United States v. Ray, No. 14-3799 (7th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseWhen he was 29, Ray started to chat over the Internet with a 14-year-old girl. At their first in-person meeting Ray plied Alexia with marijuana and cognac. At their second he took her to a motel (crossing from Indiana into Illinois), where marijuana and alcohol were followed by sexual intercourse. The Seventh Circuit affirmed Ray’s conviction under 18 U.S.C. 2423(a), for knowingly transporting a minor across state lines to engage in criminal sexual activity, but vacated his sentence of 320 months in prison plus 15 years of supervised release and remanded. The court upheld the jury instructions, noting the potential for confusion inherent in the nature of the offense, which “piggybacks” on a finding of violation of another law, The jury was entitled to find that Ray knew Alexia to be 14 (so that she could not legally consent to sex) and that Ray used drugs and force to overcome her resistance (so that she did not consent). The jury was entitled to infer that Ray knew when he drove into Illinois what he wanted and planned to do. The court noted that several conditions of supervised release were either unwarranted or poorly worded.
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