United States v. Wilkins, No. 17-2258 (8th Cir. 2018)
Annotate this CaseWilkins committed multiple violations of his supervised release, including an assault on his wife. The district court revoked Wilkins’s supervised release and sentenced him to 12 months’ imprisonment with three years’ supervised release, with a condition that prohibited Wilkins from contacting his wife, either directly or indirectly, during the full term of his supervision. The Eighth Circuit affirmed, rejecting an argument that the sentence was substantively unreasonable. District courts have discretion to impose special conditions of supervised release “so long as the conditions are reasonably related to the sentencing factors enumerated in 18 U.S.C. 3553(a), involve no greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary, and are consistent with the Sentencing Commission’s pertinent policy statements.” Wilkins has a long criminal history and has had numerous violations of supervised release. The court made the appropriate individualized inquiry and concluded that Wilkins “ha[s] a very serious problem with aggression” and that he was “a risk to harm other people, particularly [his] wife.” The court also ordered the probation office to work with Wilkins and his wife to try to set up a method by which the children could have visitation.
Court Description: Melloy, Author, with Smith, Chief Judge, and Stras, Circuit Judge] Criminal case - Sentencing. The sentence imposed upon the revocation of defendant's supervised release was not substantively unreasonable or an abuse of the court's discretion; the court's decision to impose a no-contact order condition prohibiting defendant from contacting his wife during his prison term and period of supervised release was the result of an individualized inquiry into the facts, was reasonably related to the sentencing factors and necessary to protect the woman, and did not involve a greater deprivation of liberty than was reasonably necessary.
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.