Due Process – Sentencing

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Due Process – Sentencing

The sentencing judge’s failure to order mandatory supervision after imprisonment does not entitled the defendant to a lower sentence of imprisonment.

“We can imagine an argument that due process encompasses procedures the violation of which has no tangible consequences. But the argument would founder on the fact that the due process clause does not guaranty due process; it forbids government to deprive a person of life, liberty, or property without due process. The failure to mention supervised release in Carroll’s sentence did not deprive him of life, liberty, or property. And Carroll isn’t interested in purely symbolic victories. Remember that he wanted his sentence changed to 23 years in prison followed by three years of supervised release, thus swapping three years of prison for an equivalent term of supervised release, a trade obviously advantageous to a prisoner. He has no constitutional right to such a trade just because the judge left something out of the sentence that doesn’t have to be in it in order to authorize the full measure of punishment that Carroll has been ordered to undergo.”

Affirmed.

12-3332 Carroll v. Daugherty

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Leinenweber, J., Posner, J.

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