Sentencing Guidelines – Supervised Release

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Allen Teague, et al.,

Case No.: 20-3132

Officials: WOOD, ST. EVE, and KIRSCH, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Sentencing Guidelines – Supervised Release

One component of a federal criminal sentence may, and sometimes must, be a period of supervised release that begins after the offender has completed his time in prison. 18 U.S.C. § 3583(a). Statutes usually have something to say about the length of that period. Often they confer considerable discretion on the district court, but there are instances in which they specify the required duration or range. See, e.g., 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C).

Those rules, however, pertain to the initial sentence a defendant receives. The picture is different for a person who has completed his term of incarceration and has begun serving his term of supervised release. If that person violates the conditions of his supervised release, his probation officer may move for revocation of supervised release. This case deals with the choices available to the court in the latter circumstance—specifically, whether a term of supervised release that is mandatory for initial sentencing remains a mandatory part of any new sentence after revocation. The government concedes that the answer is no, and that the district court erred when it came to the opposite conclusion. After taking an independent look at the issue, we too conclude that revocation operates under different rules. We therefore vacate the terms of supervised release imposed on the two defendants before us and order a remand for reconsideration under the correct standards.

Vacated in part. Remanded in part.

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Derek A Hawkins is Corporate Counsel, at Salesforce.