Case: 19-40016 Document: 00515272571 Page: 1 Date Filed: 01/15/2020 IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT United States Court of Appeals No. 19-40016 Fifth Circuit FILED Summary Calendar January 15, 2020 Lyle W. Cayce UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Clerk Plaintiff - Appellee v. NORMAN VARNER, Defendant - Appellant Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas Before SMITH, DENNIS, and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges. STUART KYLE DUNCAN, Circuit Judge: Norman Varner, federal prisoner # 18479-078, appeals the denial of his motion to change the name on his judgment of confinement to “Kathrine Nicole Jett.” The district court denied the motion as meritless. We conclude that the district court lacked jurisdiction to entertain the motion and so vacate the court’s judgment. In conjunction with his appeal, Varner also moves that he be addressed with female pronouns. We will deny that motion. I. In 2012, Varner pled guilty to one count of attempted receipt of child pornography and was sentenced to 180 months in prison, to be followed by 15 Case: 19-40016 Document: 00515272571 Page: 2 Date Filed: 01/15/2020 No. 19-40016 years supervised release. Varner’s federal sentence was influenced by his previous convictions at the state level for possession of child pornography and failure to register as a sex offender. In 2018, Varner wrote a letter to the district court requesting that the name on his judgment of committal (“Norman Keith Varner”) be changed to reflect his “new legal name of Kathrine Nicole Jett.” Varner’s letter explained that he “ca[me] out as a transgender woman” in 2015, began “hormone replacement therapy” shortly after, and planned to have “gender reassignment surgery in the near future” in order to “finally become fully female.” Attached to Varner’s letter was a certified copy of a 2018 order from a Kentucky state court changing Varner’s name. The government opposed Varner’s request, arguing principally that Varner alleged no defect in the original judgment and that a “new preferred name” was not a basis for amending a judgment. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 36 (upon notice, court may “correct a clerical error in a judgment, order, or other part of the record”). The government also pointed out that, under Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) regulations, Varner would be able to use his preferred name as a secondary name or alias. See BOP Policy No. 5800.15, § 402(d). Finally, the government argued that Varner’s name change was, in any event, improperly obtained under Kentucky law: Varner swore in his petition that he was then a resident of “Covington, Kentucky,” when, in fact, he was at the time incarcerated at a federal facility in Waymart, Pennsylvania. The district court construed Varner’s letter as a motion to correct his judgment of committal and denied it on the merits. The court reasoned that a “new, preferred name is not a legally viable basis to amend the previously entered Judgment,” and, moreover, that inmates have no constitutional right to have prison records reflect a new name. Order ...
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals