Former Federal Prisoner’s Appeal Challenging Potential Self-Incrimination Dismissed as Moot

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has dismissed a former prisoner’s appeal challenging, on Fifth Amendment grounds, the lower court’s revocation of his supervised release, the appellate court holding his appeal moot as he had been subsequently released from prison.

Rudolph Stanko, convicted of firearm and ammunition possession, was under supervised release and required to complete a form possibly infringing on a person’s self-incrimination protections. Stanko refused to answer any of the form’s questions. Consequently, Stanko’s probation officer petitioned the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska to revoke Stanko’s supervised release for, among other reasons, his failure to fill out the form. The district court granted the petition and sentenced Stanko to seven days in prison with no supervised release to follow, rejecting Stanko’s argument of self-incrimination protections.

The form Stanko was required to complete as a condition of his supervised release contained questions such as “I have justified selling drugs, burglarizing homes, or robbing banks by telling myself that if I didn’t do it someone else would.” Asserting his alleged rights under the Fifth and Ninth Amendments, Stanko refused to answer any of the form’s questions.

Stanko appealed after his release from prison, arguing that his violation of supervised release could affect him in future sentencings and that his case was exempt under the “capable of repetition yet evading review” exception. On August 12, 2014, despite its reservations, the appellate court dismissed the appeal as moot, finding that Stanko suffered no “continuing injury.”

The appellate court concluded that both arguments failed to establish the legal standards of “some concrete and continuing injury” or persisting “collateral consequences” to avoid dismissal on mootness grounds. Accordingly, the court first held that a potential “enhanced sentence for a future crime” was irrelevant when “presu[ming] that Stanko will conduct his future activities [lawfully].” Second, the exception “capable of repetition yet evading review” was inapplicable where the appellate court declined to assume that Stanko would face a similar situation involving supervised release in the future.

Nevertheless, despite its reasoning, the appellate court stated that “[w]e are troubled by the potential no-win situation facing individuals on supervised release who are required to complete this one-size-fits-all form regardless of their offense of conviction, criminal history, or characteristics and background.” See: United States v. Stanko, 762 F.3d 826 (8th Cir. Neb. 2014).

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