United States v. Benvie, No. 20-2147 (10th Cir. 2021)
Annotate this CaseIn early 2019, a group of individuals called the United Constitutional Patriots (UCP) began camping along a 52-mile stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border along the eastern edge of New Mexico, near El Paso, Texas. Defendant-Appellant James Benvie met this group and subsequently began posting videos on Facebook of the group’s attempts to capture aliens they contended were illegally crossing the border. While filming, Benvie was usually accompanied by members of the UCP who were often dressed in camouflage fatigues and carried firearms. In June 2019, Benvie was indicted based on two encounters with aliens that were captured on video, specifically, impersonating a government employee, for which he was sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment and a year of supervised release. On appeal, Benvie argued the district court erred by: (1) instructing the jury that “U.S. Border Patrol” and “Border Patrol” were synonymous; (2) imposing five special conditions of supervised release without adequate explanation; and (3) imposing a mandatory condition of supervised release (drug testing) in the judgment and commitment order. The Tenth Circuit affirmed the conviction but remanded for reconsideration of the conditions of supervised release and removal of the mandatory condition of drug testing.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.