United States v. Rydle ( 2023 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
Nos. 21-1016
22-1351
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
DANNY RYDLE,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEALS FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MAINE
[Hon. John A. Woodcock, Jr., U.S. District Judge]
Before
Kayatta, Selya, and Thompson,
Circuit Judges.
Robert C. Andrews and Robert C. Andrews Esquire P.C. on brief
for appellant.
Darcie N. McElwee, United States Attorney, and Noah Falk,
Assistant United States Attorney, on brief for appellee.
January 19, 2023
SELYA, Circuit Judge. The Constitution limits the power
of the federal courts to the adjudication of live cases and
controversies. See U.S. Const. art. III, § 2; see also Sundaram
v. Briry, LLC (In re Sundaram), 9 F.4th 16, 20 (1st Cir. 2021)
("Federal courts lack jurisdiction to adjudicate moot cases.").
When a case, though live when brought, loses its vitality while
pending on appeal, that constitutional limit requires the appeal
to be dismissed as moot. See, e.g., In re Sundaram, 9 F.4th at
21. "At that point, any opinion that a reviewing court might
provide would be merely advisory." Id. That is the situation
here.
In this instance, defendant-appellant Danny Rydle sought
relief — in the form of retention of a seal of judicial records —
up until the occurrence of a particular event (the expiration of
his sentence). Because that event has now occurred, we hold that
these consolidated appeals must be dismissed as moot.
I
We set the stage. On May 3, 2019, the appellant pleaded
guilty in the United States District Court for the District of
Maine to one count of theft from a licensed firearms dealer, see
18 U.S.C. §§ 2, 922(u), 924(i), and one count of conspiracy to
commit theft from that dealer, see id. §§ 371, 922(u). On October
8, 2020, the appellant was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of
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time served and seven days, to be followed by a three-year term of
supervised release.
During the appellant's brief term of incarceration, the
district court sealed portions of the record pertaining to his
cooperation with the government. In accordance with local
practice, though, the court ordered that the seal be lifted once
the appellant's imprisonment ended. The appellant objected on the
ground that unsealing the record would place him in danger should
he violate the terms of his supervised release and be resentenced
to prison. He thus requested that the seal remain in place until
he completed his sentence in its entirety, that is, until the
expiration of his term of supervised release. The district court
issued an order overruling the appellant's objection but left the
seal in place while the appellant appealed.
During the pendency of that appeal, the appellant
violated the terms of his supervised release. On December 10,
2021, the district court revoked his release and sentenced him to
a new three-month prison term, to be followed by a new twenty-
four-month term of supervised release. At that juncture, we
remanded the case to the district court (albeit retaining appellate
jurisdiction) for the limited purpose of clarifying what effect,
if any, the revocation would have on the district court's prior
order to lift the seal. On January 5, 2022, the district court,
by indicative ruling, ordered that the relevant portions of the
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record would remain sealed during the appellant's reincarceration,
with the caveat that the district court would revisit the issue
upon the appellant's release. Accordingly, we remanded the case
to the district court for further proceedings in accordance with
that indicative ruling. See Fed. R. App. P. 12.1(b). Once again,
we retained appellate jurisdiction.
Soon thereafter, the appellant was released yet again on
supervision. In response, the district court — after soliciting
further briefing from the parties — reinstated its original order,
from which a second appeal was then taken.
The two appeals were consolidated. Before they could be
adjudicated, however, the appellant violated the conditions of his
supervised release for a second time. On July 14, 2022, the
appellant's supervised release was revoked, but his sentencing was
continued until a later date. On November 2, 2022, the district
court sentenced the appellant to a term of imprisonment of time
served, with no supervised release to follow. Since the
appellant's sentence was over and done with, we invited the
appellant to show cause as to whether developments in the district
court had mooted the pending appeals. The appellant responded,
and the question of mootness is now before us.
II
The Constitution limits the jurisdiction of the federal
courts to the adjudication of "Cases" and "Controversies." U.S.
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Const. art. III, § 2. We may therefore adjudicate cases only as
long as "an actual controversy [is] extant at all stages of
review." Arizonans for Off. Eng. v. Arizona, 520 U.S. 43, 67
(1997) (quoting Preiser v. Newkirk, 422 U.S. 395, 401 (1975)). If
"the issues presented are no longer 'live,'" then the case is moot,
and we must dismiss for want of jurisdiction. Harris v. Univ. of
Mass. Lowell, 43 F.4th 187, 191 (1st Cir. 2022) (quoting Chafin v.
Chafin, 568 U.S. 165, 172 (2013)); see In re Sundaram, 9 F.4th at
20.
So it is here. The appellant challenged the district
court's order on the ground that unsealing portions of the record
while he served his term of supervised release posed a threat to
his safety should he violate the terms of that release and find
himself incarcerated once again. But given that the appellant's
sentence is now complete and that he is no longer either
incarcerated or subject to supervision, there is no longer a live
issue present in the case.
The appellant acknowledges as much, admitting that
"avoiding the mootness doctrine would require the disregard of
prior precedent." Nevertheless, he opposes the dismissal of his
appeals despite what he characterizes as "insurmountable hurdles"
to the contrary.
The appellant's efforts to show that his appeals still
present a live controversy are futile. To begin, he fails to
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identify any exception to the mootness doctrine that applies here.
Although he cites to cases that address whether collateral
consequences attendant to a revocation of parole might serve as an
exception to the mootness doctrine, see Spencer v. Kemna, 523 U.S.
1 (1998); State v. McElveen, 802 A.2d 74 (Conn. 2002), his appeals
in no way challenge the district court's serial revocations of his
supervised release. Nor does he contend that he will incur any
collateral consequences as a result of the unsealing of the records
at this time: the harms limned in the appeals themselves were
fully dissipated once he was freed from supervision, and he does
not point to any other cognizable harms.
Struggling to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat,
the appellant directs our attention to the decision in Black v.
Hathaway, 616 F. App'x 650 (5th Cir. 2015) (per curiam), an
unpublished and nonprecedential case from the Fifth Circuit. That
opinion addresses whether the "favorable-termination rule" (which
requires that a plaintiff alleging unconstitutional conviction or
imprisonment under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 show a successful direct or
collateral challenge to the underlying criminal proceeding, see
Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 486-87 (1994)) applies in cases
where federal habeas relief is no longer available. See Black,
616 F. App'x at 652-54. The relevance of that opinion to the issue
at hand is unclear, and the appellant does not further elaborate.
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For aught that appears, the opinion in Black does not advance the
appellant's cause.
The short of it is that the expiration of the appellant's
sentence has extinguished any live controversy, thus requiring
dismissal of the appellant's appeals as moot. The appellant has
failed to show cause to the contrary.
III
We need go no further. For the reasons elucidated above,
the appeals are
Dismissed.
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