United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

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No. 20-2171

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United States of America

lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee

v.

Deon Daye

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant

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Appeal from United States District Court 

for the Northern District of Iowa - Cedar Rapids

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 Submitted: April 12, 2021

Filed: July 21, 2021

[Published]

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Before KELLY, GRASZ, and KOBES, Circuit Judges. 

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PER CURIAM.

In 2017, Deon Daye pleaded guilty to making false statements before a grand

jury while under oath. See 18 U.S.C. § 1623. The district court1

 sentenced him to 33

1The Honorable Linda R. Reade, United States District Judge for the Northern

District of Iowa. 
months’ imprisonment and a three-year term of supervised release. Daye completed

the initial term of imprisonment. He now appeals the district court’s2 second

revocation of supervised release and challenges the revocation sentence of 12

months’ imprisonment as substantively unreasonable. We affirm.

I.

Daye began serving his first term of supervised release on June 7, 2019. The

district court revoked his supervised release five months later after he admitted to

violating its terms by failing to participate in substance abuse testing, failing to

comply with mental health treatment, and committing assault. The court then

sentenced Daye to five months’ imprisonment for the violations and imposed a twoyear term of supervised release. Daye began serving that new term of supervised

release on March 6, 2020. 

Several weeks later, on April 23, 2020, Daye’s probation officer petitioned the

district court to again revoke Daye’s supervised release on the basis of a police report

alleging that he had assaulted his ex-girlfriend, Sarah Bates.3 See Iowa Code.

§§ 708.2A(5) (2017) (domestic abuse assault by strangling), 708.2(2) (2010) (assault

causing bodily injury or mental illness).4 According to the police report, on April 22,

2020 an officer responded to a domestic disturbance call from Bates and found her

sitting in her car with a bloody nose and swelling above her right eye. Bates told the

officer that she and Daye had just broken up and that she got into an altercation with

2The Honorable C.J. Williams, United States District Judge for the Northern

District of Iowa.

3To protect the identity of Daye’s ex-girlfriend, who is not a party to this case,

we refer to her using the pseudonym Sarah Bates. 

4The police report also refers to a charge for criminal mischief, id. § 716.1

(2002), but the district court’s primary concern was the assault charge.

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him and his sister when she drove to his house to pick up her belongings. Bates

remained inside the car while Daye carried her things to the vehicle. Daye’s sister

began shouting insults at Bates and walked toward her car. Daye asked Bates, “What

are you saying to my sister?” and pulled open the driver’s-side door of Bates’s car. 

He then put his hands around her neck, briefly choking her. Daye and his sister each

punched Bates in the face multiple times. Bates was eventually able to drive away

from the scene and called the police shortly thereafter.

Daye contested the violation, and the district court held an evidentiary hearing

on June 4, 2020. The government introduced into evidence the video from the

responding officer’s body camera, which captured Bates’s contemporaneous

description of the night’s events. Bates, who had by then reconciled with Daye, also

testified at the hearing. She testified that Daye never punched her and that she told

the officer he had only because she was upset with Daye at the time. During crossexamination, Bates acknowledged that her goal in testifying was to “get Mr. Daye out

of jail.” She also said that she “blacked out” after Daye’s sister punched her and had

“no memory of the next several seconds.” Daye testified on his own behalf,

maintaining that he never assaulted Bates. At the conclusion of the hearing, the

district court found that the government had met its burden of proving the supervised

release violation by a preponderance of the evidence. 

II.

“A district court may revoke supervised release if the government proves by

a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant violated a condition of supervised

release.” United States v. Staten, 990 F.3d 631, 635 (8th Cir. 2021) (per curiam)

(cleaned up); see 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3). We review the district court’s decision to

revoke supervised release for an abuse of discretion and any factual determinations

underpinning the revocation, including findings regarding witness credibility, for

clear error. United States v. Richey, 758 F.3d 999, 1001 (8th Cir. 2014). “Clear error

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exists where, viewing the record as a whole, we are left with the definite and firm

conviction that a mistake has been committed.” United States v. Finley, 612 F.3d

998, 1002 (8th Cir. 2010) (cleaned up). 

In support of its decision to revoke Daye’s supervised release, the district court

explained that it found Daye’s and Bates’s hearing testimony not credible. Instead,

the court relied on Bates’s statements to the officer on the scene, as reflected in the

officer’s body camera video. A district court’s credibility determinations concerning

witness testimony at a supervised release hearing “are virtually unreviewable on

appeal,” United States v. Ralph, 480 F.3d 888, 890 (8th Cir. 2007), and we see

nothing in the record that suggests the district court in this case clearly erred in

evaluating that testimony. In discounting Bates’s hearing testimony, the court cited

her demeanor and her difficulty maintaining a consistent, logical narrative in response

to questioning, and expressed the view that Bates’s statements to the officer on the

night of the assault “r[a]ng true.” The court also relied on other evidence corroborating Bates’s initial description of the assault, including subsequent jail phone calls

between Bates and Daye. We discern no clear error in the district court’s assessment

of the evidence, nor any abuse of discretion in the court’s decision to revoke

supervised release.

Daye has already finished serving the 12-month term of imprisonment

imposed by the district court. Because he challenges only the term of imprisonment

and not the new term of supervised release, his appeal of the sentence as substantively unreasonable is moot. See Owen v. United States, 930 F.3d 989, 990–91 (8th

Cir. 2019) (dismissing appeal of revocation sentence as moot where defendant had

already completed the term of imprisonment and did not challenge the term of

supervised release). 

For these reasons, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

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