John Benjamin Thornton pleaded guilty in 2023 to cyberstalking and transmitting threats in interstate commerce. He was sentenced to 60 months of imprisonment followed by a three-year term of supervised release. Upon his release in March 2025, a mandatory condition of his supervision required him to report to the probation office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, within 72 hours. Instead of traveling to Albuquerque, Thornton went to Denver, Colorado. He claimed he feared for his life due to threats from the Surreños and Nuevos Mexicos gangs, citing a protective order he had drafted. He contacted his New Mexico probation officer by phone on April 1, 2025, to express his fears. The officer investigated the allegations but found no validity to them. Although she agreed to help him transfer supervision to Denver, the Denver office declined the transfer. The district court subsequently found Thornton violated his supervised release conditions and revoked his release, sentencing him to five months of imprisonment followed by a new three-year term of supervised release.
The Tenth Circuit reviewed the district court's decision to revoke supervised release for an abuse of discretion. The court addressed three main arguments raised by Thornton. First, regarding the claim that his violation was not willful due to fear of gang violence, the court noted that such a claim relies on the affirmative defenses of necessity or duress, not a lack of intent. The court explained that the defense of duress requires establishing an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury, a well-grounded fear that the threat will be carried out, and no reasonable opportunity to escape the harm. The court found that Thornton failed to develop an adequate appellate argument on this issue, effectively waiving the defense. Second, the court rejected the argument that the probation officer's request to transfer supervision excused his initial failure to report. The court reasoned that the revocation was based on the failure to report to New Mexico in the first place, and subsequent permission to stay in Denver did not retroactively excuse that violation. Finally, the court dismissed the claim that Thornton should have been given a chance to report to New Mexico after the transfer was denied, holding that this did not excuse the initial violation or constitute an abuse of discretion.
The judgment revoking Thornton's supervised release is affirmed, meaning he must serve the five-month reimprisonment term followed by a new three-year term of supervised release. The decision clarifies that unverified subjective fears of gang violence do not automatically excuse non-compliance with mandatory reporting conditions. It also establishes that a defendant must properly develop and brief the elements of a duress defense in the appellate record to succeed on that theory. The case remains subject to the district court's original findings on other unchallenged violations, though the government did not rely on them for this specific ruling.