United States v. Sherman Lavan Douglas

215 F. App'x 907
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
DecidedJanuary 30, 2007
Docket06-12770
StatusUnpublished

This text of 215 F. App'x 907 (United States v. Sherman Lavan Douglas) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Sherman Lavan Douglas, 215 F. App'x 907 (11th Cir. 2007).

Opinion

PER CURIAM:

In this appeal, we consider whether the district court abused its discretion in revoking Sherman Lavan Douglas’s supervised release for engaging in criminal activity while under supervision, where the court relied upon an electronic record of Douglas’s judgment of conviction — generated by the court’s own electronic filing system — rather than requiring the Government to produce a certified paper copy of the judgment. We hold that it did not. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

I.

On April 25, 2005, following 63-month federal prison sentence and while serving a 36-month term of supervised release, Sherman Lavan Douglas was arrested by Miami, Florida, police officers on state-law charges of burglary and robbery. He allegedly committed those crimes on February 9, 2005.

Also on April 25, 2005, acting on the news of Douglas’s arrest, the United States Probation Office filed in the district court a petition to revoke Douglas’s supervised release. Douglas’s probation officer alleged that Douglas’s conduct on February 9th violated the condition of his supervised release forbidding him from committing a crime while under supervision.

On May 9th, the district court granted the probation officer’s petition for action *908 and issued a warrant for Douglas’s arrest. He was arrested on June 1st. Meanwhile, on June 17th, after the State of Florida had dismissed the burglary and robbery charges against him, a federal grand jury returned a two-count indictment against Douglas for alleged Hobbs Act violations arising out of his February 9th conduct. As a result of the federal indictment, Douglas’s probation officer filed a superceding petition for revocation on June 30th, referencing the new indictment and again alleging that Douglas had violated a condition of his probation by “failing to refrain from violation of the law.” The district court scheduled a revocation hearing, but the hearing was continued several times.

Before the revocation hearing could be held, Douglas was tried on the federal charges. On March 27, 2006, a jury acquitted Douglas of conspiring to violate the Hobbs Act, but convicted him of substantively violating it. Douglas was not immediately sentenced.

Several weeks after his conviction, on April 19, 2006, the district court held the scheduled revocation hearing to determine if Douglas had violated a condition of his supervised release and, if so, to determine whether and how long he should be incarcerated for the violation. At the revocation hearing, Douglas’s counsel stated that Douglas denied having violated the Hobbs Act; nevertheless, Douglas’s counsel conceded that the Hobbs Act charges had been the subject of a lengthy trial and that Douglas had been convicted by a jury.

Probation Officer Stanley Branch testified at the hearing that he had filed the superceding petition to revoke Douglas’s supervised release on the basis of the two-count federal indictment, which was returned against Douglas on June 17, 2005, and which was based upon an incident that had occurred on February 9, 2005. Branch testified that, in preparing to file the petition, he had viewed the indictment and other documents related to the case on the district court’s electronic filing system. According to Branch, the electronic docket sheet indicated that Douglas had been convicted of the substantive Hobbs Act violation on March 27, 2006. The Government did not produce at the hearing a certified paper copy of the judgment against Douglas.

Douglas objected to Branch’s testimony about the March 27th conviction on the ground that such testimony constituted “hearsay” or “double hearsay” because the Government could not produce a certified copy of the judgment. The district court overruled Douglas’s hearsay objections.

The district judge then requested that her law clerk access the electronic docket sheet in the case involving the 2005 Hobbs Act indictment. 1 The judge reviewed the indictment and the jury verdict, which reflected that Douglas had been convicted of violating the Hobbs Act. On the basis of that information, the district court determined that the preponderance of the evidence established that Douglas had violated a condition of his supervised release, as alleged in Branch’s petition. The court sentenced Douglas to 24 months in prison, to be served consecutively to the sentence imposed on Douglas for violating the Hobbs Act. 2

*909 II.

We review for abuse of discretion a district court’s determination that a defendant has violated a condition of his supervised release. See United States v. Frazier, 26 F.3d 110, 112 (11th Cir.1994); see also United States v. Copeland, 20 F.3d 412, 413 (11th Cir.1994). We are bound by the district court’s findings of fact unless those findings are clearly erroneous. See United States v. Almand, 992 F.2d 316, 318 (11th Cir.1993).

III.

Relying solely on our decision in United States v. Hofierka, 83 F.3d 357 (11th Cir. 1996), Douglas argues that, in order to find by a preponderance of the evidence that a releasee has violated a condition of his supervised release, where the Government and the district court rely exclusively on a judgment of conviction, it is mandatory that the Government tender into evidence a certified copy of the conviction. In Hofierka, we upheld the revocation of the appellant’s supervised release, concluding that a judgment of conviction against the appellant on state-law charges, stemming from conduct the appellant engaged in while on supervised release, was sufficient evidence from which the district court could find a violation of the supervised release condition forbidding the appellant from committing a federal, state, or local crime. In so concluding, we stated: “A certified copy of a conviction is proper evidence that a defendant violated a state or federal law and, thereby, violated a condition of his or her supervised release.” Hofierka, 83 F.3d at 363. By not tendering into evidence in this case a “certified copy” of his conviction, Douglas argues that “[t]he government failed to substantiate its claim and meet its burden of proof that Appellant violated the terms and conditions of his supervised release.” We disagree.

A.

Every term of supervised release ordered by a federal district court carries with it, as a mandatory condition, a requirement that the defendant “not commit another Federal, State, or local crime during the term of supervision.” 18 U.S.C. § 3583(d). If the district court finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant has violated a condition of his supervised release, the court may revoke the defendant’s release and sentence him to prison. 18 U.S.C.

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Related

United States v. Hofierka
83 F.3d 357 (Eleventh Circuit, 1996)
Peebles v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fener & Smith Inc.
431 F.3d 1320 (Eleventh Circuit, 2005)
United States v. Sherman Lee Rice
671 F.2d 455 (Eleventh Circuit, 1982)
United States v. James S. Holland
874 F.2d 1470 (Eleventh Circuit, 1989)
United States v. Christopher Alan Almand
992 F.2d 316 (Eleventh Circuit, 1993)
United States v. Dwaine Copeland
20 F.3d 412 (Eleventh Circuit, 1994)
United States v. William Joseph Frazier
26 F.3d 110 (Eleventh Circuit, 1994)

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215 F. App'x 907, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-sherman-lavan-douglas-ca11-2007.