United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
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No. 09-3377
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United States of America, *
*
Appellee, *
* Appeal from the United States
v. * District Court for the
* District of South Dakota.
Brian Jeffries, *
*
Appellant. *
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Submitted: June 18, 2010
Filed: August 5, 2010
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Before WOLLMAN, EBEL,1 and COLLOTON, Circuit Judges.
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WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge.
Brian Jeffries pleaded guilty to one count of abusive sexual contact with a child,
in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2244(a)(5), 2246(3), and 1153. In a previous appeal, we
remanded Jeffries’ case for resentencing because the evidence was insufficient to
establish a prior conviction that provided the basis for an enhancement that the court
had relied upon in imposing Jeffries’ sentence. See United States v. Jeffries, 569 F.3d
1
The Honorable David M. Ebel, United States Circuit Judge for the Tenth
Circuit, sitting by designation.
873 (8th Cir. 2009). On remand, the district court2 sentenced Jeffries to 360 months’
imprisonment. Jeffries appeals, arguing that his sentence is unreasonable. We affirm.
Both Jeffries and the government agree that Jeffries’ advisory guideline range
was properly recalculated on remand as 292 to 365 months. In sentencing Jeffries, the
district court noted that, in addition to the conduct to which he had pled guilty, Jeffries
had a prior state conviction for attempted rape and had attempted to sexually assault
another young girl. The court stated that “[b]ecause of that pattern of sexual abuse
towards young girls and young women, I find that a sentence near the top end of your
advisory guideline range is what is appropriate here primarily for the purpose of
protecting the public.”
We review the reasonableness of a sentence in light of the factors in 18 U.S.C.
§ 3553(a) and will reverse only if the district court abused its discretion.3 United
States v. James, 564 F.3d 960, 964 (8th Cir. 2009). We may presume that a sentence
within the properly calculated guideline range is reasonable. Id.
Jeffries argues that the district court violated the admonition in § 3553(a) to
“impose a sentence sufficient, but not greater than necessary” when it cited the need
2
The Honorable Karen E. Schreier, Chief Judge, United States District Court
for the District of South Dakota.
3
The government contends that our review should be circumscribed because
Jeffries failed to raise at the sentencing hearing the argument he makes here. In
United States v. Wiley, we held that a defendant need not object to the district court’s
pronouncement of a sentence in order to preserve the issue of whether the length of
the sentence was unreasonable. 509 F.3d 474, 477 (8th Cir. 2007). Given that Jeffries
challenges not just the length of his sentence generally but also the district court’s
failure to consider a specific argument as to its reasonableness, it is questionable
whether the rule adopted in Wiley applies here. For purposes of this appeal, however,
we will assume that Jeffries has not forfeited his Adam Walsh Act argument, and thus
we will address it on the merits.
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to protect the public as the basis for sentencing him at the top end of his guideline
range. Jeffries acknowledges the specific instruction in § 3553(a)(2)(C) that district
courts should consider the need for the sentence imposed to “protect the public from
further crimes of the defendant.” According to Jeffries, however, the court should not
have given so much weight to the need to protect the public because the government
has the ability to obtain a civil commitment order and indefinitely detain him after the
expiration of his sentence if it establishes that he is sexually dangerous to others.
