United States v. Sastrom ( 2024 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 22-1750
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
ROY SASTROM,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Patti B. Saris, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Montecalvo, Selya, and Rikelman,
Circuit Judges.
Max Rodriguez, with whom Pollock Cohen LLP was on brief, for
appellant.
Donald C. Lockhart, Assistant United States Attorney, with
whom Joshua S. Levy, Acting United States Attorney, was on brief,
for appellee.
March 15, 2024
SELYA, Circuit Judge. It is black-letter law that a
federal court cannot hear a moot case. See Gulf of Me. Fishermen's
All. v. Daley, 292 F.3d 84, 88 (1st Cir. 2002); In re Cont'l Mortg.
Invs., 578 F.2d 872, 877 (1st Cir. 1978). Even when a case is not
moot, however, we may in particular circumstances exercise our
discretion and decline to order a certain remedy. See 13B Charles
Alan Wright, et al., Federal Practice and Procedure § 3533.1 (3d
ed.). This is such a case.
Defendant-appellant Roy Sastrom is serving a term of
supervised release. The United States District Court for the
District of Massachusetts modified his supervised release
conditions, and Sastrom seeks to challenge that modification. But
there is a rub: Sastrom's case has since been transferred to the
District of Connecticut, which is in another circuit, pursuant to
18 U.S.C. § 3605. Given this transfer, we currently lack authority
to adjust Sastrom's supervised release conditions and cannot
provide any viable remedy short of requesting the district court
to attempt to retrieve this case from Connecticut. Concluding
that we are not obligated either to advise the district court to
attempt to retrieve Sastrom's case or to cross jurisdictional
lines, we leave the parties where we found them and affirm.
I
We briefly rehearse the relevant facts and travel of the
case.
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A
In 1994, Sastrom was acquitted in a Connecticut state
court by reason of mental disease or defect on charges of
harassment, threatening, and attempted larceny. See Conn. Gen.
Stat. §§ 53a-182b(a), 53a-62(a)(2), 53a-49, 53a-125a. These
charges grew out of letters that Sastrom wrote while serving a
fifteen-year sentence in a Connecticut state prison for the
commission of burglaries.
Following his acquittal, Sastrom was committed to the
jurisdiction of the Connecticut Psychiatric Security Review Board
(the PSRB) for a period not to exceed forty years. On May 31,
2008 — while serving his civil commitment at a psychiatric hospital
in Connecticut — Sastrom escaped. He proceeded to burglarize two
homes in Maine (one of which belonged to a federal game warden);
steal a truck, an air pistol, and ammunition from the warden;
purchase a BB gun; and rob a bank. When arrested, Sastrom was
transferred to a Connecticut state prison. He later pleaded guilty
in the United States District Court for the District of
Massachusetts to charges of armed bank robbery and illegal
possession of ammunition. See 18 U.S.C. U.S.C. §§ 2113(d), 922(g).
While still incarcerated in Connecticut, Sastrom mailed
letters to the United States Supreme Court and the United States
Department of Veterans Affairs. Both letters contained the
statement "Anthrax Die!" — but neither letter actually contained
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anthrax. The letters led to further charges, and Sastrom pleaded
guilty to conveying false information and hoaxes. See 18 U.S.C.
§ 1038(a)(1).
All of these post-escape cases were effectively
consolidated and eventually landed in the District of
Massachusetts. In 2009, that court (Harrington, J.) accepted
Sastrom's guilty pleas and sentenced him to serve a 180-month term
of immurement, to be followed by a thirty-six-month term of
supervised release.1 The judgment did not require Sastrom to
report to Connecticut during his term of supervised release.
When the district court determined that Sastrom would
serve his federal sentence before completing his PSRB commitment,
the PSRB lodged a detainer with the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). The
detainer requested that the BOP return Sastrom to the PSRB's
jurisdiction upon the completion of his federal sentence. See
Sastrom v. Conn. Psych. Sec. Rev. Bd., No. 21-640, 2022 WL 226806,
at *1 (D. Conn. Jan. 25, 2022).
