US v. Mathis: In 2016, Mathis was convicted on numerous counts related to robbery and racketeering. In 2021, after a remand after one count was vacated on appeal, Mathis was sentenced to four concurrent life sentences (plus 48 years in prison) along with a term of supervised release. While recognizing that it was unlikely that any conditions of supervised release would ever come into effect, the district court imposed a condition requiring Mathis to submit “to warrantless search and seizure to ensure compliance with these conditions.” In the written judgment, however, that condition was expanded as to its scope and required him to notify third parties that their premises may be subject to search as well.
On appeal, the Fourth Circuit reluctantly vacated Mathis’ sentence and remanded for the third imposition of sentence in this case. There was no real disagreement among the parties that the written judgement expanded the condition applied at sentencing and therefore violated Rogers and Singletary. However, the parties did have different positions on a remedy. Mathis argued for the entire search condition to be struck, while the Government argued that the court should strike the portions of the condition in the written judgment that didn’t match the orally pronounced condition. Ultimately, the court concluded that Rogers and Singletary provided only one remedy in such situations – a complete resentencing (even in a case like this where supervised release conditions are mostly theoretical questions).
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