Under a recently enacted provision of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and
Safety Act of 2006, Pub. L. No. 109-248, 120 Stat. 587, the government may seek the
civil commitment of a “sexually dangerous person.” See 18 U.S.C. § 4248. A
“sexually dangerous person” is someone who “has engaged or attempted to engage in
sexually violent conduct or child molestation” and “suffers from a serious mental
illness, abnormality, or disorder as a result of which he would have serious difficulty
in refraining from sexually violent conduct or child molestation if released.” Id. §
4247(a). In order to obtain a civil commitment, a hearing must be held and the
government must produce clear and convincing evidence that an individual is a
sexually dangerous person. Id. § 4248(d). The individual whose mental condition
is at issue has the right to be represented by counsel and is given the opportunity to
testify, present evidence, subpoena witnesses, and confront and cross-examine
witnesses who appear at the hearing. Id. § 4247(d). Thereafter the committed
individual remains entitled to periodic review of his status and release if his mental
condition changes such that he is no longer dangerous to others. Id. §§ 4247(e);
4248(e). The Supreme Court recently held that Congress acted within its authority
under Article I of the Constitution in providing for the civil commitment of sexually
dangerous prisoners. See United States v. Comstock, 130 S. Ct. 1949 (2010); see also
United States v. Tom, 565 F.3d 497 (8th Cir. 2009) (reaching the same conclusion).
Jeffries argues that because this procedure would be available to prevent his release
if he posed a threat to society, it was an abuse of the district court’s discretion to
consider public safety as a basis for imposing a lengthier sentence. We disagree.
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Jeffries’ argument is based on the incorrect assumption that the recently enacted
civil commitment provisions shifted the responsibility for protecting the public from
district courts at sentencing to the Department of Justice at the time a prisoner is
released. Jeffries has cited nothing in the language of the statute or its legislative
history that supports this conclusion. Rather, the new provisions are “a modest
addition to a longstanding federal statutory framework, which has been in place since
1855” for the civil commitment of the mentally ill. Comstock, 130 S. Ct. at 1961.
The original federal civil commitment provisions were generally designed to
close a loophole in the federal prison system—specifically, individuals who would
have been subject to state civil commitment regimes if they had been state prisoners
had nowhere to go upon the completion of their federal prison terms. “These federal
prisoners, having been held for years in a federal prison, often had few ties to any
State; it was a matter of speculation where they would choose to go upon release; and
accordingly no State was enthusiastic about volunteering to shoulder the burden of
civil commitment.” Id. at 1970 (Alito, J., concurring). Federal civil commitment
statutes were designed to address this problem, and the recently enacted provisions
simply extended civil commitment to sexually dangerous prisoners, many of whom
“were likely already subject to civil commitment” under preexisting statutes providing
for “postsentence detention of federal prisoners who suffer from a mental illness and
who are thereby dangerous (whether sexually or otherwise).” Id. at 1961. Thus, the
possibility of civil commitment has long existed alongside a district judge’s discretion
to consider potential dangerousness in sentencing a defendant. There is no support
for Jeffries’ contention that the recently enacted provisions worked a significant
change in the law.
Moreover, Jeffries’ argument is unpersuasive for the additional reason that it
makes an unwarranted assumption about the scope and application of the civil
commitment provisions. Jeffries’ argument implicitly assumes that any person whose
release might pose a danger to the public would necessarily manifest the serious
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mental illness, abnormality, or disorder required to trigger civil commitment. We
decline to accept the assertion that the new provisions will prove to be such a
completely effective screening mechanism. Given the procedural strictures and
exacting standard of proof that the government must meet in order to secure civil
commitment of a sexually dangerous prisoner, a district court’s reliance on such a
tenuous and uncertain eventuality would constitute an abdication of its statutory duty
to impose a sentence that will protect the public from a defendant’s further crimes.
In short, there is no reason to conclude that the provisions at issue were meant
to displace a district court’s initial discretion to consider potential danger to the public
in choosing a defendant’s sentence. This is particularly true given the long-standing
role that such considerations have played in courts’ sentencing decisions and the
absence of any indication that Congress intended for the civil commitment of sexually
dangerous prisoners to have any effect on sentencing. We believe that the civil
commitment statutes are best viewed as a complement to the district court’s
sentencing discretion. Accordingly, we conclude that the district court did not abuse
its discretion by considering the need to protect the public when it imposed Jeffries’
sentence. The 360-month sentence that the district court imposed was within the
properly calculated advisory guideline range and it was not substantively
unreasonable.
The judgment is affirmed.
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