U.S. v. Williams, 91-8992
| Decision Date | 02 September 1993 |
| Docket Number | No. 91-8992,91-8992 |
| Citation | 2 F.3d 363 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Jon P. WILLIAMS, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
Suzanne Hashimi, Rise Weathersby, Federal Defender Program, Inc., Steven Paul Berne, Long & Mullman, Atlanta, GA, for defendant-appellant.
Thomas Aloysius Devlin, Jr., Asst. U.S. Atty., Atlanta, GA, for plaintiff-appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
Before ANDERSON and DUBINA, Circuit Judges, and CLARK, Senior Circuit Judge.
Jon Williams appeals from a district court order that revoked eighteen months of the three-year term of supervised release he was then serving and sentenced him to an eighteen-month term of imprisonment, to be followed by eighteen months of supervised release. Williams claims that the district court lacked the statutory authority to impose a period of supervised release to follow his custodial sentence. We vacate the sentence and remand for resentencing.
On May 15, 1990, Williams pled guilty to a charge of embezzlement of U.S. Postal funds in violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 641. He was sentenced on July 31, 1990 to four months in custody, to be followed by three years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay restitution and a special assessment, and to perform community service.
In 1991, Williams completed his custodial sentence and began serving his supervised release term. On September 18, 1991, Williams' probation officer filed a petition with the district court requesting that the court revoke Williams' supervised release. Following a hearing on October 28, 1991, the district court revoked eighteen months of Williams' supervised release and sentenced him to eighteen months of prison, followed by eighteen months of supervised release. Williams appeals.
Section 3583 of Title 18 authorizes a court to impose a term of supervised release to follow imprisonment. The statute describes the authorized release terms for different classes of felonies. It also describes factors courts should consider and conditions courts may order when imposing supervised release. Section 3583(e) grants district courts the authority to alter the release term in four different ways after imposing it. The court may
(1) terminate a term of supervised release and discharge the person released at any time after the expiration of one year of supervised release (2) extend a term of supervised release if less than the maximum authorized term was previously imposed, and may modify, reduce, or enlarge the conditions of supervised release, at any time prior to the expiration or termination of the term of supervised release ...;
(3) 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, if it finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the person violated a condition of supervised release ...; or
(4) order the person to remain at his place of residence during nonworking hours....
18 U.S.C. Sec. 3583(e). Approximately 10 months after Williams began serving his three years of supervised release, the district court found that he had violated the conditions of supervised release and ordered him to serve 18 months in prison to be followed by 18 months of supervised release. On appeal, Williams challenges the legality of the supervised release portion of this sentence.
Williams' challenge is supported by the very recent opinion of this court in United States v. Tatum, 998 F.2d 893 (11th Cir.1993). This court in Tatum, following the weight and trend of the case law in other circuits, made two alternative holdings. First, the Tatum panel rejected the argument that subsections (2) and (3) of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3583(e) could be deemed to operate in tandem, so that a term of supervised release could be revoked under subsection (3), and then an extended term of supervised release could be imposed under subsection (2). The Tatum panel held that the several alternative courses of action set out in Sec. 3583(e) were listed in the statute in the disjunctive, not in the conjunctive, so that the statute permits a district court either to extend a term of supervised release under subsection (2), or revoke it under subsection (3), but not both. This first Tatum holding is not applicable to the instant case, because the district court in this case did not attempt to use both the Sec. 3583(e)(3) option to revoke supervised release, and the Sec. 3583(e)(2) option to extend the term of supervised release. In this case, the original term of supervised release was the maximum authorized by statute, and thus the clear language of Sec. 3583(e)(2) () renders it inapplicable to this case.
We turn to the second, alternative holding in Tatum, which does control this case. The Tatum panel implicitly rejected the argument that 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3583(e)(3) would provide authority for a district court to revoke a term of supervised release, imprison the person for part of that supervised release term, and then provide that the balance of the term of supervised release be served following such imprisonment. The Tatum panel quoted the following language from United States v. Holmes, 954 F.2d 270, 272 (5th Cir.1992):
Section 3583(e)(3) authorizes the district court to "revoke" a term of supervised release. "Revoke" generally means to cancel or rescind. Once a term of supervised release has been revoked under Sec. 3583(e)(3), there is nothing left to extend, modify, reduce, or enlarge under Sec. 3583(e)(2). The term of release no longer exists. Thus regardless of whether the options available under Sec. 3583(e) could otherwise be used together, or in succession, the revocation and extension options are by their very nature mutually exclusive.
Thus, the Tatum panel held that Tatum, 998 F.2d at 895.
Pursuant to this Tatum holding, once a district court has revoked a term of supervised release under Sec. 3583(e)(3) and imposed some period of imprisonment, then that "term of release no longer exists." If the balance of the original term of supervised release is thus extinguished in its entirety, it obviously could never be served....
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
U.S. v. O'Neil
...departure from customary practice, all three judges expressed their profound disagreement with Tatum's holding. See United States v. Williams, 2 F.3d 363, 365 (11th Cir.1993). Thus, nine circuits in all read the SRR provision narrowly. On the other side of the ledger, the Eighth Circuit sta......
-
U.S. v. Tamayo
...original sentencing package as opposed to remand for resentencing on a single issue, as in this case. See, e.g., United States v. Williams, 2 F.3d 363, 365 (11th Cir.1993) ("Accordingly, we vacate Williams' sentence in its entirety and remand this case to the district court with instruction......
-
U.S. v. Stewart
...a new term of supervised release following imprisonment. United States v. Courtney, 979 F.2d 45, 51 (5th Cir.1992); United States v. Williams, 2 F.3d 363, 365 (11th Cir.1993). Despite the result reached by the Eleventh Circuit, the court called its interpretation of the statute "contrary to......
-
U.S. v. Lussier
...States v. Morales, 45 F.3d 693, 696 (2d Cir.1995); United States v. Malesic, 18 F.3d 205, 206 (3d Cir.1994); United States v. Williams, 2 F.3d 363, 363-64 (11th Cir.1993). As summarized by the Sixth Circuit, these First, where a defendant has served at least one year of his supervised relea......