United States v. Skaggs

78 F.4th 990

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Charles SKAGGS, Jr., Defendant-Appellant.

No. 22-2424

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit

Submitted August 16, 2023^*

Decided August 23, 2023

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division. No. 1:17-cr-00168-SEB-MJD—Sarah Evans Barker, Judge.

MaryAnn Totino Mindrum, Kelly Ann Rota, Bob Wood, Attorneys, Office of the United States Attorney, Indianapolis, IN, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Charles Skaggs, Jr., United States Penitentiary, Tucson, AZ, for Defendant-Appellant.

Before Wood, Brennan, and Lee, Circuit Judges.

Per Curiam.

Charles Skaggs was convicted in 2020 of producing and possessing child pornography. As part of his sentence, the district court included a broadly worded forfeiture order in the final judgment. Two and a half years later, well outside the 14-day period imposed by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 35(a) for correcting a sentence, the government filed a motion asking the court to enter a "preliminary" order of forfeiture itemizing the specific property involved. The court acceded to the government's request and entered a preliminary forfeiture order. But any forfeiture ordered at sentencing is part of the final judgment, and the district court lacked the authority to amend that judgment years after its entry. We vacate the preliminary order of forfeiture, thereby leaving the original judgment in force.

I

Skaggs made surreptitious recordings of his then-teenage daughter showering. He stored these videos and other child pornography on several pieces of computer hardware. The government charged him in 2017 in a multicount indictment for sexually exploiting a child (here, producing child pornography), see 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a), (e), possessing child pornography, see id. §§ 2252(a)(4)(B), 2252A(a)(5)(B), and concealing evidence, see id. § 1519. The indictment included notice that the government intended to seek forfeiture of Skaggs's property that law enforcement had seized during the investigation. Skaggs proceeded pro se with the assistance of standby counsel. The district court held a bench trial in 2019 and found him guilty on all counts.

In the five months between the verdict and the sentencing hearing in January 2020, the matter of forfeiture was at best an afterthought. During this time, the government did not move for, nor did the court enter, a preliminary order of forfeiture. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 32.2(b). At the hearing, forfeiture did not take up even a full page of the transcript: Skaggs broached the subject and objected to forfeiture on the ground that some of the property sought by the government did not relate to his crimes. The court replied that, after sentencing, it would ask the government to itemize the property and then give Skaggs a chance to object. The court proceeded to enter judgment, sentencing Skaggs to life imprisonment. The judgment included a forfeiture provision that merely duplicated language from the notice in the indictment: "The defendant shall forfeit all images of child pornography . . . and all property seized during the searches of the defendant[ ], his residence, and [his] laundry room."

Skaggs appealed, and we affirmed his conviction and sentence. See United States v. Skaggs, 25 F.4th 494 (7th Cir. 2022), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 143 S. Ct. 604, 214 L.Ed.2d 356 (2023). Skaggs's appellate counsel did not raise any forfeiture arguments. Skaggs himself filed a pro se brief advancing several arguments (including challenges to the forfeiture), but we declined to address his points because he was represented by counsel. See id. at 498 n.1.

In July 2022, nearly 2.5 years after judgment, the government moved in the district court for a "preliminary" order of forfeiture. Four days later, the court entered the requested order, without giving Skaggs the promised chance to object. (Skaggs had tried to object, but the court did not receive the filing until after it had ruled.) Unlike the judgment, which described the forfeited property only in broad terms, the forfeiture order itemized each piece of property that Skaggs had forfeited. Skaggs filed a notice of appeal shortly after the court entered the order.

While Skaggs's appeal was pending, the government filed a notice in the district court stating that it had returned some of the seized property to Skaggs's son. The government says that it still retains (1) the computer hardware that contained child pornography, (2) the daughter's social security card, and (3) some children's clothing. Skaggs insists that the government retains property beyond the items on this list. The parties agree, however, that whatever property the government has, it was all seized from Skaggs's person or residence.

II

On appeal, Skaggs argues that the district court failed to follow Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.2. Under that rule, a district court normally must determine what is forfeitable and enter the preliminary order before sentencing; then at sentencing, the court must include what property is forfeited in its oral pronouncement of the sentence. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 32.2(b)(2)(B), (4)(B). Skaggs argues that the district court's deviation from this sequence means the court had no authority to order forfeiture against him.

