US v. Nelson: Nelson was convicted for a SORNA violation in 2009 and sentenced to 41 months in prison to be followed by a 25-year term of supervised release. Since Nelson’s release he’s “often violated the conditions of his supervised release,” lead to several revocations. At his fifth revocation in 2021, the district court said that the “statutory available sentence” was “24 months in custody and supervised release of five years to life” before imposing a 24-month revocation sentence, to be followed by a five-year term of supervised release.
On appeal, the Fourth Circuit vacated the sentence. Applying plain error, the court agreed with nelson that there was no statutory mandatory minimum term of supervised release that applies upon revocation. The five-year mandatory minimum applies only after an initial conviction under 18 USC 3583(k), but subsequent terms of supervised release are governed by 3583(h), which has no similar requirement. The court rejected the Government’s reading that while in a revocation situation like this the district court was not required to impose a new term of supervised release at all, but if it did, had to abide by the five-year mandatory minimum, noting that the Government had conceded this issue in two other circuits. The error was also plain, prejudicial (as there was no evidence the district court would have imposed the same five-year term aside from its error), and the type of error the court should correct.
No comments:
Post a Comment