United States v. Joseph King ( 2023 )

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UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 21-4635
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
JOSEPH MICHAEL KING, a/k/a Joey King,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, at
Charleston. Joseph R. Goodwin, District Judge. (2:19-cr-00301-1)
Submitted: May 1, 2023 Decided: August 17, 2023
Before DIAZ, Chief Judge, RUSHING, Circuit Judge, and FLOYD, Senior Circuit Judge.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
ON BRIEF: Wesley P. Page, Federal Public Defender, Jonathan D. Byrne, Appellate
Counsel, Lex A. Coleman, Assistant Federal Public Defender, OFFICE OF THE
FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellant. William S.
Thompson, United States Attorney, Kathleen E. Robeson, Assistant United States
Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charleston, West Virginia,
for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:
Joseph Michael King pled guilty to attempting to entice a minor to engage in sexual
activity, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b). On appeal, King contends that the district
court erred in imposing a $5,000 special assessment under 18 U.S.C. § 3014(a), and in
imposing a discretionary condition of supervised release requiring that he submit to
searches of his person and property based on reasonable suspicion. We affirm.
Beginning with the special assessment, § 3014(a) provides that, “in addition to the
assessment imposed under [18 U.S.C. §] 3013, the [district] court shall assess an amount
of $5,000 on any non-indigent person . . . convicted of an [enumerated] offense,” including,
as here, attempting to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity. The $5,000 assessment
“shall . . . be collected in the manner that fines are collected in criminal cases.” § 3014(f);
see 18 U.S.C. § 3572(d)(1) (“A person sentenced to pay a fine or other monetary penalty
. . . shall make such payment immediately, unless, in the interest of justice, the court
provides for payment on a date certain or in installments.”); 18 U.S.C. § 3613(b) (“The
liability to pay a fine shall terminate the later of 20 years from the entry of judgment or 20
years after the release from imprisonment of the person fined.”).
King argues that the district court improperly determined that he had the burden to
prove his indigence. * As we have explained in the context of a fine, “[t]he defendant bears
*
The parties disagree as to whether King sufficiently preserved for appellate review
his challenge to the burden of proof. Because King’s challenge fails under either plain
error or de novo review, we do not decide which standard applies. See United States v.
Spirito, 36 F.4th 191, 202 n.8 (4th Cir. 2022).
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the burden of demonstrating his present and prospective inability to pay.” United States v.
Aramony, 166 F.3d 655, 665 (4th Cir. 1999). “[B]ecause the § 3014 special assessment is
akin to a fine, a defendant seeking to avoid the special assessment bears the burden of
proving his indigence.” United States v. Meek, 32 F.4th 576, 582 (6th Cir. 2022) (internal
quotation marks omitted)); see United States v. McMiller, 954 F.3d 670, 675 (4th Cir. 2020)
(noting that assessments under § 3014(a) are “to be collected in the same manner as
criminal fines”). Accordingly, the district court did not err in determining that King bore
the burden to prove his indigence under § 3014(a).
Turning to the search condition, we review discretionary conditions of supervised
release for abuse of discretion. United States v. Boyd, 5 F.4th 550, 554 (4th Cir. 2021).
“District courts have broad latitude to impose discretionary conditions of supervised
release.” Id. at 557 (internal quotation marks omitted). A district court may impose any
discretionary condition so long as it “is reasonably related to the statutory sentencing
factors referenced in 18 U.S.C. § 3583(d)(1).” United States v. Douglas, 850 F.3d 660,
663 (4th Cir. 2017) (internal quotation marks omitted). The condition must “involve[] no
greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary” to satisfy these factors,
18 U.S.C. § 3583(d)(2), and must be “consistent with any pertinent policy statements
issued by the Sentencing Commission,” 18 U.S.C. § 3583(d)(3).
A district court must explain why a discretionary condition is warranted under
§ 3583(d). Boyd, 5 F.4th at 557. However, “[t]he degree of explanation required—the
appropriateness of brevity or length, conciseness or detail, when to write, what to say—
varies with the complexity of a given case.” Id. (cleaned up). At bottom, the district court
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must provide “enough of an explanation to satisfy us that it has considered the parties’
arguments and has a reasoned basis for exercising its own legal decision-making
authority.” Id. at 559 (cleaned up). When “a defendant makes nonfrivolous objections” to
a supervised release condition, “the district court must address them head-on.” Id.
King objected to the search condition, arguing that it failed to adequately protect his
constitutional right against unlawful searches and that, if the condition was justified solely
to assist probation in supervising him, then it would be justified in every case. The district
court agreed that the condition should not be imposed in every case but found that it was
appropriate given King’s history and characteristics—namely, his significant history of
drug abuse, including several instances in which he nearly fatally overdosed on illegal
drugs. Thus, the district court based the search condition on permissible statutory
considerations.
Furthermore, although King reasserts on appeal that the search condition may
impermissibly infringe on his constitutional rights, it is well-established “that the
conditional liberty to which those under supervised release are subject entails the surrender
of certain constitutional rights.” United States v. Ward, 770 F.3d 1090, 1099 (4th Cir.
2014). Notably, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that “a condition of release can so
diminish or eliminate a released prisoner’s reasonable expectation of privacy that a
suspicionless search by a law enforcement officer would not offend the Fourth
Amendment.” Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843, 847 (2006). And King fails to
demonstrate that this rule differs when the search is conducted by a probation officer, rather
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than a law enforcement officer. Therefore, the district court did not abuse its discretion in
imposing the search condition.
Accordingly, we affirm the criminal judgment. We dispense with oral argument
because the facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials before this
court and argument would not aid the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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