In 2022 — several months before he was scheduled to be
released from federal custody — Sastrom applied for release from
his civil commitment (which was set to end in 2034). Although
1 This sentence was imposed in the first of the two cases.
The sentence imposed in the second case was of shorter duration
and was to run concurrently with the sentence in the first case.
Consequently, the second sentence was subsumed by the first, and
its details need not concern us.
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acknowledging recent improvements in Sastrom's compliance with
treatment, the PSRB denied Sastrom's request in August of 2022.
The PSRB concluded that Sastrom still "ha[d] a psychiatric
disability to the extent that his [d]ischarge or [c]onditional
release would constitute a danger to himself or others."
Notwithstanding its acknowledgement that Sastrom's compliance with
treatment had been "recently improved," the PSRB ordered him
confined — upon his discharge from federal custody — in a maximum-
security setting, specifically, Whiting Forensic Division
(Whiting), a psychiatric hospital in Connecticut.2
On September 8, 2022, the probation office requested a
status conference in Sastrom's federal criminal case. The
probation office's apparent goal was to seek modification of
Sastrom's supervised release conditions with a view toward
requiring him to report directly to Whiting upon his release from
federal custody. The district court (Saris, J.) held a status
conference on September 16, 2022. Attorneys for the parties and
for the Attorney General of Connecticut were in attendance. Both
at the status conference and in a written opposition filed on
September 21, Sastrom's counsel asked that the court stay any
2Sastrom appealed the PSRB's 2022 decision. The Connecticut
Superior Court denied his application for discharge from the PSRB's
custody on February 20, 2024.
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decision on a proposed modification while the PSRB civil commitment
decision was still being litigated in Connecticut.
The district court rejected Sastrom's request, stating
at the hearing that it would not "decide [Sastrom's] mental health
status through the auspices of a supervised release proceeding."
Consistent with this view, the district court issued an order on
September 22, 2022. In that order, the court directed Sastrom,
upon his release from federal custody, to "report directly to the
Whiting Forensic Hospital (Connecticut), in accordance with" the
PSRB's civil commitment order. The court further ordered that
Sastrom's term of supervised release would run concurrently with
his civil commitment. And if Sastrom was released from his PSRB
commitment during his term of supervised release, he would then be
obliged to report to the probation office.
Sastrom was released from federal custody on September
27, 2022. His term of supervised release commenced at that time,
and he has since reported to Whiting. On October 4, 2022, he filed
a timely notice of appeal of the district court's September 22
order. In his appellate brief, Sastrom claims that the district
court abused its discretion by modifying his supervised release
conditions and requiring him to report to Whiting.
B
Normally, our account of the travel of the case would
end here. But certain subsequent events have raised questions
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concerning this court's continuing jurisdiction over Sastrom's
appeal. On November 4, 2022, the probation office requested that
the district court transfer Sastrom's case to the District of
Connecticut. Neither Sastrom nor the government objected to the
transfer, and on November 9, the district court ordered the
transfer of Sastrom's case to the District of Connecticut. The
court acted pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3605, which authorizes a
district court to "transfer jurisdiction over a probationer or
person on supervised release to the district court for any other
district to which the person is required to proceed as a condition
of his probation or release, or is permitted to proceed."
Sastrom's case was docketed in the District of Connecticut on
December 21, 2022.
II
In this venue, Sastrom argues that we should vacate the
September 22 transfer order because the district court abused its
discretion in that it "failed to consider the factors enumerated
in 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e) before modifying [his] conditions of
supervised release" and overlooked "copious evidence" germane to
these factors indicating that he should not have been returned to
Connecticut. Sastrom insists that we should instruct the
Massachusetts district court to request that the District of
Connecticut transfer the case back to the Massachusetts district
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court so that the Massachusetts district court may hold a new
hearing regarding Sastrom's supervised release conditions.
The government demurs. To begin, it offers several
reasons why we lack jurisdiction to reach the merits of Sastrom's
appeal. The government adds that — even if we reach the merits of
Sastrom's appeal — the district court acted well within the
encincture of its discretion.
Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. See
United States v. Rydle, 58 F.4th 14, 17 (1st Cir. 2023). Where,
as here, a jurisdictional question looms, that question must be
addressed before any relief can be granted. See Steel Co. v.
Citizens for a Better Env't, 523 U.S. 83, 94-95 (1998); Harris v.
Univ. of Mass. Lowell, 43 F.4th 187, 191 n.7 (1st Cir. 2022).
Accordingly, we start with the two jurisdictional arguments that
the government has advanced.
A
The government first contends that this case is
constitutionally moot because Sastrom has already reported to
Whiting and "there is no apparent basis for this [c]ourt to order
his release from state custody." Therefore, the government argues,
there is no "effectual relief" for us to provide with respect to
the challenged order.
Our analysis begins with constitutional bedrock. "A
case that becomes moot at any point during the proceedings is 'no
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longer a "Case" or "Controversy" for purposes of Article III.'"
United States v. Sanchez-Gomez, 584 U.S. 381, 385-86 (2018)
(quoting Already, LLC v. Nike, Inc., 568 U.S. 85, 91 (2013)). We
have held that a case becomes moot when the court is incapable of
affording meaningful relief, that is, relief that will ameliorate
the harm alleged. See Gulf of Me. Fishermen's All., 292 F.3d at
88. Such relief need not be "fully satisfactory." Church of
Scientology of Cal. v. United States, 506 U.S. 9, 13 (1992). The
"power to effectuate a partial remedy . . . is sufficient to
prevent [a] case from being moot." Id. "As 'long as the parties
have a concrete interest, however small, in the outcome of the
litigation, the case is not moot.'" Chafin v. Chafin, 568 U.S.
165, 172 (2013) (quoting Knox v. Serv. Emps. Int'l Union, Local
1000, 567 U.S. 298, 307-08 (2012)).
We recognize that the unique circumstances of Sastrom's
case constrain our ability to remedy his alleged injury. The time
Sastrom has already spent at Whiting cannot be recaptured, and it
does not appear that the district court can simply order his
release from state custody. Even so, we cannot say that Sastrom
has no "concrete interest, however small, in the outcome of the
litigation." Id.Our decision in United States v. Reyes-Barreto is
instructive. See 24 F.4th 82 (1st Cir. 2022). There, the
defendant challenged the reasonableness of his prison sentence and
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was released from incarceration during the pendency of his appeal,
at which point he began serving a term of supervised release. See
id. at 84-85. The government argued that the case was rendered
moot by the defendant's release, inasmuch as the allegedly
unreasonable prison term had already been served. See id. at 85.
We disagreed, holding that the defendant "absolutely ha[d] a stake
in the outcome of [his] appeal" because, "[i]f we were to determine
that his incarcerative sentence was unreasonable, he could seek
equitable relief" such as an early termination of his supervised
release or a modification of its terms. Id. at 85-86. So it is
here: if we were to hold that the district court abused its
discretion when it ordered Sastrom to report to Whiting as a
condition of his supervised release, and the district court on
remand were to hold that its modification of Sastrom's supervised
release terms was inappropriate after consideration of the
relevant factors, Sastrom could move for equitable relief by way
of a reduction of his supervised release term. Such relief could
be meaningful to Sastrom if he were to be released from state
custody prior to the end of his federal supervised release term,
which currently ends in September of 2025. This window of
potential relief signifies that Sastrom's appeal is not moot under
Article III.
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B
The government further contends that because this case
has been transferred to the Connecticut district court, which is
under the jurisdiction of the Second Circuit, we lack statutory
jurisdiction to hear the appeal. Sastrom responds by arguing that
the district court's order purporting to transfer his case to the
Connecticut district court was a "dead letter" because it was
issued after a notice of appeal had already been filed and depended
on the propriety of the challenged district court order. We hold
that, regardless of whether the district court's transfer to the
Connecticut district court was appropriate, the transfer did not
strip us of statutory jurisdiction to review a pre-transfer order.
The government posits that we lack statutory
jurisdiction to review the challenged order because the statute
under which Sastrom's case was transferred from Massachusetts to
Connecticut district court authorizes the "court to which
jurisdiction is transferred . . . to exercise all powers" related
to supervised release. 18 U.S.C. § 3605. Consequently, the
government says, "the transferee court presides over every facet
of supervised release, even with respect to events that predated
the transfer order."
