UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. James N. COPPOCK, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 13-1189.
United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
Submitted: Jan. 15, 2014. Filed: Sept. 2, 2014.
765 F.3d 921
The judgment is affirmed in part and reversed in part. The case is remanded to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Richard Haile McWilliams, Assistant Federal Public Defender, argued, Omaha, NE, for Defendant-Appellant.
Michael P. Norris, Assistant United States Attorney, argued, Omaha, NE, for Plaintiff-Appellee.
Before WOLLMAN, COLLOTON, and GRUENDER, Circuit Judges.
James Coppock, a sex offender subject to the requirements of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), entered a conditional guilty plea to a charge of failing to register and update his sex offender registration with Nebraska officials, in violation of
I.
Coppock was convicted in 1990 by a military court of carnal knowledge and kidnaping of a minor. In February 1997, Coppock was released on military parole and came under the supervision of the United States Probation Office in the District of Nebraska until his parole expired in March 2009. In November 2009, Coppock signed an acknowledgment of his obligations to register as a sex offender and to keep that registration up to date. And in December 2009, Coppock filed a form with the State of Nebraska‘s sex offender registry to notify the State that he was moving from Blair, Nebraska, to Pasay City, Philippines.
Subsequent investigation by law enforcement officials revealed that Coppock never traveled to the Philippines but rather moved to Omaha, Nebraska, and worked for several employers, without notifying the State of Nebraska of these events. Coppock was arrested on May 7, 2012, and a grand jury charged him on May 22, 2012, with knowingly failing to register and update his sex offender registration with Nebraska authorities as required by SORNA. See
SORNA, enacted in July 2006, “requires those convicted of certain sex crimes to provide state governments with (and to update) information, such as names and current addresses, for inclusion on state and federal sex offender registries.” Reynolds v. United States, — U.S. —, 132 S.Ct. 975, 978, 181 L.Ed.2d 935 (2012); see
Coрpock moved to dismiss the indictment, raising several constitutional challenges to the application of SORNA‘s registration requirements. Adopting the findings and recommendation of a magistrate judge, the district court denied the motion, and Coppock entered a сonditional guilty plea. Coppock appeals the district court‘s denial of his motion to dismiss, and we consider the matter de novo. See United States v. Waddle, 612 F.3d 1027, 1029 (8th Cir. 2010).
Federal law makes it a crime for a sex offender convicted under federal law to fail to register or update a registration as required by SORNA.
The question presented is whether Congress had authority, under the Military Regulation and Necessary аnd Proper Clauses of Article I, see
In Comstock, the Supreme Court concluded that Article I authorizes Congress to enact a civil-cоmmitment statute providing for detention of “a mentally ill, sexually dangerous federal prisoner beyond the date the prisoner would otherwise be released.” 560 U.S. at 129, 130 S.Ct. 1949. The Court identified several considerations that informed its holding. Most relevant to our inquiry is the Court‘s conclusion that the civil-commitment scheme was “reasonably adapted to Congress’ power to act as a responsible federal custodian” over those who have violated federal criminal laws. Id. at 143, 130 S.Ct. 1949 (internal quotation and citation omitted). In examining the connection between the civil-commitment statute and Congress‘s Article I powers, the Court explained:
Congress has the implied power to criminalize any conduct that might interfere with the exercise of an enumerated power, and also the additional power to imprisоn people who violate those (inferentially authorized) laws, and the additional power to provide for the safe and reasonable management of those prisons, and the additional power to regulate the prisoners’ behavior even aftеr their release.
In Kebodeaux, the Court decided that Congress had authority under Article I to impose SORNA‘s registration requirements on an offender whо had committed a sex offense while serving in the military:
[U]nder the authority granted to it by the Military Regulation and Necessary and Proper Clauses, Congress could promulgate the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It could specify that the sex offense of which Kebodeaux was cоnvicted was a military crime under that Code. It could punish that crime through imprisonment and by placing conditions upon Kebodeaux‘s release. And it could make the civil registration requirement at issue here a consequence of Kebodeaux‘s offense and conviction.
