Sentencing — supervised release

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U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit

Criminal

Sentencing — supervised release

Where the defendant’s only sex-related offense occurred 15 years earlier, it was error to impose sex offender treatment as a condition of supervised release.

“After a jury convicted him of distributing three grams of crack cocaine and being a felon in possession of a firearm, Montarico Johnson received a 210-month sentence. He appeals on several grounds. The government had exercised peremptory challenges against two female prospective jurors, but Johnson failed to show a prima facie case of discrimination in jury selection on the basis of gender so the court did not need to evaluate the reasons for the government’s strikes. As for his sentence, which was largely driven by his career offender status, we find that the district court understood Johnson’s request for a below-guidelines sentence but rejected it in light of Johnson’s criminal history, and we affirm his prison term. The special condition of supervised release requiring that Johnson participate in a sex offender treatment program is another story, however. Johnson’s only sex-related offense came fifteen years earlier when he received a misdemeanor conviction and a probation-only sentence because, at the age of seven-teen, he had sex with a girl over thirteen and less than seventeen years old. Guided in part by decisions we made after the sentencing in this case took place, we conclude that the record does not support a connection between mandatory sex-offender treatment and the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors. We therefore vacate this condition of supervised release, as well as other conditions not mentioned in the oral pronouncement of sentence. In all other respects we affirm.”

Affirmed in part, and Vacated in part.

12-3229 U.S. v. Johnson

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, Gilbert, J., Williams, J.