No. 22-1076

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Appellee,

v.

CHRISTOPHER SAEMISCH,

Defendant, Appellant.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

[Hon. George A. O'Toole, Jr., U.S. District Judge]

Before

Barron, Chief Judge, Selya and Thompson, Circuit Judges.

Zainabu Rumala, Assistant Federal Public Defender, for appellant. Raquelle L. Kaye, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Rachael S. Rollins, United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee.

June 5, 2023 SELYA, Circuit Judge. This appeal requires us, for the first time, to address the so-called "turnover" statute. See 18 U.S.C. § 3664(n). Under this legislation, prison inmates are required to put "substantial resources" acquired while incarcerated toward unpaid restitution obligations. Id. Concluding, as we do, that the district court's application of the statute was both lawful and within the compass of its discretion, we affirm its order regarding the disposition of the appellant's funds.

I

We briefly rehearse the relevant facts and travel of the case. In March of 2019, a jury convicted defendant-appellant Christopher Saemisch of distributing child pornography. See 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(2)(A). Following his conviction, the district court sentenced him to a 360-month term of immurement and a lifetime of supervised release. It also ordered him to make restitution to the victims of his crime. See id. § 2259; see also Paroline v. United States, 572 U.S. 434, 443-48 (2014) (explaining special method of calculating restitution in child pornography cases).

The district court's restitution order, incorporated in its amended judgment, fixed the restitution amount at $18,000. Additionally, the order stated that "[p]ayment of the restitution shall begin immediately and shall be made according to the

- 2 - requirements of the Federal Bureau of Prisons' Inmate Financial Responsibility Program while the [appellant] is incarcerated and according to a court-ordered repayment schedule during the term of supervised release."

During the appellant's incarceration, the government learned that his inmate trust account — an account maintained for him by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) into which "[f]amily, friends, or other sources" may make deposits, 28 C.F.R. § 506.1 — reflected a balance of $10,956.36. Citing an amalgam of statutory provisions, see 18 U.S.C. §§ 3613(a), 3664(m), (n), the government moved for an order authorizing the BOP to "turnover to the Clerk of the Court all funds held" in the appellant's account, to be used "as payment towards" his outstanding restitution obligation. At the time, the appellant had paid no more than a few hundred dollars on account of that debt.1

Proceeding pro se, the appellant opposed the motion. He explained that — between October 1, 2020 and August 13, 2021 — he had received money from three principal sources: $10,555 from the settlement of a lawsuit brought to recover the value of items stolen from him after he was arrested; $1,725 in COVID-related

1In the court below, the government asserted that the appellant had paid only $46.82 toward restitution. Record evidence, though, suggests that the government's assertion may have undershot the mark. The apparent discrepancy is not material for present purposes, and we do not attempt to resolve it.

- 3 - stimulus checks issued by the federal