United States v. Steve Walls ( 2013 )


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  •                   United States Court of Appeals
    For the Eighth Circuit
    ___________________________
    No. 12-3295
    ___________________________
    United States of America
    lllllllllllllllllllll Plaintiff - Appellee
    v.
    Steve Ray Walls
    lllllllllllllllllllll Defendant - Appellant
    ____________
    Appeal from United States District Court
    for the Western District of Missouri - Kansas City
    ____________
    Submitted: April 8, 2013
    Filed: May 6, 2013
    [Unpublished]
    ____________
    Before COLLOTON, MELLOY, and SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges.
    ____________
    PER CURIAM.
    Steve Ray Walls was indicted for failing to register as a sex offender under the
    Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (“SORNA” or “Act”). See 
    18 U.S.C. § 2250
    (a), (c); 
    42 U.S.C. §§ 16911
    , 16913. The district court1 denied Walls’s motion
    to dismiss the indictment on several grounds. Walls entered a conditional guilty plea,
    reserving his right to appeal that denial. We affirm his conviction.
    Walls pled guilty to attempted aggravated sexual battery in Wyandotte County,
    Kansas, on June 26, 1995. At the time of his conviction, the government informed
    Walls of his duty to register as a sex offender in Kansas. Walls had several prior state
    convictions for failure to comply with Kansas’s registration requirements. On
    January 24, 2009, Walls was arrested in Kansas City, Missouri, on outstanding
    Wyandotte County, Kansas warrants. In a January 27, 2009 interview with the United
    States Marshals Service, Walls admitted that he knew he was required to register as
    a sex offender in Missouri but that he had not done so. He was released to Kansas,
    convicted under Kansas’s Offender Registration Act, and placed on probation.
    In December 2009, his Kansas probation officer attempted to complete a home
    visit at Walls’s previously reported Kansas City, Kansas address but was unable to
    locate him there. Authorities later located Walls in Kansas City, Missouri, and he
    reported staying at the City Union Mission in Kansas City, Missouri. Walls had not
    registered as a sex offender in Missouri. A grand jury indicted Walls on one count
    of violating SORNA from January 27, 2009, to July 13, 2010.
    On appeal, Walls raises the same arguments rejected by the district court:
    (1) he had no duty to register under SORNA because he was not specifically informed
    of the requirement prior to the charged offense, (2) his conviction for a SORNA
    violation violates the Ex Post Facto Clause, (3) Congress violated the nondelegation
    doctrine when it allowed the Attorney General to establish SORNA’s applicability to
    sex offenders convicted before passage of the Act, and (4) the Attorney General
    1
    The Honorable Greg Kays, United States District Judge for the Western
    District of Missouri.
    -2-
    violated the Administrative Procedures Act (“APA”) when he issued an interim
    regulation declaring SORNA to be retroactively applicable to those convicted before
    the Act passed without abiding by the APA’s notice-and-comment requirements.
    Each of Walls’s grounds for appeal involves claims of statutory construction
    or constitutional error, and thus we review his appeal de novo. See Royal v. Kautzky,
    
    375 F.3d 720
    , 722 (8th Cir. 2004). We are bound by our prior precedent, and each
    of Walls’s challenges has been previously rejected by this Court. See United States
    v. Baccam, 
    562 F.3d 1197
    , 1199-1200 (8th Cir. 2009) (holding that an offender need
    only be notified of state law registration requirements to sustain a conviction under
    section 2250(a)); United States v. Waddle, 
    612 F.3d 1027
    , 1029 (8th Cir. 2010)
    (holding SORNA does not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause because it does not
    punish defendants for having been convicted of a crime but instead punishes sex
    offenders who travel in interstate commerce after SORNA’s enactment and who fail
    to register as required by SORNA); United States v. Kuehl, 
    706 F.3d 917
    , 920 (8th
    Cir. 2013) (holding the congressional grant of authority to the Attorney General in
    
    42 U.S.C. § 16913
    (d) to be constitutionally valid because Congress had set forth an
    intelligible principle to guide in the exercise of the granted authority); United States
    v. Knutson, 
    680 F.3d 1021
    , 1023 (8th Cir. 2012) (per curiam) (holding that defendant
    could not challenge whether interim rule violated the APA’s notice-and-comment
    requirement when he pled guilty to violating SORNA for a period of time after the
    final guidelines, which did go through the notice-and-comment process, became
    effective on August 1, 2008).
    We therefore affirm the judgment of the district court.
    ______________________________
    -3-
    

Document Info

Docket Number: 12-3295

Judges: Colloton, Melloy, Per Curiam, Shepherd

Filed Date: 5/6/2013

Precedential Status: Non-Precedential

Modified Date: 11/6/2024