The government is on sound ground in asserting that when
a case is transferred under 18 U.S.C. § 3605, the transferee
court's jurisdiction generally includes facets of supervised
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release related to events predating the transfer order — for
example, a transferee court has authority "to revoke a term of a
defendant's supervised release for violations committed prior to
the transfer of jurisdiction." United States v. Adams, 723 F.3d
687, 689 (6th Cir. 2013); see United States v. King, 608 F.3d 1122,
1126-27 (9th Cir. 2010). None of the cases cited by the
government, though, addresses whether the appellate court
embracing the transferor court lacks jurisdiction to review a pre-
transfer order. See, e.g., United States v. Clark, 405 F. App'x
89, 92-93 (8th Cir. 2010) (per curiam) (holding that transferor
court, after transfer, no longer had jurisdiction to rule on a
pre-transfer motion filed by defendant).
Although there is no case law in our circuit that
directly answers this question in the context of 18 U.S.C. § 3605,
we have held with respect to a transfer under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a)
that we retained jurisdiction to hear an interlocutory appeal from
a pre-transfer order by the transferor court even though the case
had since been transferred to an out-of-circuit district. See
Matrix Grp. Ltd. v. Rawlings Sporting Goods Co., 378 F.3d 29, 32
(1st Cir. 2004). In Matrix Group, we explained that because
appeals from a district court must be taken "to the court of
appeals for the circuit embracing the district," 28 U.S.C.
§ 1294(1), the appellant's right to appeal a pre-transfer
interlocutory order could "only be realized in the First Circuit."
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Matrix Grp., 378 F.3d at 32. We further held that because the
relevant appeal was filed before the case was docketed by the
transferee court, "this court had already acquired appellate
jurisdiction before the transfer was effective," and jurisdiction
was not terminated by the subsequent transfer. Id. (quoting Lou
v. Belzberg, 834 F.2d 730, 733 (9th Cir. 1987)).
Although Sastrom's case involves a different transfer
statute and a final rather than interlocutory order, we think that
our reasoning in Matrix Group applies to the situation at hand.
Sastrom's right to appeal the challenged order can be realized
only by our review, because the language of 28 U.S.C. § 1294(1)
does not permit a Massachusetts district court order to be reviewed
by a circuit not embracing the district. Cf. Jones v. InfoCure
Corp., 310 F.3d 529, 533 (7th Cir. 2002) (holding "that an
otherwise appealable order remains appealable even if a transfer
is ordered at a later time" and noting that, "given the language
of 28 U.S.C. § 1294[,] it is doubtful that the court of appeals in
the transferee area could exercise jurisdiction over an appealable
interlocutory order entered by a district court outside its
region"). Here, moreover — as in Matrix Group — we acquired
appellate jurisdiction before the transfer took effect. Thus, we
hold that we have statutory jurisdiction to hear Sastrom's appeal.
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III
Under ordinary circumstances, we would now reach the
merits of Sastrom's appeal. But because of the unusual procedural
posture of his case and the practical hurdles that Sastrom must
clear in obtaining any remedy, we affirm without reaching the
merits.
These practical hurdles stem from the fact that
Sastrom's case has already been docketed in Connecticut district
court and has proceeded there. See Probation Form 12B Petition
for Modification of Supervision with Consent of the Offender,
United States v. Sastrom, No. 3:08-00240 (D. Conn. Nov. 2, 2023).
"Once [such a] transfer is effected, the transferor court no longer
has jurisdiction to exercise the powers that may be exercised by
the transferee court." United States v. El Herman, 971 F.3d 784,
786 (8th Cir. 2020); see King, 608 F.3d at 1126-27 (explaining
that under section 3605's "statutory structure, the transferee
court steps into the shoes of the transferor court").
Consequently, we cannot simply remand this case for the
Massachusetts district court to reassess the challenged
modification to Sastrom's supervised release conditions because
the Massachusetts district court no longer has authority over his
supervised release. Nor can we order the Connecticut district
court to take any equivalent action because that court is part of
the Second Circuit, and we have no jurisdiction over it.