133 S.Ct. at 2503. Kebodeaux establishes, therefore, that Congress has some degree of authority to apply SORNA to federal sex offenders based on violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and to punish violations of SORNA with criminal penalties under
The government‘s assertion of power in this case goes a step beyond Kebodeaux. There, although SORNA was enacted after the sex offender was released from federal custody, the Court relied on the preexisting registration requirements of the Wetterling Act of 1994: “[A]s of the time of Kebodeaux‘s offense, cоnviction and release from federal custody,” id. at 2502, the Court explained, the Wetterling Act imposed federal registration requirements similar to those that Congress later enacted in SORNA. The Court reasoned that “the Necessary and Proper Clause authorized Congress to modify the requirement” already applicable to the offender through the Wetterling Act. Id.
Here, by contrast, Coppock‘s sex offense and conviction occurred prior to both the enactment of SORNA and the enactment of the Wetterling Act. As appliеd to Coppock, then, SORNA cannot be justified as a necessary and proper modification of federal registration requirements already in place at the time of Coppock‘s offense and conviction. Nor can the government rely in Copрock‘s case on the idea that “[a] service member will be less likely to violate a relevant military regulation if he knows that, having done so, he will be required to register as a sex offender years into the future.” Id. at 2506 (Roberts, C.J., concurring in the judgment). Coppock could not have known about the later-enacted registration requirements of the Wetterling Act and SORNA when he violated military regulations.
Nonetheless, while Kebodeaux held that the conditions in that case were sufficient to authorize congressional action under Article I, the Court did not hold that Congress‘s power to require registration by federal sex offenders was limited to offenders who violated military regulations after the Wetterling Act came into effect. Coppock was still on federal parole when the Wetterling Act and SORNA were enacted; he was not unconditionally released. As to that scenario, there are suggestions in Comstock and Kebodeaux that legislation imposing sex offender registration requirements is authorized by the Necessary and Proper Clause.
Comstock strongly affirmed Congress‘s “power to act as a responsible federal custodian” of those, like Coppock, who have
The Court in Kebodeaux similarly declared that “it is entirely reasonable for Congress to have assigned the Federal Government а special role in ensuring compliance with SORNA‘s registration requirements by federal sex offenders—persons who typically would have spent time under federal criminal supervision.” 133 S.Ct. at 2504 (quoting Carr v. United States, 560 U.S. 438, 452, 130 S.Ct. 2229, 176 L.Ed.2d 1152 (2010)). The government‘s interest in keeping track of former federal prisoners to prevent further crimes applies with equal force to a pre-Wetterling Act offender who is still on parole for a federal sex offense as it does to one who commits his offense after the Act‘s passage. And Justice Alito, concurring in the judgment in Kebodeaux, deemed it necessary and proper for Congress to require registration of members of the military who are convicted of a qualifying sex offense in federal court, because the exercise of military jurisdiction may supersede state prosecutions and thereby create a gap in the laws intended to maximize the registration of sex offenders. Id. at 2508-09 (Alito, J., concurring in the judgment). The same gap-filling rationale presumably would apply to a parolee who was prosecuted by federal authorities for a sex offense before a fedеral registration requirement was developed.
For these reasons, we think the Court‘s most recent applications of the Necessary and Proper Clause counsel that the SORNA registration requirements and criminal sanctions for noncompliance are сonstitutional as applied to Coppock. Significantly, this is not a case in which the government seeks to punish an offender for violating restrictions imposed on him “years after [his] unconditional release,” pursuant to an expansive claim of a nonexistent fеderal police power. Id. at 2507 (Roberts, C.J., concurring in the judgment). Our decision here applies only to a sex offender who—at the time the registration requirements came into effect—was under federal parole supervision based on a conviction under fеderal law, and thus remained in a “special relationship with the federal government.” Id. at 2504 (majority opinion) (internal quotation omitted).
Coppock‘s alternative contentions that Congress unconstitutionally delegated legislative power by authorizing the Attorney General to determine SORNA‘s retroactive effect, see
The judgment of the district court is affirmed.