Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca3-15-01636/USCOURTS-ca3-15-01636-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Jermaine Jones
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

___________

No. 15-1636

___________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

v.

JERMAINE JONES,

Appellant 

__________

On Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

(D.C. No. 2-99-cr-00776-001)

District Judge: Honorable John R. Padova

___________

Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a)

March 1, 2016

Case: 15-1636 Document: 003112383235 Page: 1 Date Filed: 08/17/2016
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Before: SMITH and HARDIMAN, Circuit Judges.*

(Filed: August 17, 2016)

Joseph T. Labrum, III

Robert A. Zauzmer

Zane David Memeger

Office of the United States Attorney

615 Chestnut Street

Suite 1250

Philadelphia, PA 19106

Counsel for Appellee

Maria K. Pulzetti 

Brett G. Sweitzer

Leigh M. Skipper

Federal Community Defender Office

for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

601 Walnut Street

The Curtis Center, Suite 540 West

Philadelphia, PA 19106

Counsel for Appellant

____________

OPINION OF THE COURT

____________

 * The Honorable Dolores K. Sloviter assumed inactive 

status on April 4, 2016, after the submission date of this case, 

but before filing of the opinion. This opinion is filed by a 

quorum of the panel pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 46(d) and Third 

Circuit I.O.P. Chapter 12.

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HARDIMAN, Circuit Judge.

After serving a fifteen-year federal prison sentence for 

being an armed career criminal who unlawfully possessed a 

firearm, Appellant Jermaine Jones was released to serve a 

five-year period of supervised release. A year later, he was 

arrested on drug charges. In response to this arrest, the 

District Court revoked Jones’s supervised release and 

sentenced him to an additional forty months in prison. In this 

appeal, Jones argues that his sentence exceeds the statutory 

maximum because his crime of conviction should have been 

deemed a Class C felony instead of a Class A felony under 18 

U.S.C. § 3583(e). For the reasons that follow, we will affirm. 

I

In April 1999, a Norristown, Pennsylvania police 

officer approached Jones as he drank a beer on a public 

sidewalk in violation of a local ordinance. Jones fled, but was 

apprehended by police who discovered a gun in the area and 

concluded that Jones had discarded it. Jones was indicted 

under 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(e) and charged with 

possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. In June 2000, 

Jones was found guilty by a jury. 

The Government sought to have Jones sentenced under 

the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), which requires a 

sentence of at least 180 months for anyone convicted under § 

922(g) who has three or more predicate convictions for either 

a “violent felony” or “serious drug offense.” 18 U.S.C. § 

924(e). The Government argued that Jones had amassed four 

predicate offenses: a robbery conviction, an aggravated 

assault conviction, and two controlled substances convictions. 

Over objection, the District Court agreed that ACCA applied 

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and imposed the statutory mandatory minimum plus five 

years’ supervised release. We affirmed Jones’s judgment of 

conviction and sentence on direct appeal, United States v. 

Jones, 48 F. App’x 835 (3d Cir. 2002) (per curiam), and the 

District Court denied habeas relief, Jones v. United States, 

2000 WL 34075804 (E.D. Pa. Oct. 23, 2003).

Jones was released from federal custody on October 9, 

2013. A little over a year later, his probation officer reported 

that Jones had been arrested on state drug charges. After 

holding several hearings, the District Court determined that 

Jones had violated the terms of his supervised release and 

decided to revoke supervision and order him returned to 

prison. 

In March 2015, the District Court held a hearing to 

determine the length of Jones’s sentence. Under 18 U.S.C. § 

3583(e)(3), the maximum permissible revocation sentence 

depends on the classification of “the offense that resulted in 

the term of supervised release.” The Government argued that 

Jones’s underlying offense is a Class A felony, which 

authorized a maximum revocation sentence of five years’ 

imprisonment. Relying on Alleyne v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 

2151 (2013), Jones countered that he was subject to no more 

than two years’ imprisonment because his offense is properly 

categorized as a Class C felony. 

The District Court rejected Jones’s argument as an 

attempt to apply Alleyne retroactively and classified his 

offense a Class A felony. After granting a downward 

departure, the Court imposed a revocation sentence of forty 

months’ imprisonment. Jones appealed. 

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II

The District Court had jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. §§ 

3231 and 3583. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 

and 18 U.S.C. § 3742. 

The parties dispute our standard of review. The crux of 

their disagreement is whether Jones preserved the argument 

he advances on appeal by raising it in the District Court. 

