United States v. Poitra, No. 10-3480 (8th Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CaseDefendant was convicted of one count of aggravated sexual abuse and one count of failure to register as a sex offender, as required by the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), 18 U.S.C. 2250. Defendant appealed, challenging his conviction as well as the district court's imposition of certain special conditions of supervised release. The court held that the omission of the definition for the term "reside" in the jury instructions was not an error that was clear under current law because it did not prevent the district court from fairly and adequately submitting the issue to the jury. Moreover, defendant's substantial rights and the fairness, integrity, and public reputation of judicial proceedings remained unaffected. The court also held that, assuming without deciding that the district court's jury instruction, which included elements of North Dakota law, was erroneous, the error was harmless. The court further held that the district court made no affirmative indication in this case that it would retain ultimate authority over defendant's conditions of supervised release and therefore, the court found no plain error in the imposition of Special Conditions 3 and 8. The court finally held that defendant failed to persuade the court that relief under plain error review was warranted for Special Condition 6. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court.
Court Description: Criminal case - Criminal law and sentencing. Jury instruction in SORNA case was not erroneous; even if the instruction, which included elements of North Dakota law, was erroneous, the error was harmless as the error did not relate to a disputed issue; conditions of supervised release did not amount to an improper delegation of judicial authority; while the provision of defendant's supervised release which banned possession of sexually explicit materials was not supported by the required individualized findings, defendant was not entitled to relief under the plain error doctrine as the record clearly showed discernable reasons for the ban, in particular, defendant's notable risk for committing future offenses and his prior convictions for sexual offenses.
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