Mental Health Evaluation/Counseling as a Special Condition of Supervised Release

Facts of the Case

Jacqueline Wayne was indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri on five counts of wire fraud in February 2008. She pleaded guilty to Count 1 of the indictment. Ms. Wayne received a sentence of 37 months' imprisonment, followed by three years' supervised release. As a special condition of supervised release, the court ordered Ms. Wayne to participate in a mental health evaluation, as directed by the probation office, for the purpose of determining if mental health counseling was needed. Ms. Wayne raised no objection to the initial supervised-release condition at the sentencing hearing. She also failed to file a direct appeal challenging the conditions of supervised release.

Ms. Wayne began her term of supervised release in April 2008. She was instructed by her probation officer to attend a mental health evaluation at Correctional Psychology Associates (CPA). Although Ms. Wayne reported to the scheduled evaluation, she refused to sign a release authorizing the probation office to receive the evaluation results. Without this release, CPA declined to perform an evaluation.

The sentencing court transferred jurisdiction over Ms. Wayne's supervision to the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado in September 2008. The probation office requested that the district court conduct a compliance review hearing because of Ms. Wayne's refusal to participate in the mental health evaluation. In December 2008, the district court held a hearing regarding Ms. Wayne's alleged failure to comply with the initial supervised-release condition. At the initial hearing, the court ordered Ms. Wayne to participate in the evaluation and to sign the necessary release for the probation office. The court also modified the conditions of supervised release to authorize the probation office to provide a copy of the presentence report to the mental health evaluator. The court ordered Ms. Wayne to cooperate with the mental health evaluator and to sign a release authorizing the evaluator to have access to her prior mental health records, if they were necessary to complete the evaluation, while assuring Ms. Wayne that the probation office would not have access to any medical records that preceded the mental health evaluation. The court ultimately stated that if the mental health evaluator determined that she needed mental health treatment, the probation office could request a modification of the supervised condition of release and could then make a determination as to whether treatment was necessary. Ms. Wayne appealed the court's order.

Ruling and Reasoning

In its decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed the decision by the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. The Tenth Circuit held that district courts have broad discretion to prescribe conditions of release, provided that such conditions are reasonably related to the nature of the offense, the history, and characteristics of the defendant; do not involve a greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary; and are consistent with policy statements issued by the Sentencing Commission. The sentencing guidelines address the requirement for the imposition of special conditions. A special condition must be reasonably related to the nature or the circumstances of the offense and the characteristics and history of the defendant. The Sentencing Guidelines also require that there be at least one of three possible purposes served by the condition: to afford deterrence of criminal conduct; to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant; or to provide the defendant with vocational or educational training, medical care, or other correctional treatment.

Ms. Wayne argued that the district court abused its discretion when it ordered her to sign a release authorizing the submission of her mental health evaluation to the probation office. In addition, she claimed that the initial supervised-release condition required only a mental health evaluation, not counseling. She argued that the sentencing court lacked a factual and legal basis to require mental health counseling as a special condition.

Ms. Wayne claimed a deprivation of liberty. She also raised the argument that a mental health evaluation is not reasonably related to factors referenced in statutes or is inconsistent with the pertinent policy statements in the sentencing guidelines. She asserted that the federally contracted provider performing the mental health evaluation would have a pecuniary interest in recommending treatment because it would ultimately provide such treatment.

These arguments had been raised for the first time in her reply brief and were waived on appeal. The Tenth Circuit court cited Bronson v. Swensen, 500 F.3d 1099 (10th Cir. 2007), and noted that courts had typically not considered arguments that were not raised or were not adequately presented in an appellant's opening brief. Concerning her claim that the district court's order unreasonably deprived her of liberty, the court cited United States v. Barajas, 331 F.3d 114 (10th Cir. 2003), and determined that the district court did not deprive her of liberty more than was necessary to provide the needed medical care or other correctional treatment. The Tenth Circuit ruled that the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that the probation office needed the mental health evaluation report to determine whether Ms. Wayne should have mental health counseling during her supervised-release term. The court noted that the district court had limited its order to the release of the evaluation and did not order the release of her preceding medical records to the probation office.

With regard to her assertion that the district court had no basis for its order, merely because four years had elapsed since her sentencing, the Tenth Circuit rejected that claim and responded that conditions of supervised release always follow the person's release from incarceration and that those individuals who serve lengthy prison terms are necessarily subject to conditions of release that were first imposed many years before the completion of their incarceration.