United States v. Anderson

Procedural entryThis page is a short order in United States v. Anderson. Read the opinion of the Court — 519 F.3d 1021
Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit·Decided March 25, 2008·No. 07-50145·Published

Opinion

FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,  No. 07-50145 Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No. v.  CR-89-00670-DSF- JIMMY ANDERSON, 01 Defendant-Appellant.  OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California Dale S. Fischer, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted March 5, 2008—Pasadena, California

Filed March 25, 2008

Before: John R. Gibson,* Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain, and Susan P. Graber, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Graber

*The Honorable John R. Gibson, Senior United States Circuit Judge for the Eighth Circuit, sitting by designation.

3003 UNITED STATES v. ANDERSON 3005

COUNSEL

Michael Tanaka, Deputy Federal Public Defender, Los Ange- les, California, for the defendant-appellant.

Terri K. Flynn and Nancy B. Spiegel, Assistant United States Attorneys, Los Angeles, California, for the plaintiff-appellee.

OPINION

GRABER, Circuit Judge:

Defendant Jimmy Anderson appeals the district court’s imposition of a 3-year term of supervised release after revoca- tion of a 90-day term of supervised release. Defendant argues that the court’s authority to reimpose a term of supervised 3006 UNITED STATES v. ANDERSON release under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e) (1993)1 was limited to the duration of the revoked term. We review de novo a district court’s application of the supervised release statute, United States v. Cade, 236 F.3d 463, 465 (9th Cir. 2000), and affirm.

In 1989, Defendant pleaded guilty to armed robbery in vio- lation of 18 U.S.C. § 2113. The district court sentenced Defendant to 63 months’ imprisonment plus a 5-year term of supervised release, the maximum term of supervised release authorized under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(b)(1). The district court revoked the supervised release when Defendant violated its terms and sentenced Defendant to 6 months’ imprisonment plus a 3-year term of supervised release. After being released from prison, Defendant again violated the terms of his super- vised release, and the district court sentenced Defendant to 7 months’ imprisonment and a 3-month term of supervised release. Defendant once again violated the terms of his super- vised release. On this third occasion, the court sentenced Defendant to 89 days’ imprisonment and a 3-year term of supervised release. Defendant timely appeals the 3-year term of supervised release.

His argument on appeal is that the district court erred because, under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e), the court was limited to the term of supervised release that it revoked minus any time in custody. In other words, according to Defendant, because the court revoked a 3-month term of supervised release and sentenced Defendant to 89 days’ imprisonment, the maximum term of supervised release that the court could have imposed was a term of one day. We disagree.

Under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, a district court’s authority to revoke a term of supervised release was governed 1 All references to 18 U.S.C. § 3583 in this opinion are to the statute in effect before Congress amended it with the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Pub. L. No. 103-322, 108 Stat. 1796, 1831, 2016-17, 2130-31. UNITED STATES v. ANDERSON 3007 by 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3), which authorized a district court to “revoke a term of supervised release, and require the per- son to serve in prison all or part of the term of supervised release without credit for time previously served on postre- lease supervision.” The statute did not explicitly authorize postrevocation supervised release. In 1994, Congress amended the supervised release statute and gave district courts the authority to order postrevocation supervised release under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(h). But courts “attribute postrevoca- tion penalties to the original conviction.” Johnson v. United States, 529 U.S. 694, 701 (2000). Consequently, where, as here, a defendant’s conviction occurred before the 1994 amendment, the district court’s authority to impose postrevo- cation penalties is governed by the pre-amendment version of § 3583. See id. at 702 (holding that § 3583(h) was not retroac- tive).

In Johnson, 529 U.S. at 713, the Supreme Court held that, “in applying the law as before the enactment of subsection (h), district courts have the authority to order terms of super- vised release following reimprisonment.” The Court reasoned:

Prisoners may, of course, vary in the degree of help needed for successful reintegration. Supervised release departed from the parole system it replaced by giving district courts the freedom to provide postrelease supervision for those, and only those, who needed it. Congress aimed, then, to use the dis- trict courts’ discretionary judgment to allocate super- vision to those releasees who needed it most. But forbidding the reimposition of supervised release after revocation and reimprisonment would be fun- damentally contrary to that scheme. A violation of the terms of supervised release tends to confirm the judgment that help was necessary, and if any pris- oner might profit from the decompression stage of supervised release, no prisoner needs it more than one who has already tried liberty and failed. He is 3008 UNITED STATES v. ANDERSON the problem case among problem cases, and a Con- gress asserting that “every releasee who does need supervision will receive it,” seems very unlikely to have meant to compel the courts to wash their hands of the worst cases at the end of reimprisonment.

Id. at 709-10 (citations omitted).

[1] Johnson thus held that a district court can impose a term of supervised release following postrevocation reimpri- sonment. Since Johnson, we have not addressed whether, and to what extent, a court is limited in doing so, particularly where, as here, a court revokes a defendant’s supervised release several times.

[2] Section 3583(e)(3) authorizes a district court to “revoke a term of supervised release, and require the person to serve in prison all or part of the term of supervised release without credit for time previously served on postrelease supervision.” (Emphasis added.) The text of § 3583(e)(3) thus implies that a court is limited in imposing postrevocation penalties by the term of supervised release being revoked. But that interpreta- tion would run counter to Johnson’s holding that postrevoca- tion penalties are “attribute[d] . . . to the original conviction.” 529 U.S. at 701 (emphasis added). Although Johnson did not involve repeated revocations of supervised release, we hold that, under Johnson, “original” means “original”2 — postrevocation penalties are limited to the term of supervised release imposed as part of a defendant’s sentence at convic- tion.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

United States v. Anderson, (9th Cir. 2008).

United States v. Anderson (United States v. Anderson) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related

Johnson v. United States
529 U.S. 694 (Supreme Court, 2000)
United States v. Douglas Keith Cade
236 F.3d 463 (Ninth Circuit, 2000)
United States v. Kevin Russell
340 F.3d 450 (Seventh Circuit, 2003)