United States of America v. Louis Andrew Rabbitt, Jr.

United States Court of Appeals
For the Eighth Circuit
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No. 24-1987
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United States of America
lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee
v.
Louis Andrew Rabbitt, Jr.
lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant
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Appeal from United States District Court
for the District of South Dakota - Central
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Submitted: June 9, 2025
Filed: July 9, 2025
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Before COLLOTON, Chief Judge, ARNOLD and GRUENDER, Circuit Judges.
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ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.
A jury found Louis Rabbitt guilty of failing to register as a sex offender, see
18 U.S.C. § 2250(a); assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer with a deadly
or dangerous weapon, see id. § 111(a), (b); and committing a crime of violence while

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failing to register as a sex offender, see id. § 2250(d). After the district court1
sentenced him to 77 months in prison, he appealed to our court, maintaining that the
evidence was insufficient to convict him of any of these charges. We affirm.
During the early summer of 2023, Rabbitt began a term of supervised release
following a conviction for failing to register as a sex offender. His probation officer,
Derek Seeley, testified at trial that he met with Rabbitt a few times over the course
of a month, including at the address Rabbitt listed as his residence on the sex-offender
registry. According to Seeley, Rabbitt then missed a scheduled meeting, and when
Seeley visited Rabbitt’s home, Rabbitt wasn’t there. Seeley said that he spoke with
Rabbitt on the phone less than two weeks later, and Rabbitt informed him that “he
was struggling with his living arrangements.” Seeley testified that he eventually lost
contact with Rabbitt, and so the district court issued a warrant for Rabbitt’s arrest.
Deputy U.S. Marshal Brian Graves testified about his efforts to find Rabbitt
over the next month and a half. He related that deputy marshals knocked on the door
of Rabbitt’s registered address one day and, when no one answered, they “breached
the door” and went inside, finding no one. When they returned about a month later,
Graves said, the apartment was boarded up, and Rabbitt’s whereabouts were still
unknown.
Later that day, deputy marshals found Rabbitt in a parked car outside a
residence. Five of them testified about what happened next. The deputy marshals
ordered Rabbitt to get out of the car, and Rabbitt did so while holding a metal
baseball bat. After motioning with the bat, Rabbitt fled, and the deputy marshals gave
chase. At one point Rabbitt stopped and faced two of them with bat in hand, and then
1The Honorable Roberto A. Lange, Chief Judge, United States District Court
for the District of South Dakota.
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he took off again, dropping the bat along the way. The deputy marshals eventually
captured and subdued him after a struggle.
At trial Rabbitt moved for a judgment of acquittal, arguing that the evidence
against him was insufficient to support a conviction. The district court denied the
motion. We review the district court’s decision de novo, considering the evidence in
a light most favorable to the verdict. See United States v. Keck, 2 F.4th 1085, 1090
(8th Cir. 2021).
With respect to his conviction for knowingly failing to register as a sex
offender, see 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a), Rabbitt protests that he attempted to register on
two different days in July but was turned away and told to return another time. For
one thing, though, the evidence at trial about the number of times Rabbitt visited the
registration office that month is less than crystalline, and we believe a reasonable jury
could find from it that Rabbitt attempted to register only once. Regardless, though,
a reasonable jury could also determine that Rabbitt was attempting merely to fulfill
his biannual obligation to re-register as a sex offender. See S.D. Codified Laws § 22-
24B-7. But as the district court instructed the jury, Rabbitt also had an obligation to
update the registry no later than three business days after he changed his residence,
see 34 U.S.C. § 20913(c), and Rabbitt didn’t do that or attempt to do that for months
even though there was ample evidence that he no longer lived at the apartment he
listed on the registry.
Rabbitt says that, even though Seeley and the deputy marshals failed to make
contact with him at the listed residence several times over the course of a few months,
it doesn’t necessarily follow that he had moved out of the apartment. After all, he
argues, he wasn’t required to be at the apartment at all times. A reasonable jury could
conclude, however, that Rabbitt had indeed moved out. Rabbitt’s ex-girlfriend and
his sister (both of whom lived at the same apartment) testified that Rabbitt had moved
out by the middle of July. And according to Graves, the apartment was boarded up
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when he visited it in September. On this record, the jury was not obligated to believe
he still lived there.
In his next effort to challenge this conviction, Rabbitt states that, even if he did
move out of the apartment in the middle of July, the evidence doesn’t show that he
had any “residence” after that, with “residence” being defined as set forth in the jury
instructions as “the location of the defendant’s home or other place where the
defendant habitually lives.” See also 34 U.S.C. § 20911(13). Once again, though, we
think the jury could reasonably disagree with Rabbitt, as his ex-girlfriend testified
that after she and Rabbitt moved out of the apartment, they lived together for about
two weeks in a trailer belonging to one of Rabbitt’s friends.
