United States v. Roger Haggard

Appellant Roger Haggard challenges the criminal sentence imposed upon him by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

I.

In 1988, eight-year-old Michaela Garecht was abducted near her home in Hayward, California. She has not been seen since. A few years after the kidnapping, appellant Haggard contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) and claimed to know the whereabouts of Michaela’s body and the identity of her assailant. At the time he contacted the FBI, Haggard was in state prison in Indiana serving time for a burglary conviction.

During a series of interviews with the FBI in late 1991 and 1992, Haggard spun an elaborate tale about Michaela’s kidnapping and murder. Skeptical investigators at first declined to pursue Haggard’s story. Upset by this, Haggard wrote a November 1992 letter to the San Francisco Chronicle in which he claimed to know the identity of Michaela’s assailant and the location of her body. Haggard wrote that he was assisting the FBI because he wanted to put Michaela’s parents at ease and allow them to give their daughter a proper burial.

Not long after Haggard wrote the…