United States v. Mandrell

── United States v. Mandrell ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Date: April 20, 2026 Category: General Appellate Case: 25-7046 Document: 43-1 Date Filed: 04/20/2026 Page: 1 FILED United States Court of Appeals UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Tenth Circuit FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT April 20, 2026 _________________________________ Christopher M. Wolpert Clerk of Court UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. No. 25-7046 (D.C. No. 6:17-CR-00023-RAW-1) THOMPSON CHRISTOPHER KYLE (E.D. Okla.) MANDRELL, Defendant - Appellant. _________________________________ ORDER AND JUDGMENT * _________________________________ Before MATHESON, MORITZ, and FEDERICO, Circuit Judges. _________________________________ Thompson Mandrell lived in a halfway house while serving the supervised-release portion of his criminal sentence. A condition of his supervised release required him to follow the halfway house’s policies. The district court found he violated that condition based on evidence that he had sexually explicit material on his phone against halfway-house policy. This appeal requires us to decide if the court erred in making that finding. We conclude it did not. We have honored the parties’ request for a decision without oral argument. * See Fed. R. App. P. 34(f); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). This decision is not binding precedent except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. But it may be cited for its persuasive value. See Fed. R. App. P. 32.1; 10th Cir. R. 32.1.  Appellate Case: 25-7046 Document: 43-1 Date Filed: 04/20/2026 Page: 2 I Mandrell pleaded guilty to a federal crime in 2017. He received a prison sentence followed by a term of supervised release. Shortly after leaving prison for supervised release, he moved into the halfway house. One condition of his supervised release required him to “follow all policies and procedures during his stay at the halfway house.” R. vol. 1 at 16. And one of the halfway house’s policies prohibited “sexually explicit material on the premises” or in residents’ possession. R. vol. 2 at 53. After Mandrell had spent several months at the halfway house, the probation office alleged he had viewed sexually explicit material on his phone, violating the halfway-house policy and, in turn, the supervised-release condition requiring compliance with the policy. At the revocation hearing, a probation officer explained that Mandrell had monitoring software on his phone that allowed the officer to view the phone’s contents. Using this software, the officer had viewed images on Mandrell’s phone of “cartoon depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct.” Id. at 39. One image, for example, depicted a “prepubescent blonde female child passed out” while an adult male put “his penis into her mouth.” Id. at 41. The officer estimated that he saw 800 to 1,000 “obscene” images on Mandrell’s phone. Id. at 38. At the end of the hearing, the district court found that Mandrell had violated the condition requiring him to follow the halfway house’s policies. The court revoked supervised release. 2  Appellate Case: 25-7046 Document: 43-1 Date Filed: 04/20/2026 Page: 3 II