US v. Hardin: Hardin pleaded guilty to one count of receiving child pornography. The district court applied a statutory enhancement to his sentence based on Hardin’s prior conviction in Tennessee for statutory rape, increasing his potential sentence to 15 to 40 years in prison. The district court then imposed a mandatory minimum sentence of 180 months in prison, followed by a lifetime term of supervised release.
On appeal, a divided Fourth Circuit affirmed Hardin’s sentence of imprisonment, but vacated his term of supervised release and remanded for further proceedings. On the sentence of imprisonment, the court applied the categorical approach and concluded that Hardin’s Tennessee offense matched the requirement that a prior sentence was “relating to . . . abusive sexual conduct involving a minor” to trigger the statutory enhancement. Of particular importance was the “relating to” language, which enveloped the Tennessee offense, even in its most minor form. On the supervised release term, the court held that neither length of the term itself nor several of the special conditions to which Hardin had objected were supported by a sufficient explanation from the district court.
Judge Wynn dissented, disagreeing that the Tennessee statute “relat[es] to abusive sexual conduct involving a minor” and indicating that the decision created a circuit split.
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