United States v. Brandyn Blatchford

FILED

NOT FOR PUBLICATION OCT 23 2012

MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS U .S. C O U R T OF APPE ALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 11-10431

Plaintiff - Appellee, D.C. No. CR-04-562-PCT-DGC

v.

MEMORANDUM *

BRANDYN BLATCHFORD,

Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona David G. Campbell, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted October 17, 2012 San Francisco, California

Before: FISHER, TALLMAN, and CALLAHAN, Circuit Judges.

Defendant-Appellant Brandyn Blatchford (“Blatchford”) appeals the district

court’s imposition of a special condition of supervised release that he “shall

participate in a mental health program as directed by the probation officer which

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3. may include taking prescribed medication.” We have jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C.

§ 3742 and 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm.

The district court’s imposition of the disputed special condition was not an

abuse of…

concurring:

I concur in the result and in the majority’s analysis but write separately to surface two concerns. One is that I hope our decision will not be understood by district courts as a signal that they should continue to use open-ended, unqualified language when imposing supervised release conditions requiring defendants to take prescribed medication. Under our case law, such conditions should either be supported by the findings required under United States v. Williams, 356 F.3d 1045 (9th Cir.2004), or be limited explicitly to medications that do not implicate significant liberty interests. Probation officers and government attorneys should bear this in mind when they propose conditions to district courts. And district courts should revise the standard language they use when imposing such conditions. The language used here — “which may include taking prescribed medication” — is facially overbroad, and could be revised to read, for example, “which may include taking prescribed medication, so long as the medication does not implicate substantial liberty interests.” Of course, the more specificity the court can provide, the better.

Second, as the majority says, Blatchford…

MEMORANDUM *

Defendant-Appellant Brandyn Blatch-ford (“Blatchford”) appeals the district court’s imposition of a special condition of supervised release that he “shall participate in a mental health program as directed by the probation officer which may include taking prescribed medication.” We have jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3742 and 28 U.S.C. § 1291 , and we affirm.

The district court’s imposition of the disputed special condition was not an abuse of discretion. 1 First, because the court did not make “ ‘on-the-record, medically-grounded findings that court-ordered medication [was] necessary to accomplish one or more of the factors listed in [18 U.S.C.] § 3583(d)(1),’ ” this condition “must ‘be understood as limited to those medications that do not implicate a particularly significant liberty interest of the defendant.’” United States v. Daniels, 541 F.3d 915, 926 (9th Cir.2008) (some internal quotation marks and citations omitted) (quoting United States v. Cope, 527 F.3d 944, 954-55 (9th Cir.2008)). There is no reason to remand for clarification by the district court, which we assume was aware of this rule of interpretation when it imposed the special condition. See…