United States v. McCullock, 991 F.3d 313

Defendant Robert McCullock has multiple relevant convictions: state convictions (1999–2000) for molesting two young girls (one involved an attempted penile penetration of a five-year-old) and a 2017 state conviction for indecent assault and battery on an adult girlfriend.
In 2001 he was federally prosecuted for using a computer to share child pornography; German police downloaded child-porn images from his U.S. computer and Georgia police later found hundreds of images and thousands erased images on a pawned computer.
While on supervised release for the child-porn conviction, McCullock committed the 2017 offense that led to supervised-release revocation.
After revocation the district court imposed 6 months imprisonment plus 30 months supervised release and added special conditions: (6) ban on possessing or viewing nude/sexual materials depicting children or adults; (9) ban on using computers/internet-capable devices without probation approval and forbidding use to access sexually explicit material; (12) prohibition on knowingly having direct contact with minors unless preapproved or in presence of preapproved responsible adult.
McCullock appealed, arguing the district court procedurally erred by failing to explain the special conditions and that the conditions are substantively overbroad/unreasonable.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Procedural adequacy of explanation for conditions 6 and 9	Judge failed to give case-specific reasons for banning adult sexual material	Government: defendant failed to preserve a claim about inadequate explanation; plain-error review applies	Plain-error review applies; defendant did not satisfy plain-error factors; affirmed
Procedural adequacy for condition 12 (contact with minors)	Judge did not explain basis for restricting contact with minors	Government: no contemporaneous objection; plain-error review required	Plain-error review; defendant failed to show plain error; affirmed
Substantive reasonableness of conditions 6 and 9 (ban on adult sexual materials)	No record link between viewing adult pornography and his offenses; condition is overbroad	Condition is reasonably related to offense, history, and risk of recidivism given child-porn cache and violent sexual history	Abuse-of-discretion review; ban is not "clearly unnecessary" given facts; affirmed
Substantive reasonableness of condition 12 (ban on contact with minors)	Condition prohibits incidental or nonpurposeful contacts and is overbroad across ages and sexes	Condition limits liability to ‘knowingly’ contacts, allows probation preapproval, and is justified by defendant's history including victimization of a boy and violent sexual conduct	Plain-error review; condition is textually limited and supported by record; no plain error; affirmed

Puckett v. United States, 556 U.S. 129 (2009) (explains plain-error preservation policy)
United States v. Perazza-Mercado, 553 F.3d 65 (1st Cir. 2009) (limits on porn bans and need for record support)
United States v. Ramos, 763 F.3d 45 (1st Cir. 2014) (standards for restricting associational and porn-related conditions)
United States v. Santiago, 769 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2014) (a condition is impermissible if "clearly unnecessary")
United States v. Marino, 833 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2016) (judicial flexibility in crafting special conditions subject to statutory limits)
United States v. Medina, 779 F.3d 55 (1st Cir. 2015) (vacating overbroad adult-porn restrictions where record lacked linkage)
United States v. Gall, 829 F.3d 64 (1st Cir. 2016) (assessing relation between pornography and offense in upholding/vacating conditions)
United States v. Hinkel, 837 F.3d 111 (1st Cir. 2016) (striking overly broad porn-related supervised-release conditions)
United States v. Fey, 834 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2016) (plain-error reversal of an across-the-board child-contact ban distinguished on facts)
United States v. Cruz-Ramos, 987 F.3d 27 (1st Cir. 2021) (explaining plain-error test and abuse-of-discretion standard)