In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 23-1830 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

v.

JEROME D. FORD, 

Defendant-Appellant. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division.

No. 1:22CR00004-001 — James Patrick Hanlon, Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED JUNE 5, 2024 — DECIDED JULY 1, 2024 

____________________ 

Before EASTERBROOK, BRENNAN, and JACKSON-AKIWUMI,

Circuit Judges. 

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. A district judge sentenced Jerome Ford to 96 months in prison for possessing a firearm, 

despite his felony conviction. 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(1). Three years 

of supervised release will follow Ford’s release. The judgment 

provides, among many other conditions: “If this judgment 

imposes a fine or restitution, it is a condition of supervised 

release that the defendant pay in accordance with the 
2 No. 23-1830 

Schedule of Payments sheet of this judgment.” Ford’s fine is 

$250; the court did not order him to pay restitution. All the 

“Schedule of Payments” sheet provides is that Ford must start 

paying immediately.

Ford presents only one appellate issue. He contends that 

the payment condition of supervised release is unauthorized 

because the judge did not mention it during sentencing, and 

it also did not appear in the presentence report (whose recommendations were adopted orally at sentencing). When the 

oral pronouncement and the written judgment in a criminal 

case conflict, the oral pronouncement controls. See, e.g., 

United States v. Johnson, 765 F.3d 702, 710–11 (7th Cir. 2014); 

United States v. Alburay, 415 F.3d 782, 788 (7th Cir. 2005). Ford 

asks us to delete the payment condition from the judgment.

We have recognized at least one exception to the rule that 

oral prevails over written. A condition of supervision required by law (that is, a mandatory condition) need not be 

announced orally. United States v. Anstice, 930 F.3d 907, 909 

(7th Cir. 2019). Some conditions are required by statute, see 

18 U.S.C. §3583(d), but the payment condition is not in that 

category. It is, however, on a list of mandatory conditions in 

the Sentencing Guidelines. U.S.S.G. §5D1.3(a)(5). That may be

how it found its way to the judgment in Ford’s case. This condition is preprinted on the 2016 version of Form AO 245B 

(Judgment in a Criminal Case) circulated by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts—but it does not appear 

on the most recent version (effective September 2019). The 

district court used the 2019 version for the first page of Ford’s 

judgment and took the remaining pages from the 2016 version; he did not explain why.
No. 23-1830 3 

Ford asserts that the Guidelines’ list of mandatory conditions ceased being mandatory after United States v. Booker, 543 

U.S. 220 (2005), declared the Guidelines to be advisory. That 

is not necessarily true. As an application of Apprendi v. New 

Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), Booker concerns the jury’s role in 

determining minimum and maximum sentences. The remedial opinion in Booker solved the Apprendi problem by declaring that the upper and lower ends of the Guidelines’ ranges 

are not binding. It held that 18 U.S.C. §3553(b)(1), which requires district courts to respect the minimum and maximum 

ranges set by the Guidelines, is invalid. 543 U.S. at 259. Neither of the two majority opinions in Booker (Justice Stevens for 

a majority on the merits, and Justice Breyer for a majority on 

the remedy) suggests that the conditions of supervised release, which are unrelated to minimum and maximum sentences and have never been the province of juries, are problematic. The remedial opinion lists 18 U.S.C. §3583, which covers supervised release, as among provisions not affected by 

Booker. Compare 543 U.S. at 258 with id. at 259. 

As far as we know, neither the Supreme Court nor any 

court of appeals has held since Booker that conditions required 

by §3583(d) or U.S.S.G. §5D1.3 are no longer mandatory. At 

least one circuit has said that Booker does not affect conditions 

of supervised release. United States v. Reyes, 18 F.4th 1130, 

1137–38 (9th Cir. 2021). Many decisions, including some in 

this circuit, e.g., United States v. Bangsengthong, 550 F.3d 681, 

682 (7th Cir. 2008), declare broadly that “the Guidelines” are 

not mandatory after Booker, but none of these concerns conditions of supervised release or discusses the way the remedial 

opinion in Booker separated valid from invalid statutes.
4 No. 23-1830 

The brief for the United States does not make anything of 

this, however. It ventures that the payment condition “may 

be mandatory” but does not take a firm position. Instead the 

prosecutor argues that the payment condition isn’t that much 

of a departure from the oral pronouncement. Given the principle of party presentation, see United States v. Sineneng-Smith, 

590 U.S. 371 (2020), we accept the implied concession for the 

purpose of this appeal, while reserving the subject for decision in some future case in which it has been the subject of 

adversarial briefing.

It follows that the payment condition must be vacated. The 

rule that the oral sentence controls has an exception for mandatory conditions but not for all conditions that prosecutors 

deem minor.

It is not clear whether our decision will help Ford. A statute, 18 U.S.C. §3613A(a)(1), provides that people who do not 

pay their fines may be returned to prison. That statute applies 

to Ford during his supervised release whether or not a payment condition appears in the judgment. And §3583(e)(2) provides that courts may add or delete conditions of supervised 

release at any time. If the district judge thinks the payment 

condition important, he may add it to the judgment. All we 

decide today is that one particular condition that appears in 

the judgment, but was not mentioned or adopted by incorporation during sentencing, must be vacated.

The district court’s judgment is modified to delete the payment condition.