United States v. Ellis

112 F.4th 240

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Robert Dale ELLIS, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 21-4093

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit

Argued: May 8, 2024

Decided: August 14, 2024

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, at Asheville. Martin K. Reidinger, Chief District Judge. (1:15-cr-00016-MR-WCM-1)

ARGUED: Melissa Susanne Baldwin, FEDERAL DEFENDERS OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA, INC., Asheville, North Carolina, for Appellant. Anthony Joseph Enright, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Anthony Martinez, Federal Public Defender, FEDERAL DEFENDERS OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA, INC., Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellant. William T. Stetzer, Acting United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellee.

Before GREGORY and QUATTLEBAUM, Circuit Judges, and FLOYD, Senior Circuit Judge.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Quattlebaum wrote the opinion in which Judge Floyd joined. Judge Gregory wrote a dissenting opinion.

QUATTLEBAUM, Circuit Judge:

Following state law convictions involving child pornography, Robert Dale Ellis failed to register as a sex offender. That failure led to a subsequent federal conviction, which in turn led to a term of imprisonment and a term of supervised release. Almost immediately after completing his prison sentence, Ellis began violating his conditions of supervised release. As a result, the district court revoked his supervised release and imposed another prison term along with new supervised release conditions. And that sequence of events has repeated itself over and over—four times to be precise.

On appeal, Ellis challenges two special conditions imposed during the latest iteration. First, he contends that a condition requiring a probation officer's approval before using internet-capable devices for non-employment purposes improperly delegates judicial power, inappropriately represents a complete ban on the internet and, even if not a complete ban, is overbroad. Second, he argues that a condition requiring six months of location monitoring is not reasonably related to his sentencing factors and involves a greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary.

We disagree. Permitting the probation office to approve internet-accessible devices for non-employment purposes, like other special conditions subject to a probation officer's approval, does not delegate a core judicial function. And the device-approval condition by its express terms is not a complete internet ban. Finally, Ellis' overbreadth challenges to that condition and the location-monitoring condition fail because the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that they are reasonably related to his sentencing factors and do not involve a greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary. So we affirm the district court's judgment.

I.

In 2005 and 2006, Ellis was convicted of possession of child pornography and its duplication or distribution under North Carolina law. These convictions required Ellis to register as a sex offender under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). But Ellis failed to register. As a result, a federal grand jury empaneled in the Middle District of North Carolina charged him in 2013 with violating SORNA. After Ellis pled guilty, the district court sentenced him to fifteen months' imprisonment and a five-year term of supervised release with conditions. Following imprisonment, Ellis began his original term of supervised release in June 2014, and jurisdiction over Ellis' supervised release was transferred to the Western District of North Carolina in January 2015. "Before long," he "began to run into difficulties complying with the conditions of his release." United States v. Ellis, 984 F.3d 1092, 1095 (4th Cir. 2021).

In February 2015, Ellis was pulled over by a highway patrolman as he was driving to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This episode led to two violations of his supervised release conditions: one that prevented him from leaving the judicial district without receiving permission from the court or his probation officer and another that required he report any contact with law enforcement.

As a result of these violations, the district court, at probation's request but with Ellis' consent, modified his release conditions by adding two months of home detention with location monitoring technology. But "before that term could be completed, the probation officer petitioned to terminate home detention because Mr. Ellis had become homeless." Id. The court then granted Ellis "permission to live with a friend for several months" in the Middle District of North Carolina. Id. at 1095-96.

Later, in July 2015, Ellis asked the district court to modify his conditions so he could return to the Western District in order to participate in a program that provided housing and employment opportunities to individuals returning to their communities after prison. The court granted that request but added a condition that he cooperatively participate in that reentry program until discharged. The next month, Ellis began residing at the reentry center. But the program soon discharged Ellis because he refused to comply with its rules and directives. With no place to live, Ellis moved from hotel to hotel using so-called "second chance funds" meant for emergency housing. Id. at 1096.

Ellis' violations did not stop there. For nearly a month in October 2015, the probation office lost contact with Ellis. He failed to contact his probation officer within the first five days of October as required by his supervised release conditions. And, despite the probation officer's outreach efforts, Ellis was not seen or heard from again until early November.

Then, just after that unexplained absence, on November 10, 2015, Ellis once again left the judicial district without permission of the court or his probation officer. Probation discovered this violation when police in Greensboro, North Carolina, stopped Ellis for soliciting money.

Later that month, the district court again modified Ellis' conditions, with his consent, to allow him another chance at participating in a local reentry program. But after beginning to participate in outpatient and mental health treatment, Ellis "called a crisis hotline and stated that he was thinking of harming himself." Id. This incident resulted in his discharge from the reentry program, as the director found that the program "was inadequate to meet [his] mental health needs." Id. He was then admitted to an in-patient facility for observation.

In January 2016, because Ellis was a registered sex offender who lacked a stable address, the probation office requested that he be placed on GPS location monitoring to ensure his whereabouts were known to his probation officer. With Ellis' consent, the court modified his conditions to include a location-monitoring condition for six months. In addition, Ellis disregarded the condition that he follow mental health and sex offender treatment requirements by repeatedly failing to show up to mental health and sex offender treatment appointments.

Because of these admitted violations, in August 2016, the probation office petitioned the district court to revoke Ellis' supervised release. At the hearing that followed, Ellis requested a short, five-month prison sentence, arguing that he needed treatment that was unavailable in prison. The government resisted such a short sentence, countering that the district court had modified the release conditions, at Ellis' request, to facilitate mental health and sex offender treatment. The government added that, twice already, Ellis had been kicked out of treatment programs for failing to abide by their rules. The district court granted the petition and ordered Ellis to be imprisoned for ten months, followed by a supervised release term of five years. Included as part of Ellis' supervised release was a device-approval condition, stating that he "shall not use, purchase, possess, procure, or otherwise obtain any computer or electronic device that can be linked to any computer network, bulletin board, Internet Service Provider, or exchange format involving computers unless approved by the United States probation officer." J.A. 65. Ellis did not object to these conditions.

Once released from this prison term, the pattern continued. In February 2018, the probation office petitioned the district court for a second time to revoke Ellis' supervised release. This time, Ellis admitted violating a condition that required him to comply with sex offender risk assessment and testing and a condition that prevented him from using internet-accessible devices unless approved by probation. At the revocation hearing, Ellis admitted that he had lied about viewing pornography during a polygraph test. After learning that he failed the test, he admitted to "daily pornography use" on unapproved internet-accessible devices. Ellis, 984 F.3d at 1096 n.2. Despite these admissions, Ellis once more sought a low sentence. He claimed that he had made progress since his first revocation hearing by not missing treatment appointments as he had before. He also pointed out his mental health challenges based on childhood trauma and gender identity issues. And while admitting that he used an unapproved device to view pornography daily, he pointed out the government offered no proof of him viewing child pornography. For these reasons, Ellis requested a seven-month prison term.

The government sought a longer term. It argued that the prior term did not dissuade Ellis from continuing to violate his conditions. And it countered that because Ellis used an unauthorized device, exactly what he had been viewing could not be known. The government also emphasized Ellis' lying about those devices and viewing pornography on them. On top of seeking a longer...