Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

Sentencing – Supervised release

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//January 16, 2015//

Sentencing – Supervised release

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//January 16, 2015//

Listen to this article

U.S. Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit Criminal

Criminal

Sentencing – Supervised release

Conditions of supervised release must be sufficiently precise as not to afford probation officers unlimited discretion in their interpretation.

“The government in defending the conditions of supervised release imposed in these four cases relies not on case law but rather on the proposition that the defendant can ask the probation officer what a condition means, and the officer will give him a sensible answer. This is some protection against unreasonable or ambiguous conditions, but not enough. It is too much like telling a defendant he’ll be on supervised release until the probation officer decides he’s been on it long enough, or that if he isn’t sure what is ‘excessive use of alcohol’ he should ask the probation officer. As a practical matter the terms of supervised release would be determined not by a judge but by a probation officer exercising an essentially unlimited discretion (for example to define ‘excessive use of alcohol’). The law doesn’t authorize that. United States v. Tejeda, 476 F.3d 471, 473–74 (7th Cir. 2007). It’s true that probation officers are employees of the federal judiciary, but so are law clerks and judges’ secretaries, yet they are not allowed to decide the sentences of convicted defendants.”

Reversed and Remanded.

14-1316, 14-1521, 14-1676 & 14-1772 U.S. v. Thompson

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, Reagan, J., Posner, J.

Full Text

Polls

Should Steven Avery be granted a new evidentiary hearing?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Legal News

See All Legal News

WLJ People

Sea all WLJ People

Opinion Digests