Our opinion in United States v. Voice, 622 F.3d 870 (8th Cir. 2010), is
instructive. There, a sex offender absconded from a halfway house that he listed as
his residence on the sex-offender registry. There was evidence at his trial that after
he left the halfway house he lived for about ten days in someone’s home and then in
an abandoned comfort station. We rejected his contention that he hadn’t changed
residences. See id. at 873–75. We agreed with a case that had “affirmed a jury
instruction that an updated registration is required if a sex offender leaves his
registered residence with no intent to return.” See Voice, 622 F.3d at 875 n.2 (citing
United States v. Van Buren, 599 F.3d 170, 172–75 (2d Cir. 2010)). Moving from a
listed residence to anywhere else, whether a singular location or several, is a “change”
of residence, as the offender can no longer be expected to be found at the place listed
in the sex-offender registry. We also found it significant that the defendant stayed ten
days at someone’s home. See Voice, 622 F.3d at 874–75. Here, similarly, a reasonable
jury could conclude that Rabbitt lived for two weeks in his friend’s trailer, which his
ex-girlfriend explained was located in the “trailer courts” across from a grocery store.
If Voice should have listed the address of the home where he stayed for ten days, then
surely Rabbitt should’ve listed the address or other identifying information for the
trailer where he resided for two weeks.
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Rabbitt finally says that even if he failed to update his registration as required,
he didn’t do so “knowingly” as the statute requires because he didn’t realize he had
changed residences and triggered the obligation to provide an update. Voice resolves
this contention as well, as we rejected the defendant’s nearly identical argument that
he didn’t know that he had changed residences when he left the halfway house. See
id. at 875–76. We explained that a sex offender can, within the meaning of the statute,
knowingly fail to update his registration even when he doesn’t know that his failure
is unlawful. See id. at 876. Likewise here, the government didn’t have to show that
Rabbitt knew his failure to register was unlawful.
In sum, sufficient evidence supports Rabbitt’s conviction for failing to register
as a sex offender, and the district court did not err in denying Rabbitt’s motion for
judgment of acquittal.
We turn now to Rabbitt’s conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 111. That statute
provides that whoever uses a deadly or dangerous weapon and “forcibly assaults,
resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes with” a deputy marshal while he
is engaged in his official duties is guilty of a crime. A conviction under § 111 does
not require that the defendant make physical contact with the officer; “[a]ll that is
required is such a threat or display of physical aggression toward the officer as to
inspire fear of pain, bodily harm, or death.” See United States v. Wilkins, 25 F.4th
596, 599 (8th Cir. 2022). To determine whether the requisite degree of force was
displayed, we consider whether the defendant’s actions “would reasonably have
inspired fear in a reasonable person.” See id.
Rabbitt maintains that he didn’t forcibly assault, resist, or impede the deputy
marshals but simply “did one thing: he ran away while holding a bat in his hand.”
And, he continues, though he stopped at one point during his flight and turned toward
two deputy marshals, “he was three to four yards away and . . . did not swing the bat.”
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He also suggests that if he did use the bat in an apparently threatening manner, there
was no evidence that he did so intentionally as opposed to accidentally. See id.
Considering the evidence in a light most favorable to the verdict, we disagree
with Rabbitt’s contentions. The deputy marshals consistently testified that Rabbitt
didn’t immediately get out of the car where officers found him despite their several
commands. One of the deputy marshals said that, after he got out of the car and stood
there with the bat, Rabbitt didn’t obey orders to drop the bat but instead made
motions indicating he was “loosening up” and getting “[r]eady to go.” Another deputy
marshal described Rabbitt as taking “an aggressive stance” with the bat. Then when
Rabbitt fled, the two deputy marshals hot on Rabbitt’s heels explained what happened
when Rabbitt stopped momentarily and faced them. One testified that Rabbitt
continued to refuse orders to drop the bat and stood “as if he was either going to run
at us or he was going to continue his flight,” which he described as a “[v]ery
dangerous” situation. The other testified that Rabbitt turned around “with the bat in
the air, like he was getting ready to swing at us,” or in other words, “like he was
getting ready to swing a[n] ax to come down on somebody.” Both deputy marshals
demonstrated for the jury how Rabbitt stood with the bat and testified that Rabbitt’s
actions led them to draw their guns. It is manifest that a reasonable jury could
conclude on this record that Rabbitt used the bat to make “such a threat or display of
physical aggression toward the officer[s] as to inspire fear of pain, bodily harm, or
death,” see Wilkins, 25 F.4th at 599, and that he did so intentionally and not
accidentally.
Finally, Rabbitt challenges his conviction for committing a crime of violence
while failing to register as a sex offender. See 18 U.S.C. § 2250(d). He argues that,
since the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions under § 111 or
§ 2250(a), then it’s necessarily insufficient to support a conviction under § 2250(d).
But for the reasons we just explained, the evidence was sufficient to support those
convictions, and so his challenge to his conviction under § 2250(d) fails too.
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Affirmed.
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