Court Affirms Several Supervised Release Conditions in Child Pornography Case

US v. Olson: Olson was a fifth-grade teacher who was found to have downloaded child pornography using a peer-to-peer network. Olson admitted to the downloading and to having experience with such networks due to training in systems management. He pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography and possessing child pornography involving a prepubescent minor or a minor under 12. At sentencing, the district court imposed a sentence was a 120 months in prison, a slight variance, and a 30-year term of supervised release. In doing so, the district court relied on the report of a pair of experts submitted by Olson that addressed his chances for recidivism and means to keep him from offending again.

Olson appealed. His initial appellate counsel filed an Anders brief. After reviewing the record, the court ordered the parties to file supplemental briefs addressing three issues – the adequacy of Olson’s plea, the adequacy of the district court’s explanation of its 30-year term of supervised release, and whether any of the imposed conditions of supervised release were substantively reasonable. Olson’s counsel filed a brief addressing only the first two (the Government’s brief did address all three). After appointing new appellate counsel,* the court issued another supplemental briefing order directing the parties to address the substantive reasonableness of any supervised release conditions.

The Fourth Circuit ultimately affirmed Olson’s convictions and sentence, focusing primarily on the reasonableness of several conditions of supervised release. The court affirmed a “standard” condition prohibiting communication with others engaged in criminal activity or who have a felony conviction, calling the peer-to-peer network “communal software that made his downloaded child pornography videos available to others.” The court also held that the condition has an “implicit mens rea requirement” and would not apply to situations where Olson unknowingly had such interactions. The court affirmed a prohibitions on the use of drugs, excessive use of alcohol, and drug testing, based on Olson’s experts’ stressing the importance of “sobriety” for his supervision, even though there was no evidence in the record of Olson consuming alcohol or drugs. The court also affirmed a condition allowing suspicionless searches of Olson’s home, property, and person, as related to Olson’s offense.

* Full disclosure – that was me.