Although we take this opportunity to reemphasize the 

responsibility of litigants to raise not just all “issues” but all 

“arguments” in district court, United States v. Joseph, 730 

F.3d 336, 341 (3d Cir. 2013), we need not determine whether 

Jones met that responsibility in this case. Because we would 

reach the same result under either standard of review, we will 

apply de novo review, which is more favorable to Jones. 

United States v. Williams, 675 F.3d 275, 277 (3d Cir. 2012) 

(applying de novo review in interpreting 18 U.S.C. § 3583). 

III

Several of our sister courts have held that “the validity 

of an underlying conviction or sentence may not be 

collaterally attacked in a supervised release revocation 

proceeding and may be challenged only on direct appeal or 

through a habeas corpus proceeding.” United States v. 

Warren, 335 F.3d 76, 78 (2d Cir. 2003); see also United 

States v. Francischine, 512 F.2d 827, 828–29 (5th Cir. 1975); 

United States v. Torrez-Flores, 624 F.2d 776, 780 (7th Cir. 

1980); United States v. Miller, 557 F.3d 910, 913 (8th Cir. 

2009); United States v. Simmons, 812 F.2d 561, 563 (9th Cir. 

1987); United States v. Hofierka, 83 F.3d 357, 363 (11th Cir. 

1996) (per curiam). We join those courts today. 

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Jones tries to escape this straightforward rule by 

arguing that his appeal “does not challenge the validity of 

[his] underlying conviction or sentence.” Reply Br. 6. He 

characterizes his case as a challenge to “only the district 

court’s determination, at revocation sentencing, that his 

underlying offense is presently classified as a Class A felony 

for Section 3583(e) purposes.” Id. In other words, Jones 

argues that he is appealing an error the Court made in 

calculating his revocation sentence rather than collaterally 

attacking his original conviction or sentence. We disagree 

with this characterization.

In light of Jones’s drug charges, 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e) 

authorized the District Court to “revoke [his] term of 

supervised release” and “require [him] to serve in prison all 

or part of the term of supervised release authorized by statute

for the offense that resulted in such term of supervised 

release.” 18 U.S.C. 3583(e)(3) (emphasis added). The offense 

that resulted in Jones’s five-year term of supervised release 

was unlawful possession of a firearm by an armed career 

criminal, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g) and 924(e). 

Jones acknowledges, as he must, that this offense was 

properly classified as a Class A felony at the time of his 

original conviction and sentencing. He nonetheless argues 

that two recent Supreme Court cases—Johnson v. United 

States, 559 U.S. 133 (2010) and Johnson v. United States, 135 

S. Ct. 2551 (2015)—nullify his status as an armed career 

criminal and render the “present[] classifi[cation]” of his 

offense a Class C felony. Reply Br. 6.

Even if Jones were correct that his original offense 

would not include an armed career criminal designation under 

current law, it would have no effect on his revocation 

sentence because the District Court is not tasked under 

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Section 3583(e) with reconsidering an offender’s status as an 

armed career criminal.1 That determination was made in 

2001, and was proper at that time. 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3); 

Williams, 675 F.3d at 279 (“[The] language [of Section 

3583(e)(3)] unambiguously sets the maximum prison 

sentence by reference to the length of supervised release 

statutorily authorized for the conviction offense . . . .”). This 

is consistent with the Supreme Court’s statement that 

revocation sentences are part and parcel of a defendant’s 

underlying conviction and punishment. Johnson v. United 

States, 529 U.S. 694, 700 (2000) (“[P]ostrevocation sanctions 

[are properly considered] as part of the penalty for the initial 

offense . . . .”); see also United States v. Dozier, 119 F.3d 

239, 241 (3d Cir. 1997) (“A sentence imposed upon 

revocation of supervised release is most properly viewed as a 

consequence of the original criminal conviction.”). 

For these reasons, we reject Jones’s efforts to bifurcate 

his original conviction and sentence from his revocation 

sentence, and to characterize this appeal as a direct challenge 

to a classification determination made in imposing the latter. 

Accordingly, we will affirm the judgment of the District 

Court.

 1 Our decision in United States v. Turlington, 696 F.3d 

425 (3d Cir. 2012) does not support Jones’s argument. There, 

we held that the classification of Appellant’s original 

conviction was not subject to change under 18 U.S.C. 

§ 3583(e) based on a statutory amendment. Those 

circumstances are not present here and we decline Jones’s 

invitation to apply Turlington by negative implication.

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