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The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a district court’s preliminary order for forfeiture against a man convicted of child pornography-related crimes in a per curiam order issued Wednesday and reinstated a final judgment issued in 2020.
According to court records, Charles Skaggs was found guilty in 2019 and sentenced in January 2020 for producing and possessing child pornography.
His indictment included a notice that the government intended to seek forfeiture of Skaggs’ property that law enforcement had seized during the investigation.
In the five months between his trial and Skaggs’ sentencing hearing in 2020, the government did not move for, nor did the district court enter, a preliminary order of forfeiture.
As part of his sentence, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana included a broadly worded forfeiture order in the final judgment.
Skaggs broached the subject and objected to forfeiture on the ground that some of the property sought by the government did not relate to his crimes.
The district court replied that, after sentencing, it would ask the government to itemize the property and then give Skaggs a chance to object.
The court proceeded to enter judgment, sentencing Skaggs to life imprisonment.
The judgment included a forfeiture provision that merely duplicated language from the notice in the indictment: “The defendant shall forfeit all images of child pornography … and all property seized during the searches of the defendant[], his residence, and [his] laundry room.”
Skaggs appealed, and the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction and sentence in United States v. Skaggs, 25 F.4th 494 (7th Cir. 2022), cert. denied, 143 S. Ct. 604 (2023).
In July 2022, more than two years after judgment, the government moved in the district court for a “preliminary” order of forfeiture.
Four days later, the court entered the requested order, without giving Skaggs the promised chance to object. (Skaggs had tried to object, but the court did not receive the filing until after it had ruled.)
Unlike the judgment, which described the forfeited property only in broad terms, the forfeiture order itemized each piece of property that Skaggs had forfeited.
Skaggs filed a notice of appeal shortly after the court entered the order.
While Skaggs’ appeal was pending, the government filed a notice in the district court stating that it had returned some of the seized property to Skaggs’ son.
On appeal, Skaggs argued that the district court failed to follow Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.2.
Under that rule, a district court normally must determine what is forfeitable and enter the preliminary order before sentencing; then at sentencing, the court must include what property is forfeited in its oral pronouncement of the sentence.
Skaggs argues that the district court’s deviation from this sequence means the court had no authority to order forfeiture against him.
The government conceded that the district court neither entered a timely preliminary order nor announced at sentencing what property Skaggs would forfeit.
It insisted, however, that those deadlines are “time-related directives” and thus harmless-error review applies.
According to the 7th Circuit, had Skaggs raised this challenge on direct appeal, the appellate court would consider whether the district court violated a time-related directive or a mandatory-claims processing rule and thus whether the forfeiture provision of the judgment was lawful.
But since the appellate court had already affirmed the judgment on direct appeal, the court is reviewing only the “preliminary” order of forfeiture.
“We conclude that the district court did not have the authority to enter that order. District courts generally lack the authority to alter a final criminal judgment after sentencing, outside the narrow circumstances and 14-day time limit provided by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 35(a),” the order stated, with the court citing Dillon v. United States, 560 U.S. 817, 824 (2010).
The order noted that, in Skaggs’ case, the district court attempted to amend its final judgment years after entry: It included a broad forfeiture provision in the final judgment, and more than two years later it entered a “preliminary” order of forfeiture that itemized the property forfeited.
The 7th Circuit order added that, because the court is vacating the preliminary order of forfeiture, the district court’s final judgment remains in effect.
“This judgment included a broad forfeiture provision that seems to cover the property still retained by the government: ‘The defendant shall forfeit all images of child pornography … and all property seized during the searches of the defendant[], his residence, and [his] laundry room,’” the order stated.
Finally, the order stated that Skaggs may not use this challenge to the belated preliminary forfeiture order to reopen arguments about his criminal judgment.
Judges Diane Wood, Michael Brennan and John Lee issued the per curiam order.
The case is United States of America v. Charles Skaggs, Jr., 22-2424.
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