In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 00-2540

United States of America,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

Helen Bass,

Defendant-Appellant,

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Illinois.

No. 00-CR-30020--William D. Stiehl, Chief Judge.

Argued September 8, 2000--Decided December 1, 2000

 Before Flaum, Chief Judge, and Posner and Rovner,

Circuit Judges.

 Posner, Circuit Judge. This appeal from a

sentence for violation of conditions of

supervised release presents a novel question

under the federal sentencing guidelines. In

December of last year the federal district court

in St. Louis sentenced Helen Bass for bank fraud

upon her plea of guilty. The sentence, as stated

in the form document entitled "Judgment in a

Criminal Case," was as follows: "The defendant is

sentenced to a one (1) day imprisonment with

credit given for time served. The defendant is

placed on a term of six (6) months home

confinement. The defendant is released to begin

her term of home confinement and upon completion

the defendant is to begin her term of five (5)

years supervised release." The sentencing

guidelines provide that for a Class B felony,

which Bass’s offense was, a sentence of

supervised release with home confinement

substituted for imprisonment is proper only if

the defendant is sentenced to at least one

month’s imprisonment. U.S.S.G. sec. 5C1.1(c)(2).

But without objection by the government the

sentencing judge departed downward from one month

to one day. In exercising such lenience the judge

was hoping that Bass, who was employed, would be

able to repay the $31,000 that she had stolen

from the bank; home confinement would permit her

to work during the day. See U.S.S.G. sec. 5F1.2

Background Note ("in the usual case, the

Commission assumes that a condition requiring

that the defendant seek and maintain gainful
employment will be imposed when home detention is

ordered"). The maximum period of supervised

release for a Class B felony is five years. 18

U.S.C. sec. 3583(b)(1).

 Although Bass worked in St. Louis, she lived

across the Mississippi River, in Belleville, in

the Southern District of Illinois. Two months

after sentencing Bass, and thus during her period

of home confinement, the sentencing judge

transferred jurisdiction over her case to the

Southern District of Illinois pursuant to 18

U.S.C. sec. 3605. This section provides that a

defendant who is on supervised release may be

transferred to another district, and the transfer

gives the judge in that district the same powers

as the original sentencing judge. The transfer

order states that the period of the defendant’s

supervised release runs from December 10, 1999,

the date of Bass’s sentencing, to December 9,

2004. Bass did not object to the transfer.

 In May, the probation office for the southern

district filed a petition with that court seeking

to revoke Bass’s supervised release on the ground

that she had violated its conditions, for example

by not returning home immediately after work as

the home-confinement portion of her sentence,

still in force, required. After a hearing, Judge

Stiehl revoked Bass’s supervised release and

sentenced her to six months in prison followed by

54 months of supervised release. The sentence was

imposed on June 6, 2000, by which time Bass was

no longer in home confinement, although the

violations of the conditions of supervised

release that were the basis for the revocation

had occurred while she was.

 The ground of the appeal is that the judge in

Missouri had no jurisdiction to transfer the case

to another district, and therefore that Judge

Stiehl acted beyond his power when he revoked

Bass’s supervised release. Since the transfer

statute merely regulates venue, it may be doubted

whether a violation of it goes to jurisdiction;

if it does not, then Bass’s failure to have

objected to the transfer bars her argument. But

in any event we do not think the statute was

violated.

 It is true that the statute is limited to

defendants who are on supervised release; and

Bass argues that in February, when she was

transferred, she was still under home confinement

and so, under the terms of the judgment, her term

of supervised release had not yet begun. The

judgment had been explicit that Bass’s five-year

term of supervised release was to begin at the

end of the six-month period of home confinement.

If, instead, it had begun at the beginning of
that period, as the government argues in defense

of Judge Stiehl’s authority, it would exceed five

years and thus pierce the statutory ceiling. The

government contends that the judgment is

ambiguous as to when the period of supervised

release was to begin. It points out that the

section of the judgment captioned "Supervised

Release" states that "upon release from

imprisonment, the defendant shall be on

supervised release for a term of 5 years," and

the government interprets "imprisonment" to refer

to the one day in prison, not the six months of

home confinement. The government also points out

that the transfer order has the period of

supervised release beginning on the date of the

sentence and ending five years later; and this it

contends is what the sentencing judge intended.

 The most natural interpretation of what the

sentencing judge intended is that the period of

supervised release was to begin upon the

defendant’s release from home confinement. The

term "imprisonment" on which the government rests

its best argument of ambiguity is part of the

form language in the judgment, rather than

language used by the judge himself; and as for

the transfer order, it was issued months later

and the dates of the period of supervised release

were probably filled in by a clerk and, since

they were just for identification, not reviewed

carefully by the judge.

 So on the plane of literal interpretation the

defendant has the better of the argument. But

that is not the right plane to stay on. If the

judgment is read literally, the sentence was

illegal, because there is no authority in federal

law for imposing a free-standing sentence of home

confinement. United States v. Gilchrist, 130 F.3d

1131, 1137 (3d Cir. 1997) (concurring opinion).

Home confinement is authorized only as a

condition of pretrial release, probation, or

supervised release. U.S.S.G. sec. 5F1.2 ("home

detention may be imposed as a condition of

probation or supervised release, but only as a

substitute for imprisonment"). Cases can be found

in which a free-standing rather than conditional

sentence of home confinement was imposed, see,

e.g., United States v. Warner, 43 F.3d 1335, 1336

(10th Cir. 1994), but in none was the propriety

of such a sentence discussed.

 What is more, if read literally the judgment in

this case would have prevented transferring

supervision of the defendant to the district in

which she lives during the very period in which

she was confined to her home; and that would make

no practical sense, since it is during that

period, when she is working outside the home,

that supervision is required. Had the sentencing
judge in Missouri been apprised by the parties

(the Department of Justice was especially remiss

in failing to apprise him) of the legal and

practical obstacles to his sentence, we are sure

he would have done just what Judge Stiehl

interpreted him to have done. That is, make the

five-year maximum term of supervised release run

from the date of the sentence (the defendant had

already served the one day in prison) and require

as a condition of supervised release that she

spend the first six months in home confinement.

Interpretation is a flexible tool, and if here

employed rather aggressively to bring about the

legally and practically sound result that Judge

Stiehl lacked authority to bring about directly,

we do not think it was flexed quite to the

breaking point.

Affirmed.