United States v. James Tafelmeyer

MEMORANDUM

James Tafelmeyer, a convicted felon currently serving a 97-month federal prison sentence for receiving child pornography, appeals the district court’s denial of his motion to modify his conditions of supervised release. Specifically, Tafelmeyer contends that the district court abused its discretion in imposing a condition that requires him to submit to suspicionless searches, including GPS tracking, because such a condition violates his Fourth Amendment right to be free from warrant-less searches and seizures. Tafelmeyer sought to modify the release condition following his sentencing hearing. The district court denied his motion. The court reasoned that Tafelmeyer’s status as a supervised releasee affords him fewer privacy rights than the average citizen, and that his long history of accessing pornography — even when admonished against doing so while on pretrial release — warrants increased supervision once he is released from prison.

We review the district court’s imposition of the release condition for abuse of discretion, see United States v. King, 608 F.3d 1122, 1130 (9th Cir.2010), and the underlying Fourth Amendment claim de novo, see United States v. Cotterman,…