In United States v. Alberts, No. 16-11065 (June 13, 2017) (Martin, Jill Pryor, Anderson), the Court affirmed a 120-month sentence for receiving and possessing child pornography.
The defendant unsuccessfully made two arguments on appeal. First, he argued that the district court erroneously applied the enhancement in 2G2.2(b)(5) for engaging in a pattern of activity involving sexual abuse. The defendant did not dispute the PSI facts, where he admitted to engaging in sexual activity with minor relatives, and that admission, coupled with corroborating indicators of his interest in pedophilia and incest, was sufficient to support the enhancement. The defendant argued that, because the sexual activity occurred more than 30 years ago, it was too attenuated, but he acknowledged that this argument was foreclosed by binding circuit precedent. And the Court rejected the defendant's argument that the enhancement does not apply to sexual activity committed by the defendant when he himself was a minor. Joining other circuits, the Court reasoned that the application notes to 2G2.2(b)(5) referred to several statutory provisions that prohibited minor-on-minor conduct, and nothing in the Guideline was to the contrary. The Court cautioned, however, that only conduct falling within one the statutory provisions can support an enhancement, but the defendant did not dispute that his conduct qualified as "sexual acts" within the meaning of one of those statutes.
Second, the defendant argued that his sentence was procedurally and substantively unreasonable. As to the former, the Court, applying plain error, found that, although the district court did plainly err under Tapia by considering the need for rehabilitation at sentencing, that error did not affect the defendant's substantial rights because rehabilitation was merely an ancillary concern at sentencing. As to the latter, the Court found that the 120-month sentence, which fell below the properly calculated guideline range, was not substantively unreasonable.
