United States v. Lawrence Antelope, United States of America v. Lawrence Antelope

Lawrence Antelope is a convicted sex offender who shows promise of rehabilitation. The terms of his supervised release offer him treatment — -but at a price he is not willing to pay. Antelope has repeatedly refused to incriminate himself as part of his sex offender treatment. He declines to detail his sexual history in the absence of any assurance of immunity because of the risk that he may reveal past crimes and that his admissions could then be used to prosecute him. In response, the government has twice revoked his conditional liberty and sent him to prison. The case he now brings requires us to decide whether the government’s actions violated his Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination. Because the Constitution does not countenance the sort of government coercion imposed on Antelope, and because his claim is ripe for adjudication, we reverse the judgment of the district court.

We decide also Antelope’s challenge to the release term prohibiting him from possessing “any pornographic, sexually oriented or sexually stimulating materials,” which we vacate and remand, as well as his challenge to the term prohibiting him from access to “any ‘on-line computer…