US v. Mills: Mills was serving a term of supervised release when he had an incident with this “then-ex-girlfriend” in which she alleged he “strangled and assaulted her.” Along with a petition to revoke his term of supervised release, Mills was also charged with state charges arising from the same incident. As a result, the revocation proceedings lingered for months. Ultimately, Mills was acquitted in state court, but his supervised release was revoked and he was sentenced to 24 months in prison with no further term of supervised release.
On appeal, the Fourth Circuit vacated Mills’ revocation sentence. First, the court affirmed the revocation itself, rejecting Mills’ argument that the district court had failed to properly consider the discrepancies between the ex-girlfriend’s revocation hearing testimony and state trial testimony. Such questions of credibility are, essentially, unreviewable on appeal. Second, however, the court concluded that the district court failed to adequately consider Mills’ argument for a lesser sentence – that during the lengthy period while his revocation was pending he had no issues on bond and committed no additional offenses. Such an argument was not frivolous and the court concluded that the “record does not reflect that the district court adequately considered or addressed that argument.”
Congrats to the Defender office in ED VA on the win!
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