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To be sure, there is precedent in our circuit for
retrieving a case by means of informal mechanisms after it was
wrongfully transferred to a court outside of our jurisdiction. In
Forty Six Hundred LLC v. Cadence Education, LLC, we held that the
case had been erroneously remanded from federal district court to
state court. 15 F.4th 70, 80 (1st Cir. 2021). Because the case
had already proceeded in state court, we were "unable to identify
any formal procedural mechanism for [its] retrieval." Id.Nonetheless, we instructed the district court to "enlist the state
court's cooperation and restore the action to its own docket."
Id. at 81.
There are some similarities here: Sastrom's case has
already proceeded in Connecticut district court, and we cannot
identify any formal procedural mechanism for retrieving it. Were
we to find for Sastrom on the merits, we could follow Forty Six
Hundred's example and direct the district court to attempt to
enlist the Connecticut district court's cooperation to retrieve
his case. Id.We are not, however, obligated to provide such a
solution. "In some circumstances, a controversy, not actually
moot, is so attenuated that considerations of prudence and comity
for coordinate branches of government counsel the court to stay
its hand, and to withhold relief it has the power to grant."
Chamber of Com. v. United States Dep't of Energy, 627 F.2d 289,
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291 (D.C. Cir. 1980); see 13B Charles Alan Wright, et al., Federal
Practice and Procedure § 3533.1 (3d ed.) ("Remedial discretion is
often relied upon to determine that the prospective benefit of an
injunction, declaratory judgment, or other specific remedy is too
slight to justify decision."). This is such a case. The only
remedy we can provide Sastrom is an order directing the district
court to attempt to retrieve this case so that it may hold another
hearing about Sastrom's supervised release conditions and, if that
court determines that the prior modification order was improper,
grant an equitable reduction in or end to Sastrom's term of federal
supervised release. The likelihood of this process providing any
practical benefit to Sastrom is remote — it would only affect his
circumstances if he were released from state custody prior to the
end of his period of supervised release. His release from state
custody before then (September of 2025) appears particularly
unlikely following the Connecticut Superior Court's recent denial
of his application for discharge from the PSRB's custody. See
supra note 2. We add, moreover, that the execution of this
remedial process would require expending significant judicial
resources. Thus, we exercise our remedial discretion and decline
to grant this remedy.
We add that this case is distinguishable from Forty Six
Hundred in a key respect. In Forty Six Hundred, we emphasized
that "there [was] no question of waiver or estoppel" because the
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appellant had "at all times acted expeditiously to preserve its
right to a federal forum," including by asking the district court
to stay its remand order and, when that request was denied, asking
the First Circuit for a stay. 15 F.4th at 79. In contrast,
Sastrom did not object to, request a stay of, or appeal the
district court's order transferring his case to the Connecticut
district court, and his argument that the transfer was improper
was raised for the first time in his reply brief. See Sandstrom
v. ChemLawn Corp., 904 F.2d 83, 86 (1st Cir. 1990) (holding
argument waived because it "was not made to the district court or
in appellant's opening brief, surfacing only in his reply brief").
Consequently, we are not inclined to follow the path of Forty Six
Hundred and to direct the district court to attempt to retrieve
Sastrom's case from Connecticut.
Viewing the matter as a whole, we see little benefit to
shuttling Sastrom's case back and forth between district courts.
Sastrom has less than two years of supervised release remaining,
and — even if his federal sentence were terminated at this moment
— his liberty would still be constrained by his civil commitment.
As we already have stated, the Connecticut Superior Court recently
issued a decision refusing to discharge Sastrom from his civil
commitment. Although Sastrom may still pursue other avenues for
challenging his commitment, the Connecticut Superior Court's
recent denial of his latest entreaty makes it unlikely that he
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will secure his release from commitment before his sentence in
this case is already near or at its end.
IV
We need go no further. We will not order the district
court to retrieve jurisdiction of Sastrom's case and, thus, we
will not disturb the existing situation.
Affirmed.
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