{"id":3321,"date":"2009-01-17T16:09:37","date_gmt":"2009-01-17T21:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=3321"},"modified":"2009-01-17T16:09:37","modified_gmt":"2009-01-17T21:09:37","slug":"seventh-circuit-week-in-review-part-i-ppgs-and-halfway-houses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/01\/seventh-circuit-week-in-review-part-i-ppgs-and-halfway-houses\/","title":{"rendered":"Seventh Circuit Week in Review, Part I: PPGs and Halfway Houses"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Seventh Circuit had six new opinions in criminal cases this week, all dealing with sentencing issues.\u00a0 Two focused on supervised release questions, which will be the subject of this post; the remaining four with be covered in another post.<\/p>\n

First, in United States v. Rhodes <\/a><\/em>(No. 07-3953), a sex offender challenged penile plethysmograph (“PPG”)\u00a0testing as a condition of supervised release.\u00a0 PPG testing involves attaching a monitor to the male subject’s genitals, presenting him with an array of sexually stimulating images, and then determing the degree of arousal by measuring erectile responses.\u00a0 When used with sex offenders, the\u00a0hope is that arousal patterns can be studied to determine how great the risk is that\u00a0an offender will commit new sex crimes.\u00a0 Although experts disagree as the effectiveness of PPG testing, it has become a routine part of adult sex offender treatment programs.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Following his conviction, the district court sentenced Rhodes to ten years in prison, followed by a life term of supervised release.\u00a0 In connection with his supervised release, Rhodes was ordered by the judge to “undergo a psychosexual evaluation and participate in an outpatient sex offender counseling program if recommended by the evaluator which may involve use of polygraph and plethysmograph [PPG]\u00a0examinations.”\u00a0 On appeal, Rhodes challenged the PPG condition as a deprivation of liberty that was greater than “reasonably necessary” in violation 18 U.S.C. \u00a73583(d)(2).<\/p>\n

The Seventh Circuit (per Judge Tinder) dismissed the appeal without prejudice, reasoning that Rhodes’ claim was unripe.\u00a0 Because an evaluator might not actually recommend PPG testing for Rhodes at the conclusion of his prison term — and one does hope that better technology will be available in ten years! — Rhodes might not suffer the liberty deprivation he complained of.\u00a0 In declining to review Rhodes’ claim on the merits, the Seventh Circuit adopted the approach of the Sixth Circuit in a similar case, and rejected the approach of the Ninth Circuit in United States v. Weber <\/em>(9th Cir. 2008), which required the “district court to state precisely why the PPG testing is no greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary.”<\/p>\n

In the second supervised release case, United States v. Head<\/a> <\/em>(No. 07-3619),\u00a0the Seventh Circuit created\u00a0a circuit split.\u00a0 Following his violation of an initial supervised release order, Head was sentenced to two years of prison and one\u00a0additional year of supervised release, with the first six months to be spent in a “residential reentry center.”\u00a0 On appeal, Head argued that the district court judge lacked authority to include this halfway-house condition.<\/p>\n

The federal probation statute includes a laundry list of conditions that a sentencing judge may order for purposes of probation, including confinement in a halfway house.\u00a0 As it existed at the time of Head’s sentence, the federal supervised release statute specifically incorporated the probation conditions as permissible supervised release conditions — with the conspicuous exception of the halfway-house condition.\u00a0 The legislative history strongly suggests that this omission was simply a clerical error by Congress.\u00a0 Indeed, last October, Congress amended the supervised release statute so as to include the halfway-house condition.\u00a0 However, as the Seventh Circuit (per Judge Williams) indicated in Head,<\/em> the\u00a0amendment should not be read to apply to defendants convicted and sentenced before its passage.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, all seven circuits to have considered this supervised release problem have interpreted the statute contrary to its plain meaning and permitted sentencing judges to impose the halfway-house condition.\u00a0 For defendants, the eighth time is a charm: the Seventh Circuit actually adhered to the statute’s plain meaning in Head<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The case is interesting from a statutory interpretation standpoint for presenting such a clear conflict between statutory text and legislative intent.\u00a0 Where other circuits have bent over backwards to find ambiguity in the text, thereby permitting recourse to other considerations, I think the Seventh Circuit has correctly found the relevant statutory language to be clear.\u00a0 And, as the court observed, “Even if Congress made a mistake, it is beyond our province to rescue Congress from its drafting errors, and to provide for what we might think is the preferred result.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Seventh Circuit had six new opinions in criminal cases this week, all dealing with sentencing issues.\u00a0 Two focused on supervised release questions, which will be the subject of this post; the remaining four with be covered in another post. First, in United States v. Rhodes (No. 07-3953), a sex offender challenged penile plethysmograph (“PPG”)\u00a0testing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,28,74,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-criminal-law-process","category-federal-sentencing","category-seventh-circuit","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}