UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 13-4682

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff - Appellee,

v.

STEVE CHRISTOPHER WELLS, JR.,

Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western 

District of Virginia, at Roanoke. Samuel G. Wilson, District 

Judge. (7:10-cr-00026-SGW-1)

Submitted: June 19, 2014 Decided: July 11, 2014

Before KING, GREGORY, and WYNN, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

Larry W. Shelton, Federal Public Defender, Christine Madeleine 

Lee, Research and Writing Attorney, Roanoke, Virginia, for 

Appellant. Timothy J. Heaphy, United States Attorney, Charlene 

R. Day, Assistant United States Attorney, Elizabeth Noles, Third 

Year Law Student, Roanoke, Virginia, for Appellee.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
2

PER CURIAM:

In July 2010, Steve Christopher Wells, Jr., entered a 

guilty plea to possession with intent to distribute five grams 

or more of crack cocaine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. 

§ 841(b)(1)(B) (2006). Without a recidivist enhancement, Wells 

faced a mandatory minimum sentence of five years’ imprisonment. 

Prior to Wells’ December 2010 sentencing, the Government moved 

to amend the charge to allow Wells to plead guilty to the 

lesser-included offense of violating 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C) 

(2006). The Government made this motion to bring Wells’ case in 

line with the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (“FSA”), which took 

effect on August 3, 2010. Wells agreed to the modification, 

without reservation. The district court allowed the amendment 

and sentenced Wells to twenty-four months’ imprisonment, to be 

followed by four years of supervised release. 

After he was released from prison and while serving 

his supervised release, Wells was arrested by Virginia law 

enforcement authorities and charged with felony eluding. 

Thereafter, Wells’ federal probation officer filed a violation 

report. The district court subsequently determined that Wells 

violated the terms of his supervised release and sentenced Wells 

to twenty-four months’ imprisonment, to be followed by an 

additional ten years of supervised release. 
3

On appeal, Wells challenges only the subsequent 

supervised release term that the court ordered. Specifically, 

Wells contends that imposition of the additional ten-year term 

of supervised release violates the Ex Post Facto Clause because 

it is longer than the supervised release term he faced at the 

time he committed the underlying violation of § 841(b)(1)(B).1 

We reject this argument and affirm. 

Wells did not assert this constitutional argument 

before the district court; as such, we are limited to plain 

error review. See United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 732–33 

(1993); United States v. Knight, 606 F.3d 171, 177 (4th Cir. 

2010) (reviewing for plain error defendant’s ex post facto 

challenge to the particular edition of the Sentencing 

Guidelines, which was not presented in the district court); 

 1 Taken together, the relevant statutory provisions 

authorize a four- to five-year term of supervised release for a 

violation of § 841(b)(1)(B). See 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(B) 

(setting statutory maximum sentence at forty years’ imprisonment 

and mandating the imposition of at least a four-year term of 

supervised release); see also 18 U.S.C. § 3559(a)(2) (2012) 

(designating any federal offense with a statutory maximum 

sentence of twenty-five years to life as a Class B felony); 18 

U.S.C. § 3583(b)(1) (2012) (authorizing a five-year maximum term 

of supervised release for Class A or Class B felonies). 

Comparatively, while there is a statutory minimum three-year 

term of supervised release that must be imposed in conjunction 

with a conviction under § 841(b)(1)(C), there is no upper limit 

as to the term of supervised release that may be ordered. See

21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C); United States v. Pratt, 239 F.3d 640, 

647-48 (4th Cir. 2001). 
4

accord United States v. Woodward, 744 F.3d 488, 496 (7th Cir. 

2014) (reviewing unpreserved ex post facto claim for plain 

error). 

The Ex Post Facto Clause “bars application of a law 

that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, 

than the law annexed to the crime, when committed.” Johnson v. 

United States, 529 U.S. 694, 699 (2000) (internal quotation 

marks and alteration omitted). For a law to run afoul of the Ex 

Post Facto Clause, two elements must be present — it must 

“operate[ ] retroactively,” applying to conduct completed prior 

to its enactment, and it must “raise[ ] the penalty from 

whatever the law provided when [the defendant] acted.” Id.

Wells’ claim fails because no “new law” operated 

retroactively at the revocation proceeding. Operative, instead, 

was the same statutory provision to which Wells consented when 

he accepted the Government’s offer to modify his initial charge 

of conviction. He agreed to this modification knowingly and 

without reservation. As such, the district court properly 

applied the supervised release provisions relevant to 

§ 841(b)(1)(C), as this was the basis for Wells’ initial 

conviction and sentence.2 

 2 This is line with the general legal principle “that postrevocation prison sentences are sentences for the original 

federal crime, not punishment for the violation of the terms of 

(Continued)
5

We thus agree with the Government’s threshold argument 

that the Ex Post Facto Clause simply is not implicated here. 

The deviation between the statutory provision Wells violated 

when he committed the underlying federal offense in December 

2009, and the statutory provision utilized to later determine 

his supervised release range, resulted from Wells’ acceptance of 

the Government’s offer to reduce his charge, “not by any 

operation of law.” (Appellee’s Br. at 13). 

Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s revocation 

judgment. 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.

AFFIRMED

 

supervised release.” United States v. Fareed, 296 F.3d 243, 247 

(4th Cir. 2002) (citing Johnson, 529 U.S. at 700-01).