United States v. Lamirand, 11–6033.

• Decision Date: 05 January 2012
• Docket Number: No. 11–6033.,11–6033.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Keenan Anthony LAMIRAND, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

669 F.3d 1091

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.Keenan Anthony LAMIRAND, Defendant–Appellant.

No. 11–6033.

United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit.

Jan. 5, 2012.

Chris Eulberg of Eulberg Law Offices, Oklahoma City, OK, for Defendant–Appellant.

Jonathon E. Boatman, Assistant United States Attorney (Sanford C. Coats, United States Attorney, and Andre B. Caldwell, Assistant United States Attorney, with him on the brief), Oklahoma City, OK, for Plaintiff–Appellee.

Before O'BRIEN, Circuit Judge, BRORBY, Senior Circuit Judge, and HOLMES, Circuit Judge.^*

HOLMES, Circuit Judge.

Defendant–Appellant Keenan Anthony Lamirand pleaded guilty to one count of possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), and was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of twenty-four months, followed by five years of supervised release. After he served his sentence, he violated the terms of his supervised release, and, in 2010, the district court revoked his supervised release and sentenced him to thirty days in prison. In addition, the district court also imposed a new term of supervised release. After serving his revocation sentence, Mr. Lamirand violated the terms of supervised release for a second time, leading the court to again revoke his release and sentence him to an additional year and a day in prison. Mr. Lamirand now appeals, claiming that the district court lacked the statutory authority to imprison him for a period longer than his second term of supervised release. Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we reject Mr. Lamirand's position and affirm his sentence.

BACKGROUND

On August 6, 2003, Mr. Lamirand pleaded guilty to one count of possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). He was sentenced to twenty-four months' imprisonment, to be followed by five years of supervised release.

In February of 2010, Mr. Lamirand admitted to violating the conditions of his supervised release. His supervised release was subsequently revoked, and he was sentenced to thirty days in prison, to be followed by a new six-month term of supervised release.

Shortly after his release from prison, Mr. Lamirand again violated the terms of his supervised release by, inter alia, stealing gasoline, possessing controlled substances (i.e., illegal drugs) with the intent to distribute, and associating with felons. The district court conducted a hearing regarding the alleged violations on January 31, 2011. There, Mr. Lamirand admitted to the violations and conceded that 18 U.S.C. § 3583(g) required revocation. ¹ Mr. Lamirand argued, however, that the court could not imprison him upon revocation for more than six months—the length of the supervised-release term that he was then serving. His counsel explained:

[M]y position is simple, that the Court cannot revoke that which was not imposed. This Court could have imposed a longer term of supervised release on the first revocation. It did not. When the Court revoked [Mr. Lamirand's] prior term of supervised release, that is gone. It's extinguished. The Court imposed a six-month term of supervised release and that's what he has admitted to violating. Our position is that the Court can order him to serve any or all of those six months.R., Vol. III, at 5 (Revocation Hr'g Tr., held Jan. 31, 2011). In other words, his counsel argued that the district court could “revoke only what is there, which is six months.” Id. at 6.

The government, in contrast, argued that because Mr. Lamirand's underlying crime of conviction—the violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1)—was a Class D felony, the district court was authorized to reimprison Mr. Lamirand for an aggregate of two years for any supervised-release violations. Accordingly, the government reasoned that, in this instance, the district court had the authority to imprison Mr. Lamirand for up to twenty-three additional months (subtracting the one month of post-revocation imprisonment that Mr. Lamirand previously served).² The district court ultimately agreed with the government. Yet, it elected to impose less than the maximum twenty-three additional months, instead imposing a prison term of twelve months and one day with no further supervised release. This timely appeal followed.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

Generally, we review a revocation sentence imposed by the district court to determine if it is “reasoned and reasonable.” United States v. McBride, 633 F.3d 1229, 1232 (10th Cir.2011) (quoting United States v. Contreras–Martinez, 409 F.3d 1236, 1241 (10th Cir.2005)) (internal quotation marks omitted). However, where, as here, the defendant challenges the district court's interpretation of a governing statute, we review that challenge de novo. United States v. Begay, 631 F.3d 1168, 1170 (10th Cir.2011) (“We review the district court's interpretation of a statute de novo....”).

