United States v. Tim Collins

Tim James Collins appeals his conviction and imposition of a 60-month sentence following his entry of a plea of guilty to a single charge of possessing child pornography that had been shipped in interstate commerce, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B).

Collins challenges his conviction and sentence on three bases: (1) the district court’s acceptance of Collins’s guilty plea violated Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11; (2) the First Superseding Indictment was invalid due to improper instructions submitted to the grand jury; and (3) the lifetime term of supervised release imposed by the district court is unreasonable and unconstitutional. Collins contends that, as a result of these errors, the district court’s judgment must be vacated, and he is entitled to negotiate about re-pleading under the status quo ante immediately after his initial, August 18, 2009, plea. Collins alternatively contends that the lifetime term of supervised release and certain conditions of release should be struck from his sentence.

The district court did not err in accepting Mr. Collins’s guilty plea, and Collins’s challenges to the grand jury instructions were untimely and therefore…