Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-03-01333/USCOURTS-ca8-03-01333-1/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Thomas Arthur Palmer
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 03-1333

___________

United States of America, *

*

Appellee, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the

* Northern District of Iowa.

Thomas Arthur Palmer, *

*

Appellant. *

___________

Submitted: April 14, 2004

Filed: August 24, 2004

___________

Before LOKEN, Chief Judge, WOLLMAN, HANSEN, MORRIS SHEPPARD

ARNOLD, MURPHY, BYE, RILEY, SMITH, and COLLOTON, Circuit

Judges.

___________

WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge.

We vacated our prior panel opinion in this case, United States v. Palmer, 77

Fed. Appx. 919 (8th Cir. 2003) (per curiam), and granted rehearing en banc to

reconsider the interpretation of 18 U.S.C. § 3583 advanced in United States v. St.

John, 92 F.3d 761 (8th Cir. 1996). We now overrule St. John’s interpretation and

affirm the sentence imposed by the district court.

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The Honorable Michael J. Melloy, now a member of this Court.

2

The Honorable Linda R. Reade, United States District Judge for the Northern

District of Iowa.

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I.

On April 11, 2000, Thomas Palmer pleaded guilty to three counts of

threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction to blow up certain federal agencies

and one count of mailing a threat to blow up a United States Post Office. 18 U.S.C.

§§ 2332a(a)(3); 844(e). The former convictions were class A felonies, subjecting

Palmer to a maximum penalty of life imprisonment and up to five years of supervised

release. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 2332a(a), 3559(a)(1), 3583(b). The district court1

 departed

upward from the range specified in the United States Sentencing Guidelines and

sentenced Palmer to 27 months of imprisonment, to be followed by 36 months of

supervised release.

Palmer completed his prison term in 2002 and began serving his period of

supervised release. Several months into supervision, he violated the conditions of

that release. The district court2

 then revoked Palmer’s supervised release and

imposed 12 months of imprisonment and another 36 months of supervised release –

an aggregate revocation sentence of 48 months – 12 months longer than Palmer’s

initial term of supervised release. Palmer appeals, arguing that this longer term is

illegal.

II.

We review the legality of Palmer’s revocation sentence de novo, United States

v. Brings Plenty, 188 F.3d 1051, 1053 (8th Cir. 1999) (per curiam), a matter that turns

on construction of 18 U.S.C. § 3583. Prior to 1994, § 3583(e)(3) provided that upon

revocation a district court could require a defendant to “serve in prison all or part of

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the term of supervised release without credit for time previously served on postrelease

supervision . . . .” Id. Our court interpreted this section to authorize imposition of

both a term of imprisonment and a new term of supervised release upon revocation

if the two terms, in aggregate, did not exceed the total term of supervised release

initially imposed. See United States v. Krabbenhoft, 998 F.2d 591, 594 (8th Cir.

1993); United States v. Schrader, 973 F.2d 623, 624-25 (8th Cir. 1992). This was a

minority position joined only by the First Circuit, see United States v. O’Neil, 11 F.3d

292, 294, 301 (1st Cir. 1993), as most other circuits held that district courts could

require either imprisonment or continued supervised release, but not both. See e.g.,

United States v. Truss, 4 F.3d 437, 439 (6th Cir. 1993) (collecting cases).

In the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Pub. L. No.

103-322, § 110505, 1994 U.S.C.C.A.N. (108 Stat.) 1796, 2017, Congress enacted

new statutory language governing imposition of supervised release following

revocation. Among other things, the Act created an entirely new subsection, which

explicitly permits district courts to impose both imprisonment and a new term of

supervised release if the new term does “not exceed the term of supervised release

authorized by statute for the offense that resulted in the original term of supervised

release, less any term of imprisonment that was imposed upon revocation of

supervised release.” 18 U.S.C. § 3583(h) (emphasis added). The Act also changed

subsection (e)(3) to specify that, within limitations, revocation courts may require

imprisonment for “all or part of the term of supervised release authorized by statute

for the offense that resulted in such term of supervised release . . . .” Id. § 3583(e)(3)

(emphasis added). 

Our court initially confronted this language in United States v. St. John, 92

F.3d 761 (8th Cir. 1996), a case in which the defendant was convicted and sentenced

under the pre-1994 scheme but violated his supervised release and faced revocation

after enactment of the new language set forth above. St. John acknowledged that the

new subsection (h) could peg the available new term of supervised release upon

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The Court mentioned in Johnson that “[a]s it was written before the 1994

amendments, subsection [(e)(3)] did not provide (as it now does) that the court could

revoke the release term and require service of a prison term equal to the maximum

authorized length of a term of supervised release.” 529 U.S. at 705.

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revocation to the maximum term of supervised release authorized by statute for the

offense of conviction. Id. at 766. Concerned that this reading would generate an ex

post facto problem, however, St. John chose to follow our prior law, construing the

words “term of supervised release” to mean “the term of supervised release in the

original sentence rather than the maximum authorized term of supervised release.”

