United States v. Blair, No. 18-1220 (10th Cir. 2019)
Annotate this CaseAt issue before the Tenth Circuit in this case was whether a special condition of supervised relief, “defendant’s use of computers and Internet access devices must be limited to those the defendant requests to use, and which the probation officer authorizes,” involves a “greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary for” deterring criminal activity, protecting the public, and promoting a defendant’s rehabilitation in contravention of 18 U.S.C. sections 3583(d)(2) and 3553(a)(2)(B)-(D). In 2013, the police searched Michael Blair’s home as part of an investigation that was unrelated to this case. During the search, the police discovered a hard drive belonging to Blair with more than 700,000 images of child pornography on it. Ultimately, Blair was charged with and plead guilty to one count of possession of child pornography. After calculating Blair’s sentence, the district court imposed, among several others, the special conditions of supervised release at issue. The Tenth Circuit concluded this special condition violated these provisions because it allowed the probation office to completely ban the defendant’s use of the Internet by failing to place any restraints on a probation officer’s ability to restrict a defendant’s Internet access. Thus, the Tenth Circuit concluded the special condition was impermissibly broad, and the district court abused its discretion by imposing it. The special condition was vacated and the case remanded to the district court to reformulate it to conform with the dictates of the Court's opinion. Blair also challenged the length of his sentence as substantively unreasonable, but the Court disagreed with that challenge and affirmed it.
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.