United States v. William Poff ( 2019 )

FILED
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
JUL 12 2019
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 16-30141
Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No.
2:09-cr-00160-JLR-3
v.
WILLIAM S. POFF, MEMORANDUM*
Defendant-Appellant.
On Remand from the United States Supreme Court
Before: GOULD, PAEZ, and CHRISTEN, Circuit Judges.
William S. Poff appeals from an order directing the Bureau of Prisons to
turn over the funds in his inmate trust account to the Clerk of the United States
District Court for the Western District of Washington for payment of his court-
ordered restitution. On March 7, 2018, we issued a memorandum disposition
affirming the district court’s order. United States v. Poff, 727 F. App’x 249 (9th
Cir. 2018). In January 2019, the Supreme Court vacated the judgment and
remanded the case “for further consideration in light of” its recent decision in
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
Lagos v. United States, 584 U.S. ____, 138 S. Ct. 1684 (2018). See Poff v. United
States, 139 S. Ct. 790 (mem.) (2019).
We have considered the Supreme Court’s decision in Lagos and are
unpersuaded that it changes the analysis in the present case. Lagos considered and
interpreted the statutory language in 18 U.S.C. § 3663A(b)(4) of the Mandatory
Victims Restitution Act (MVRA), a different provision than the one at issue here.
138 S. Ct. at 1687. Section 3663A(b)(4) considers the type of losses a crime
victim may recover through restitution. Id. at 1688 (holding that “expenses
incurred during participation in the investigation or prosecution of the offense or
attendance at proceedings related to the offense” is limited to government
investigations and criminal proceedings (emphasis omitted) (quoting
§ 3663A(b)(4))). Here, by contrast, we consider the sources from which a crime
victim may recover court-ordered restitution. Lagos also declined to adopt a broad
reading of § 3663A(b)(4) based, in part, on the administrative burdens inherent in
inviting courts to determine which of a victim’s expenses were necessarily incurred
or which proceedings were sufficiently “related to the offense” to be eligible for
restitution. Id. at 1689. None of those concerns are present here.
Lagos reiterated the MVRA’s “broad purpose . . . ‘to ensure that victims of a
crime receive full restitution,’” 138 S. Ct. at 1689 (quoting Dolan v. United States,
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560 U.S. 605, 612 (2010)), merely adding the admonition that “a broad general
purpose of this kind does not always require us to interpret a restitution statute in a
way that favors an award,” id. (emphasis added). Poff does not challenge the
restitution award; he argues that he cannot be compelled to turn over his disability-
benefits payments to satisfy that award.
Section 3664(n) of the MVRA requires a person who “receives substantial
resources from any source, including inheritance, settlement, or other judgment,
during a period of incarceration . . . to apply the value of such resources to any
restitution or fine still owed.” 18 U.S.C. § 3664(n) (emphasis added). Poff
contends that the district court erred by allowing the government to seize funds
from his inmate trust account because his veterans disability payments were not
within the scope of § 3664(n).
We are persuaded by the Fifth Circuit’s analysis in United States v. Hughes
that § 3664(n) “refers to windfalls or sudden financial injections . . . that become
‘suddenly available’” to the defendant. 914 F.3d 947, 951 (5th Cir. 2019) (citation
omitted). As the Fifth Circuit noted, the examples in § 3664(n)—“inheritance,
settlement, or other judgment”—share a similar quality. Id. Applying the noscitur
a sociis canon, these words should be given the “meaning that makes them
3
similar.”1 Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of
Legal Texts 195 (2012). The three statutory examples share the relevant
characteristic of a one-time, lump-sum payment—a category that would not
include, for example, periodically paid prison wages. Hughes, 914 F.3d at 951.
Read in conjunction with the surplusage canon, which cautions against “an
interpretation that renders [a provision] pointless,” Scalia & Garner, at 176, we are
satisfied that Congress would not have included those three examples if it intended
§ 3664(n) to apply more broadly.
The district court granted the government’s turnover motion for the full
amount in Poff’s inmate trust account: $2,663.05. But the record is unclear about
the source of the funds seized from Poff’s inmate trust account. It is unclear
whether all of the funds were service-related disability payments from the
Department of Veterans Affairs, and some of the funds may have been Poff’s
prison wages.
1
Poff urges the application of ejusdem generis. We decline to apply that
canon. “In all contexts other than the pattern of specific-to-general, the proper rule
is to invoke the broad associated-words canon, not the narrow ejusdem generis
canon.” Scalia & Garner, at 205. Here, the language we interpret proceeds from
the general to the specific: “resources from any source, including inheritance,
settlement, or other judgment.” 18 U.S.C. § 3664(n).
4
To the extent any of Poff’s $2,663.05 account balance is comprised of
accumulated prison wages, we agree with the Fifth Circuit that those funds do not
qualify under § 3664(n). See Hughes, 914 F.3d at 951.2 To the extent the account
balance is comprised of disability benefits payments, those payments were not
disclosed to the district court when Poff’s payment schedule was established,
despite several requests to Poff for information about his ability to pay restitution.
We leave it to the district court on remand to determine the exact
composition of the account balance and to determine if the government’s turnover
motion is properly considered pursuant to § 3664(n) or if the disability benefits
payments constitute a “material change in the defendant’s economic
circumstances,” better addressed pursuant to § 3664(k), which provides a
mechanism for the court to “adjust the [restitution] payment schedule, or require
immediate payment in full, as the interests of justice require.” 18 U.S.C.
§ 3664(k); see also United States v. Holden, 908 F.3d 395, 405 (9th Cir. 2018).3
2
Notably, in Hughes, unlike here, the district court ordered immediate
turnover of all funds “with a $200 carve out for Hughes’s telephone and
commissary needs.” 914 F.3d at 949. By contrast, the district court in this case
ordered immediate turnover of the full balance in Poff’s account, leaving him with
a $0.00 balance.
3
We do not read Holden to have decided that § 3664(n) applies only to
“unexpected windfalls,” but merely to note, in dicta, that the language from the
provision allows for recovery of windfalls that a defendant may receive.
5
VACATED AND REMANDED.
6