Id. Although the United States Supreme Court subsequently eliminated the ex post

facto concern by holding that § 3583(h) does not apply retroactively, see Johnson v.

United States, 529 U.S. 694, 702-03 (2000), our court has continued to acknowledge

and apply St. John’s construction of the 1994 changes despite language in Johnson

casting doubt on the viability of that reading.3 See e.g., United States v. Pozo, 50

Fed. Appx. 329 (8th Cir. 2002) (per curiam); United States v. Chaddock, 49 Fed.

Appx. 88 (8th Cir. 2002) (per curiam); but cf. United States v. Touche, 323 F.3d 1105

(8th Cir. 2003) (upholding aggregate revocation sentence of 45 months despite initial

supervised release term of 36 months where defendant did not appeal aggregate

length of revocation sentence).

Having considered the matter en banc, we conclude that St. John’s

interpretation of the 1994 act is not consistent with the language of the statute. In

subsections (e)(3) and (h), the words “term of supervised release” are now followed

by unambiguous language referencing the term authorized by statute for the offense

of conviction, not the term of supervised release initially imposed by the district

court. Subsection (b) of the statute is captioned “[a]uthorized terms of supervised

release,” and provides for specific maximum periods of supervised release for each

class of felony conviction. Conversely, no statutory language indicates that new

terms of supervised release are cabined by the supervised release term originally

imposed. The only explicit limitations include those on the available terms of

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imprisonment specified in subsection (e)(3) and the subsection (h) requirement that

the new term of supervised release not exceed the term statutorily authorized for the

offense of conviction (minus any revocation terms of imprisonment). 

If allowed to stand, St. John would also contribute to a circuit conflict. In

United States v. Pla, 345 F.3d 1312 (11th Cir. 2003), the Eleventh Circuit recently

concluded that “the language of § 3583(e)(3), (g) and (h) makes clear that the length

of additional supervised release and [a] prison term upon revocation is not bound by

the original term of supervised release but by the class of felony of which the

[defendant] is convicted.” Id. at 1315. We agree, and given both the clarity of the

statutory language and the importance of intercircuit uniformity in revocation

sentencing, we overrule St. John’s contrary reading. 

We do not agree with Palmer’s suggestion that our new reading places us at

odds with the Seventh Circuit’s decision in United States v. Russell, 340 F.3d 450

(7th Cir. 2003). The defendant in Russell, as in St. John, was convicted and

sentenced prior to the 1994 changes. Russell thus involved a determination of the

appropriate sentence authorized by the earlier version of subsection (e)(3), not the

sentence authorized by the language contained in the current versions of (e)(3) and

(h). If anything, various statements in other circuit opinions interpreting § 3583(h),

including those of the Seventh Circuit, suggest that those courts would endorse our

plain-meaning approach. See United States v. Moody, 277 F.3d 719, 721 (5th Cir.

2001) (noting that “[t]he plain language of § 3583(h) directs courts to look to the

‘statute for the offense that resulted in the original term of supervised release.’”);

United States v. Cade, 236 F.3d 463, 466 (9th Cir. 2000) (noting that “[i]f the court

imposes a term of imprisonment that is less than [the maximum term authorized in §

3583(e)(3)] . . . it also may require the defendant to serve an additional term of

supervised release that cannot exceed . . . the maximum term authorized by [§

3583(b)] . . . .”); United States v. Shorty, 159 F.3d 312, 316 (7th Cir. 1998) (same);

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United States v. Dozier, 119 F.3d 239, 242 (3rd Cir. 1997) (same), abrogated on other

grounds in Johnson, 529 U.S. at 699 n. 3, 702. 

We read 18 U.S.C. §§ 3583(e)(3) and (h) to mean what they plainly say. Upon

revocation, a defendant may be sentenced to both imprisonment and a further term of

supervised release. 18 U.S.C. § 3583(h). For those defendants whose offense of

conviction occurred after the 1994 changes, the available supervised release term is

not measured by the term initially imposed by the district court, see St. John, 92 F.3d

at 766, but by the term authorized in 18 U.S.C. § 3583(b) for the offense of

conviction, minus the aggregate amount of any revocation terms of imprisonment.

18 U.S.C. § 3583(h); Johnson, 529 U.S. at 702 (“§ 3583(h) applies only to cases in

which that initial offense occurred after the effective date of the amendment,

September 13, 1994.”); Brings Plenty, 188 F.3d at 1054 (concluding that all

revocation terms of imprisonment must be aggregated when calculating the remaining

available term of supervised release).

The district court chose to imprison Palmer for 12 months upon revocation.

Under § 3583(h), the district court was empowered to impose a new term of

supervised release that could not exceed the five-year maximum term of supervised

release authorized in § 3583(b) for Palmer’s offenses of conviction, minus the 12-

month term of imprisonment imposed on revocation. The maximum available term

of supervised release was the difference of the two – 48 months. Because the 36-

month term of supervised release imposed falls well within that boundary, we affirm

the sentence. 

______________________________

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