United States v. Palmer; United States v. Barkau, No. 10-2272 (8th Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CaseDefendants, Debra Palmer and Todd Barkau, operated an illicit bondage domination sadism masochism (BDSM) business and trained Palmer's 12 year old daughter to become a dominatrix. When the child was 14 years old, defendants sold the girl's services to customers on the internet using webcam sessions and in-person sessions. After defendants pled guilty to commercial sex trafficking of a child, the district court ordered them to pay $200,000 in restitution to cover the child's future mental health expenses. Both parties appealed the district court's judgment. The court held that the special conditions on the restitution orders violated the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (MVRA), 18 U.S.C. 3663A-3364, where the conditions lacked the "specified intervals" required by the MVRA. The court also denied the district court's alternative restitution orders as unenforceable attempts to impinge on the government's right to appeal. The court held, however, that the denial of all restitution to the child would be contrary and clearly erroneous and that the evidence in the record sufficiently supported the $200,000 assessment.
Court Description: Criminal case - Criminal case. The district court's special conditions for the defendant's future restitution payments to cover mental health treatment for the victim violated the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act; the payments were tied to a future contingency and were not set at predetermined moments in time and thus lacked the specified intervals required by the Act; district court's alternative restitution orders were unenforceable attempts to impinge on the government's right to appeal, and they are vacated; the evidence before the court was sufficient to allow the court to make a reasonably certain estimate of the victim's future treatment costs, and the award of $200,000 is affirmed.
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