United States v. Wilkin Pettis , 445 F. App'x 662 ( 2011 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 11-4459
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff – Appellee,
v.
WILKIN O’NEAL PETTIS,
Defendant – Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
South Carolina, at Columbia. Cameron McGowan Currie, District
Judge. (3:08-cr-00396-CMC-3)
Submitted: September 6, 2011 Decided: September 9, 2011
Before DAVIS, KEENAN, and DIAZ, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
James P. Rogers, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Columbia,
South Carolina, for Appellant. William N. Nettles, United
States Attorney, T. DeWayne Pearson, Assistant United States
Attorney, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Wilkin O’Neal Pettis appeals the district court’s
judgment revoking his supervised release and sentencing him to
ten months’ imprisonment. The district court revoked Pettis’s
supervised release based on a finding that Pettis had engaged in
new criminal conduct when he interfered with a police officer in
the discharge of the officer’s duties, in violation of Forest
Acres, South Carolina Code of Ordinances § 15-7 (“the
Ordinance”). Pettis argues on appeal that the Ordinance is
unconstitutionally vague. We affirm.
We review properly-preserved constitutional claims de
novo. United States v. Hall, 551 F.3d 257, 266 (4th Cir. 2009).
Due process requires that a penal statute “define the criminal
offense [1] with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people
can understand what conduct is prohibited and [2] in a manner
that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory
enforcement.” Skilling v. United States, 130 S. Ct. 2896, 2927-
28 (2010) (internal quotation marks omitted); see Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 77 (1976) (per curiam) (“Due process requires
that a criminal statute provide adequate notice to a person of
ordinary intelligence that his contemplated conduct is illegal,
for no [perso]n shall be held criminally responsible for conduct
which he could not reasonably understand to be proscribed.”)
(internal quotation marks omitted).
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Under the Ordinance, “[a]ny person who shall resist or
interfere with any policeman in the discharge of his duties
shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.” Pettis argues that the
Ordinance’s prohibition of “resist[ing]” or “interfer[ing]” with
a police officer in the discharge of his duties is
unconstitutionally vague. Claims of statutory vagueness that do
not implicate the First Amendment “must be examined in the light
of the facts of the case at hand.” United States v. Sun, 278
F.3d 302, 309 (4th Cir. 2002) (internal quotation marks
omitted). Accordingly, this court’s review is limited to
whether Pettis had fair notice that the statute at issue
proscribed his conduct. United States v. Hsu, 364 F.3d 192, 196
(4th Cir. 2004). We conclude that he did and that the district
court did not err in denying Pettis’s motion to dismiss the
revocation petition.
Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s judgment.
We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal
contentions are adequately presented in the materials before the
court and argument would not aid the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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