UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 15-4256

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff – Appellee,

v.

DAVID LLOYD BROWN,

Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western 

District of Virginia, at Charlottesville. Norman K. Moon, 

Senior District Judge. (3:02-cr-00036-NKM-1)

Submitted: February 17, 2016 Decided: June 8, 2016

Before WYNN, DIAZ, and HARRIS, Circuit Judges.

Vacated by unpublished per curiam opinion.

Larry W. Shelton, Federal Public Defender, Christine Madeleine 

Lee, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Roanoke, Virginia, 

for Appellant. Anthony P. Giorno, United States Attorney, 

Heather Lynn Carlton, Assistant United States Attorney, 

Charlottesville, Virginia, for Appellee.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:

This appeal stems from the district court’s second 

revocation of David Lloyd Brown’s original term of supervised 

release. The district court found that it had jurisdiction in 

April 2015 over Brown’s already once-revoked supervised-release 

term, even though Brown had completed his revocation sentence 

approximately ten months earlier in June 2014. Brown argues 

that his release term expired upon completion of his revocation 

sentence and that because his probation officer petitioned for 

revocation in November 2014, the post-expiration petition did 

not save the court’s jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(i), 

which provides that the court’s revocation power “extends beyond 

the expiration of the term of supervised release . . . if, 

before [the term’s] expiration, a warrant or summons has been 

issued.” For the reasons that follow, we agree. Accordingly, 

we vacate the district court’s judgment.

I.

In 2003, Brown pleaded guilty to various federal fraudrelated charges, and was sentenced to 100 months of 

imprisonment, followed by five years of supervised release. On 

October 7, 2009, Brown’s supervised release began.

In November 2013, the court revoked Brown’s supervised 

release for technical release violations and imposed a sentence 

of seven months’ imprisonment, to be followed by a new twelve-
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month term of supervised release. While serving his revocation 

sentence, Brown was indicted in Charlottesville, Virginia, on 

state drug charges in connection with offenses committed in 

September and October 2013, during his original supervisedrelease term. Brown completed his revocation sentence in June 

2014, but he was held on a state detainer pending resolution of 

the Commonwealth’s case. 

In November 2014, after Brown pleaded guilty to and was 

sentenced on the state drug charges, his probation officer 

petitioned the district court to revoke the original supervisedrelease term for a second time—this time on the basis of the 

conduct underlying the state charges.

Brown moved to dismiss the petition for lack of 

jurisdiction, claiming that his original supervised release had 

expired, and that the sentencing court did not have revocation 

power under § 3583(i) because the probation officer failed to

petition for revocation before the release term’s expiration. 

Brown also argued that the court did not have jurisdiction to 

revoke the second supervised-release term (i.e., the twelvemonth term imposed in November 2013) on the basis of conduct 

occurring during the original release term. 

The district court held a revocation hearing, in which the 

government clarified that it did not seek revocation of the 

second supervised-release term, but rather wanted the court to
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impose additional prison time for the more serious violations

committed during the original release term. The district court 

agreed and concluded that it had jurisdiction under United 

States v. Winfield, 665 F.3d 107 (4th Cir. 2012), to again 

revoke Brown’s original supervised release. After crediting 

Brown with seven months already served, the court imposed four

concurrent fifteen-month revocation prison sentences, to be 

served consecutively to the state sentence for the drug-related 

conduct. The district court did not impose a new term of 

supervised release because the state sentence included a fiveyear term of supervised release. 

Brown filed a timely notice of appeal. 

II.

On appeal, Brown challenges the district court’s conclusion 

that it had jurisdiction in April 2015 to revoke Brown’s

supervised release for a second time. “We review de novo a 

challenge of a district court’s jurisdiction to rule upon 

alleged violations of supervised release.” Winfield, 665 F.3d 

at 109. Brown contends that his original term of supervised 

release expired in June 2014, upon the completion of his first 

revocation sentence.1 We agree.2

 1 Before the district court, Brown argued that his first 

revocation sentence ended in November 2013 when the court first

revoked the original release term, see J.A. 83, but the 
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In Winfield, we held that a district court’s revocation of 

a supervised-release term did not conclude the court’s 

jurisdiction over that release term. Id. at 112. We explained 

that the court retained jurisdiction “to hold a second violation 

hearing and impose a [new revocation] sentence.” Id. In

crafting these holdings, we implied that a revoked release term 

expires at or around the time that the originally imposed term 

would have ended had there not been a revocation. Id.; cf.

United States v. Buchanan, 638 F.3d 448, 449, 458 (4th Cir. 

2011) (providing that a five-year supervised-release term began 

in 1993 and that the defendant, who absconded supervision in 

1995, had three years of supervision remaining when he was 

apprehended many years later because the defendant’s fugitive 

status tolled his supervised release).

