so. SORNA requires a sex offender, to "register, and keep the registration current, in each jurisdiction where the offender resides, where the offender is an employee, and where the offender is a student." 34 U.S.C. § 20913(a). A sex offender must update his registration by registering in the relevant jurisdiction "not later than 3 business days after each change of name, residence, employment, or student status." 34 U.S.C. § 20913(c).

Defendant concedes that he is a sex offender who is required to register under SORNA. (Doc. 42, p 3.)¹ Defendant asserts, however, that he could not have violated SORNA because he was in compliance with the state sex offender registration laws of Michigan (his state of permanent residence) and/ or Arizona (the state where he was working and residing temporarily). (Doc. 25, pp. 3-5; Doc. 42, pp. 2-5.) Defendant suggests that, because SORNA relies on State sex offender registries, the federal government can only prosecute a sex offender for violating SORNA when the offender is in violation of state sex offender registration requirements. (Doc. 30, pp. 1-2.) Defendant also argues that he was prevented from registering in Arizona by circumstances beyond his control, which is an affirmative defense under Arizona law. Defendant requests that the Court review the record and transcripts of the evidentiary hearing before the Magistrate Judge and sustain his objection. (Doc. 42, p. 7.)

Although an evidentiary hearing was held on the pending motion, evidence produced at the hearing is not necessary to resolve Defendant's legal challenge to the sufficiency of the indictment. To the extent Defendant seeks review of the sufficiency of the Government's evidence to prove a violation of SORNA, the motion is improper and the evidence cannot be reviewed. See United States v. Nukida, 8 F.3d 665, 669-70 (9th Cir. 1993) ("Inasmuch as Nukida's arguments before the district court challenged thegovernment's ability to prove that her actions affected commerce, her motion to dismiss amounted to a premature challenge to the sufficiency of the government's evidence tending to prove a material element of the offense"); United States v. Sharma, No. 17-CR-00055-TLN, 2019 WL 2285393, at *4 (E.D. Cal. May 29, 2019) (whether the government could provide sufficient evidence to meet its burden of proving the required element that defendant attempted to induce a person under eighteen years of age cannot be resolved pretrial on a motion to dismiss indictment).²

The Court concludes that the Indictment is sufficient on its face and sets forth a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a), failure to register as a sex offender. An indictment is generally sufficient when it sets forth the offense in the words of the statute itself, as long as those words set forth all the elements necessary to constitute the offense intended to be punished. Hamling v. United States, 418 U.S. 87, 117 (1974); see United States v. Mancuso, 718 F.3d 780, 790 (9th Cir. 2013) (an indictment is sufficient on its face when it recites the language of the statute, even if it fails to allege how the violation was committed); United States v. Lazarenko, 564 F.3d 1026, 1033 (9th Cir. 2009) (an indictment is sufficient if it contains the elements of the charged offense, fairly informs a defendant of the charge, and enables him to plead an acquittal or conviction in bar of future prosecutions for the same offense). In United States v. Marrowbone, 102 F.Supp.3d 1101, 1104 (D.S.D. 2015), the court found that the indictment was facially valid in a prosecution for failing to register as sex offender, in violation of SORNA, where the wording of indictment tracked the three elements of offense by alleging that the defendant was required to register under SORNA, the defendant was a sex offender by reason of conviction underfederal law, and the defendant knowingly failed to register and update his registration, and also included a narrow timeframe in which the defendant allegedly failed to register. Applying the same standards as the district court in Marrowbone, the Indictment in the present case is sufficient.

Defendant offers little support for his argument that a conviction under section 2250(a) requires the government to prove that a defendant has also violated a state sex-offender-registration law. Defendant does not identify any federal statute that imposes such a requirement, and section 2250(a) does not include any language which would suggest that violation of state law is an element of the offense. Defendant cites a sentence from United States v. Kebodeaux, 570 U.S. 387, 398 (2013), in which the Supreme Court stated: "And as far as we can tell, while SORNA punishes violations of its requirements (instead of violations of state law), the Federal Government has prosecuted a sex offender for violating SORNA only when that offender also violated state-registration requirements." This sentence discredits Defendant's argument. The Kebodeaux Court expressly acknowledges that SORNA punishes violations of federal law, not state law. In addition, in noting that to date the federal government has only prosecuted federal sex offender registration charges where there also existed a violation of state-registration law, the Kebodeaux Court recognized that the federal government could bring federal failure-to-register charges even in the absence of a state law violation.

Several courts have rejected arguments similar to Defendant's. See United States v. Paul, 718 F. App'x 360, 364 (6th Cir. 2017) ("if Congress meant for sex offenders' SORNA requirements to depend on state registration requirements, the Act would specifically say so."); United States v. Thompson, 811 F.3d 717, 722 (5th Cir. 2016) ("SORNA's registration provision, 42 U.S.C. § 16913, requires a convicted sex offender to register and keep the registration current, in each jurisdiction where the offender resides, where the offender is an employee, and where the offender is a student . . . , [by] not later than 3 business days, after each change of name, residence, employment, or student status, appearing in person . . . and inform[ing] that jurisdiction of all changes in the informationrequired for that offender in the sex offender registry.") (internal quotation marks and...