United States v. Hobbs, No. 16-1956 (8th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseIn 2009, Hobbs and her husband pled guilty to aggravated identity theft and conspiring to commit bank fraud. Hobbs was sentenced to 56 months’ imprisonment and five years’ supervised release. Her husband was sentenced to 80 months’ imprisonment and five years’ supervised release. They were ordered jointly to pay approximately $18,000 in restitution. In 2016, probation moved to revoke her supervised release, alleging four violations of her release conditions: Hobbs moved from her registered address without telling her probation officer; she failed to submit to a required urinalysis; she left her job without telling her probation officer; she stopped making restitution payments the month her husband was released. Hobbs admitted the violations. The government asked that her release be modified rather than revoked, with a condition of “no contact with her husband.” The court expressed concern that Hobbs’s violations were connected to her husband’s release and imposed a sentence of 30 days’ imprisonment and the condition: The defendant shall have no direct, indirect, or electronic contact with codefendant and husband, Jack Hobbs, during her term of supervised release. The Eighth Circuit vacated the condition as a “sweeping restriction on her important constitutional right of marriage.”
Court Description: Smith, Author, with Riley, Chief Judge, and Murphy, Circuit Judge] Criminal case - Sentencing. Special condition of defendant's supervised release prohibiting her from "direct, indirect, or electronic contact" with her husband was not supported by the record, and this sweeping restriction on defendant's important constitutional right of marriage is vacated; the matter is remanded for reconsideration on a closed record as the government had a full and fair opportunity to present evidence on this issue and it will not be permitted to expand the record on remand. [ December 13, 2016
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