The government concedes that the district court neither entered a timely preliminary order nor announced at sentencing what property Skaggs would forfeit. It insists, however, that those deadlines are "time-related directives" and thus harmless-error review applies. (A time-related directive is a deadline that is legally enforceable but does not deprive the judge of "the power to take action to which the deadline applies if the deadline is missed." United States v. Lee, No. 22-1293, 77 F.4th 565, 582 (7th Cir. Aug. 9, 2023) (quoting Dolan v. United States, 560 U.S. 605, 611, 130 S.Ct. 2533, 177 L.Ed.2d 108 (2010)).)

Our recent decision in United States v. Lee, 77 F.4th 565, confirms that—if this were a direct appeal—some of the district court's errors would be reversible. We held that the timing of the preliminary order of forfeiture is a time-related directive but that the timing of the oral pronouncement of the final order of forfeiture is a mandatory-claims processing rule. See id. at 581-83. In other words, the lack of a preliminary order did not deprive the court of the power to enter forfeiture against Skaggs, but, because Skaggs objected, the lack of an oral pronouncement at sentencing did.

But we are not reviewing this case on direct appeal. Had Skaggs raised this challenge on direct appeal, we would consider whether the district court violated a time-related directive or a mandatory-claims processing rule and thus whether the forfeiture provision of the judgment was lawful. But we have already affirmed the judgment on direct appeal, see Skaggs, 25 F.4th 494, and here we are reviewing only the "preliminary" order of forfeiture.

We conclude that the district court did not have the authority to enter that order. District courts generally lack the authority to alter a final criminal judgment after sentencing, outside the narrow circumstances and 14-day time limit provided by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 35(a). See Dillon v. United States, 560 U.S. 817, 824, 130 S.Ct. 2683, 177 L.Ed.2d 271 (2010) (citing 18 U.S.C. § 3582(b)). This limit applies to the entire judgment, including any forfeiture provision. As we explained in Lee, when a court announces forfeiture at sentencing, that pronouncement is part of the final judgment. 77 F.4th at 583-84; see also Fed. R. Crim. P. 32.2(e)(1) (allowing amendment of forfeiture order for circumstances not applicable here).

In Skaggs's case, the district court attempted to amend its final judgment years after entry: It included a broad forfeiture provision in the final judgment, and more than two years later it entered a "preliminary" order of forfeiture that itemized the property forfeited. In essence, the postjudgment order amended the judgment by imposing different criminal sanctions on Skaggs. As our sister circuits have recognized, a court may not order additional property forfeited after the judgment is final. See, e.g., United States v. Maddux, 37 F.4th 1170, 1173-74, 1182 (6th Cir. 2022) (ordering forfeiture of millions of dollars after entering judgment); United States v. Shakur, 691 F.3d 979, 986-87, 989 (8th Cir. 2012) (court did not specify in judgment what property was forfeited and only later listed specific property); United States v. Petrie, 302 F.3d 1280, 1283-85 (11th Cir. 2002).

The government points us to several cases in which an appellate court concluded that a district court's failure to conform to Rule 32.2 was not a reversible error. See, e.g., United States v. Guzman-Cordoba, 988 F.3d 391, 402-03 (7th Cir. 2021) (on plain-error review, failure to enter preliminary order did not affect substantial rights); United States v. Dahda, 852 F.3d 1282, 1296-98 (10th Cir. 2017) (same), aff'd on other grounds, — U.S. —, 138 S. Ct. 1491, 200 L.Ed.2d 842 (2018); United States v. Farias, 836 F.3d 1315, 1329 (11th Cir. 2016) (harmless error); United States v. McIntosh, 58 F.4th 606, 609 (2d Cir.) (concluding Rule 32.2's deadlines are time-related directives), cert. docketed, No. 22-7386 (U.S. Apr. 24, 2023).

But we read these cases differently. First, "[t]here is a world of difference between the procedural flaws" in Skaggs's prosecution and those in the government's cited cases. Lee, 77 F.4th at 581-83. A key inquiry when evaluating a Rule 32.2 violation is whether the proceedings were marred by minor hiccups or a wholesale disregard of the Rule. See id. For example, in McIntosh, cited by the government, the district court's failure to enter a preliminary order was only a small deviation because the court otherwise "gave the defendant an opportunity to contest...