Moroni Johnson v. United States

Petitioner, the father of multiple female and male children with his longtime spouse and other women, was convicted of conspiring to transport minor females (including some of his own minor daughters) in interstate commerce for illegal sexual activity. The district court sentenced petitioner to serve 25 years in federal prison. The court also imposed a lifetime term of supervised release to commence upon petitioner’s release from prison. One of the conditions of supervised release categorically prohibits petitioner from having any type of direct or indirect “contact” with all victims, as well as all of the victims’ “family” members, without written permission of a supervising probation officer. On its face, that broad condition necessarily prohibits petitioner from having any unapproved contact with his spouse and also all of petitioner’s non-victim adult children, who are the siblings or half-siblings of petitioner’s daughters who were victimized. On appeal to the Ninth Circuit, petitioner challenged the condition of supervision as an infringement of his fundamental constitutional right to associate with his immediate non-victim family members. Petitioner requested, as a remedy, a remand to the district court with instructions simply to modify the condition so as not to prohibit petitioner from having unapproved contact with any immediate family member who is neither a victim of the offense nor a minor. The Ninth Circuit refused to address the merits of this constitutional challenge after concluding that the issue was not “ripe” for resolution because, by the time that petitioner will be released at the end of his lengthy prison sentence, his familial relationships may differ from the relationships that exist at the time his direct appeal. The questions presented are: I. Whether a purely legal challenge to a condition of supervised release raised on direct appeal by a federal defendant who still must serve a significant term of imprisonment before commencing supervised release is “ripe” for resolution when the condition, on its face, violates a fundamental constitutional right. II. Whether this Court should overrule its precedent recognizing a “prudential” ripeness doctrine and limit ripeness analysis to Article III considerations.