DISCUSSION

We are called upon to resolve a very narrow question in this appeal: Whether the district court was statutorily authorized to impose a post-revocation term of imprisonment on Mr. Lamirand that exceeded the six-month term of supervised release that he was serving at the time of the admitted violations that led to the revocation. We answer the question in the affirmative.

The principal statute at issue is 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3).³ Under § 3583(e)(3), “when a person violates a condition of his or her supervised release, the district court may revoke the term of supervised release and impose prison time.” United States v. Kelley, 359 F.3d 1302, 1304 (10th Cir.2004). Specifically, the statute provides:

(e) The court may ... (3) revoke a term of supervised release, and require the defendant to serve in prison all or part of the term of supervised release authorized by statute for the offense that resulted in such term of supervised release without credit for time previously served on postrelease supervision, if the court ... finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant violated a condition of supervised release, except that a defendant whose term is revoked under this paragraph may not be required to serve more than 5 years in prison if the offense that resulted in the term of supervised release is a class A felony, more than 3 years in prison if such offense is a class B felony, more than 2 years in prison if such offense is a class C or D felony, or more than one year in any other case....18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3) (emphases added). Mr. Lamirand concedes that the district court was authorized to revoke his supervised-release term, but he maintains that “the term of imprisonment [imposed upon revocation] is limited to the length of the term of supervised release that had been imposed” on his first revocation—in this case, six months. Aplt. Opening Br. at 4.

Mr. Lamirand's argument challenges the district court's interpretation of § 3583(e)(3). In resolving it, we begin with the text of § 3583(e)(3). See Jimenez v. Quarterman, 555 U.S. 113, 118, 129 S.Ct. 681, 172 L.Ed.2d 475 (2009) (noting that “statutory interpretation ... begins with the plain language of the statute”); United States v. Sprenger, 625 F.3d 1305, 1307 (10th Cir.2010) (“[If] the terms of the statute are clear and unambiguous, the inquiry ends and we simply give effect to the plain language of the statute.” (quoting Toomer v. City Cab, 443 F.3d 1191, 1194 (10th Cir.2006)) (internal quotation marks omitted)); Tuckel v. Grover, 660 F.3d 1249, 1252 (10th Cir.2011) (“Any exercise in statutory interpretation must begin with an examination of the plain language at issue.”). And “given the clarity of that provision's language,” our analysis “could end there.” Tapia v. United States, ––– U.S. ––––, 131 S.Ct. 2382, 2388, 180 L.Ed.2d 357 (2011) (analyzing a different statute that was clear on a plain reading).

Section 3583(e)(3) empowers the district court to imprison a defendant who violates his or her term of supervised release to “all or part of the term of supervised release authorized by statute for the offense that resulted in such term of supervised release.” 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3) (emphasis added). By its very terms, § 3583(e)(3) provides that the scope of the possible term of post-revocation imprisonment is defined by the statute that authorizes the supervised-release term for the offense resulting in supervised release, and not by the actual court-imposed supervised-release term. In other words, as applicable here, under the plain meaning of § 3583(e)(3), it was the statute authorizing the supervised-release term that established the possible length of the post-revocation term of imprisonment that the district court could lawfully impose on Mr. Lamirand and not the court-imposed term of supervised release that he was serving at the time of revocation.

The statute authorizing supervised-release terms is subsection (b) of § 3583. It defines, unless otherwise provided by statute, “the authorized terms of supervised release” for various grades of offenses. ⁴ 18 U.S.C. § 3583(b)(1)-(3). Therefore, subsection (b) constitutes an essential and necessary guidepost that defines the scope of possible post-revocation terms of imprisonment. However, this statute, alone, does not actually prescribe the maximum post-revocation prison terms that a sentencing court may impose. Its interaction with subsection (e)(3) of § 3583 is critical in this regard and furnishes that answer.⁵ However, for purposes of addressing Mr. Lamirand's argument, the critical point is that because of the “authorized by statute” language of subsection (e)(3), sentencing courts are obliged to look to the statutory reference point of subsection (b) to discern the possible authorized length of post-revocation prison terms and not to a previously imposed term of supervised release ordered by the sentencing court. See United States v. Hampton, 633 F.3d 334, 339 (5th Cir.2011) (“This phrase [i.e., the ‘term of supervised release authorized by st...