Winfield’s original three-year term of supervised release 

began in August 2007. Winfield, 665 F.3d at 108–09. His 

probation officer petitioned the court for revocation in October 

2009 (on the basis of technical release violations) and twice 

 

government does not argue waiver on appeal. Moreover, this 

being a jurisdictional question, we have an obligation to ensure 

that the district court’s jurisdiction was proper. E.g., In re 

Kirkland, 600 F.3d 310, 314 (4th Cir. 2010).

2 Brown also argues that the five-month delay between the 

filing of the petition and the revocation hearing was 

unreasonable. Because we reverse on jurisdictional grounds, we 

do not reach this issue.
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amended the petition before May 2010 (both times on the basis of 

substantive release violations for which Winfield had been 

charged in state court). Id. at 109. In May 2010, the district 

court held a revocation hearing, and the parties agreed to 

bifurcated proceedings to allow time for the resolution of the 

pending state charges. Id. At the May 2010 proceeding, the 

court effectively revoked Winfield’s release and imposed a

twelve-month revocation sentence. Id. at 109, 111–12. The 

court held the second hearing in September 2010, revoked 

Winfield’s original supervised-release term for a second time, 

and imposed another twelve-month revocation sentence.3 Id. at 

109. Notably, the court did not impose a new term of supervised 

release to follow the revocation sentences.

In holding that the initial revocation did not end the 

court’s jurisdiction over the release term, we suggested that 

(1) the defendant’s supervised release had not expired as of the 

first release revocation in May 2010, (2) the probation 

officer’s revocation-petition amendments between October 2009 

and May 2010 were filed before the original release term’s 

expiration, and (3) the second revocation hearing in September 

 3 In Winfield, we noted that it was not clear whether the 

district court intended the September revocation sentence to run 

concurrently or consecutively to the May revocation sentence, or 

whether the court intended for the twelve-month sentences to run 

concurrently or consecutively with Winfield’s state sentences. 

665 F.3d at 109 n.1. 
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2010 fell after the release term’s expiration. See id. at 112.

Thus, Winfield’s original release term expired in or around 

August 2010.

In light of Winfield, we understand how the district court 

arrived at its decision: Brown’s original release term would 

have expired in October 2014, five years after the imposition of 

a five-year release term in October 2009. Because it is 

undisputed that pretrial detainment tolls supervised release,

United States v. Ides, 624 F.3d 666, 669 (4th Cir. 2010), 

Brown’s pre-trial detainment, beginning in June 2014 after he 

completed the revocation sentence, tolled the approximately four 

months remaining on his original supervised-release term. 

Because the November 2014 revocation petition was filed before 

the expiration of the supervised-release term, the district 

court concluded that it had jurisdiction. 

But the newly imposed period of supervised release—a 

circumstance not present in Winfield—changes the analysis. The 

parties here agree that in June 2014, upon his release from 

federal custody, Brown would have begun to serve his second term 

of supervised release (not the remainder of his original release 

term—if one exists), and they agree that the pre-trial 

detainment on the state charges tolled Brown’s second release 

term. See Appellant’s Br. at 12–13; Appellee’s Br. at 9–10 & 

n.4; see also 18 U.S.C. § 3624(e) (“The term of supervised 
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release commences on the day the person is released from 

imprisonment . . . .”). Indeed, both the district court and 

government were careful in this case to clarify that the second 

revocation applied only to Brown’s original release term—not to 

the second, see United States v. Brown, No. 3:02CR00036-1, 2015 

WL 1883645, at *1 (W.D. Va. Apr. 24, 2015); J.A. 103; Appellee’s 

Br. at 10, which avoided the problem at the center of United 

States v. Wing, see 682 F.3d 861, 865 (9th Cir. 2012) 

(concluding that “once a term of supervised release has been 

revoked, a later-discovered violation of a condition of that 

term cannot form the basis of a revocation of a subsequent term 

of supervised release”). 

Had Brown been released—rather than detained—in June 2014, 

his new twelve-month term of supervised release would have 

begun, and the district court would have improperly revoked that 

release term in April 2015. Thus, when a revocation sentence is 

to be followed by a new, separate term of supervised release, we 

see no meaningful distinction between the defendant’s completion 

of the revocation sentence and release from custody, and the 

defendant’s completion of the revocation sentence and 

subsequent, unrelated pre-trial detainment. The pre-trial 

detainment’s legal significance operates on the new term of 

supervised release (so as to toll it) and has nothing to do with 
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the completed revocation sentence—or, therefore, the original 

supervised-release term. 

Accordingly, Brown’s original term of supervised release 

expired in June 2014 when he completed his revocation sentence, 

making the probation officer’s November 2014 petition to revoke 

the original release term fall after that term’s expiration. As 

a result, the district court did not have jurisdiction in April 

2015, on the basis of a November 2014 revocation petition, to 

revoke Brown’s original term of supervised release and impose a 

new revocation sentence.

III.

For the foregoing reasons, we vacate the district court’s 

judgment. We direct the clerk to issue the mandate forthwith. 

We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal 

contentions are adequately presented in the materials before 

this court and argument would not aid the decisional process.

VACATED