US v. Amin: In 2015, Amin (then 17 years old) pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to ISIS based partly on his online presence and use of a computer. Among the conditions of supervised release imposed as part of his sentence was that he “follow the instructions of the probation officer,” that he not “associate with any person convicted of a felony” without permission, and that he be “subject to any screening or monitoring of internet use, as directed by the probation officer.” When he began supervision, he received additional instructions from his PO that required Amin to submit to computer monitoring, obtain permission before conversing online in a language other than English, not possess any material that reflects extremist or terrorist views, and have no contact with any known extremist. Amin, pro se, challenged the instructions, which the Government in response moved to have made formal conditions of supervision. The district court denied all requests, concluding that the PO’s instructions did not do anything new, only clarified the already imposed conditions.
Amin violated the conditions/instructions in several ways (including, for example, using Linux for an operating system, which defeated probation’s tracking software, and communicating with “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh) and the Government sought the revocation of his term of supervised release based on some (but not all) of the alleged violations. The district court agreed, revoked Amin’s term of supervised release, and sentenced him to one year in prison and reimposed the lifetime term of supervised release from his original sentence.
On appeal, the Fourth Circuit affirmed Amin’s revocation and sentence, rejecting various arguments Amin made about the nature of the conditions and instructions he violated (there was no factual dispute that he violated them). For example, the court rejected Amin’s argument that the PO’s instructions amounted to additional conditions of supervised release that were not properly imposed by the district court, agreeing with the district court that they merely clarified and gave effect to conditions imposed at sentencing. The court also rejected as applied challenges to the underlying conditions, reinforcing its holding that such challenges must come in the direct appeal of the initially imposed sentence. As to any as-applied challenges to the any vagueness in the PO’s instructions, the court held that Amin had multiple means to seek clarity if there was confusion about their scope but did not.
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