NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MAR 29 2021
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 19-10180
Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No.
2:18-cr-00306-JCM-NJK-1
v.
CARL EDWARD BELT, MEMORANDUM*
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Nevada
James C. Mahan, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted March 8, 2021
Las Vegas, Nevada
Before: CLIFTON, NGUYEN, and BENNETT, Circuit Judges.
Appellant Carl Belt challenges the district court’s imposition of two
conditions of supervised release following his guilty plea for being a felon in
possession of a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(a)(2). First,
Belt challenges a discretionary condition that allows his probation officer to
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
conduct searches of his electronic devices without a warrant (hereafter, the “Search
Condition”). Belt also challenges a standard condition that requires him to notify
third parties about the risks he poses to them, at the direction of his parole officer
(the “Risk Notification Condition”). We have jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3742,
and we affirm.
We generally review supervised release conditions for abuse of
discretion, though we review de novo “‘[w]hether the sentence imposed was
“illegal,”’ for example, by exceeding ‘the permissible statutory penalty for the
crime[] or [by being] in violation of the Constitution.’” United States v.
Gementera, 379 F.3d 596, 600 n.5 (9th Cir. 2004) (alterations in original) (internal
citation omitted). Where, as here, the defendant failed to object to one of the
conditions of supervised release at sentencing, we review that condition for plain
error. United States v. Bell, 770 F.3d 1254, 1256 (9th Cir. 2014); Fed. R. Crim. P.
52(b).
Belt argues that the Search Condition is impermissibly broad because it
allows the parole officer to conduct warrantless searches of his electronic devices,
even though there is no evidence to suggest that his underlying crime and criminal
history were facilitated by electronic devices. However, we have held that “so long
as a district court makes a factual finding establishing some nexus between
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computer use and one of the [statutorily-defined goals of supervised release] . . . it
is not an abuse of discretion for a district court to impose a condition of supervised
release permitting the search of a defendant’s personal computers.” United States
v. Bare, 806 F.3d 1011, 1017 (9th Cir. 2015); see also 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(B)–
(D). We have found sufficient nexus even in cases where there was no evidence of
computer use in the defendant’s past criminal conduct, because “[p]ermitting a
search of only paper records—but not computers—might enable [parolees] to
evade discovery of recidivist activity by switching [their] records into an electronic
format.” Bare, 806 F.3d at 1019.
Here, the district court went beyond what was constitutionally required when
it cabined the Search Condition to allow searches only if Belt’s parole officer has
reasonable suspicion that he violated a condition of supervised release, and that the
device to be searched contains evidence of that violation. See Samson v.
California, 547 U.S. 843, 856–57 (2006) (holding that a similarly worded
condition imposed on all California parolees did not violate the Fourth
Amendment, even without the reasonable suspicion restriction); United States v.
Betts, 511 F.3d 872, 876 (9th Cir. 2007) (“There is no sound reason for
distinguishing parole from supervised release with respect to this condition. . . .
The Court in Samson itself drew the analogy to supervised release.”). For that
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reason, there is no room for treating the Search Condition in this is case as an
abuse of discretion.
Belt argues that the Risk Notification Condition is unconstitutionally vague
because it does not provide him with sufficient notice as to what people should be
notified or what risks qualify and gives parole officers unfettered discretion to
interpret the condition. However, because Belt failed to object to the Risk
Notification Condition at sentencing, we have discretion to remedy the error only if
certain conditions of plain error review are met.
Molina-Martinez v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 1338, 1343 (2016). Plain error
requires that the defendant show the District Court committed an error (1) “that has
not been intentionally relinquished or abandoned,” (2) that was plain (“that is to
say, clear or obvious”), and (3) that affected the defendant’s substantial rights. Id.
Even then, we should “exercise [our] discretion to correct the forfeited error [only]
if the error ‘seriously affects the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial
proceedings.’” Id. (citation omitted).
Here, Belt does not establish that the district court committed plain error. It
is true that we have previously struck down two earlier versions of the Risk
Notification Condition. See United States v. Evans, 883 F.3d 1154, 1163–64 (9th
Cir. 2018); United States v. Magdirila, 962 F.3d 1152, 1158–59 (9th Cir. 2020).
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However, both of those opinions—and several subsequent unpublished
dispositions—discussed the current Risk Notification Condition favorably. See
United States v. Davis, 785 F. App’x 374, 376 (9th Cir. 2019); United States v.
Burleson, 820 F. App’x 567, 569–70 (9th Cir. 2020); United States v. McPherson,
808 F. App’x 450, 452 (9th Cir. 2020); United States v. Oseguera, 793 F. App’x
579, 581 (9th Cir. 2020); United States v. Jackson, No. 19-10277, 2020 U.S. App.
LEXIS 40060, at *5 (9th Cir. Dec. 22, 2020); United States v. Pruitt, No. 19-
10125, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 39502, at *6 (9th Cir. Dec. 16, 2020). As such, we
find no plain error.
For all of these reasons, we affirm the district court’s imposition of the
Search Condition and the Risk Notification Condition.
AFFIRMED.
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