United States v. Peterson, No. 16-4288 (8th Cir. 2018)
Annotate this CaseThe Eighth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction and sentence on four counts of the deprivation of his female probationers' civil rights. The court held that there was sufficient evidence to support defendant's convictions where he intentionally engaged in sexual conduct with the victims, the victims acquiesced to his sexual advances as a result of his abuse of his state law authority, and his conduct was egregious enough to support a Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process claim; the district court did not err by rejecting his theory of defense instruction; any procedural error in calculating his 108 month sentence was harmless; and defendant's sentence was substantively reasonable where the district court carefully considered the 18 U.S.C. 3553(a) factors.
Court Description: Shepherd, Author, with Benton and Kelly, Circuit Judges] Criminal case - Criminal law and Sentencing. Evidence was sufficient to support defendant's convictions on charges that he deprived his female probationers of their civil rights by forcing them to engage in inappropriate sexual acts and contacts while they were under his supervision; the evidence was sufficient to show the victims acquiesced to his sexual advances as a result of his abuse of his state law authority; the conduct was egregious enough to support a Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process claim; no error in denying defendant's theory of the defense instruction which would have instructed the jury that in order to convict him, he must have known both that he used his position of power to cause the victims to submit to his demands and that the victims consented because of that influence; assuming the district court erred in calculating defendant's guidelines range, the error was harmless as the court stated it would impose the same sentence regardless of the underlying range; sentence was not substantively unreasonable.
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