Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 779.0

529US3

Unit: $U56

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704

JOHNSON v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

“(3) revoke a term of supervised release, and require
the person to serve in prison all or part of the term of
supervised release without credit for the time pre-
viously served on postrelease supervision, if it ﬁnds by
a preponderance of the evidence that the person violated
a condition of supervised release, pursuant to the provi-
sions of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure that
are applicable to probation revocation and to the provi-
sions of applicable policy statements issued by the Sen-
tencing Commission . . . .”

The text of subsection (e)(3) does not speak directly to the
question whether a district court revoking a term of super-
vised release in favor of reimprisonment may require service
of a further term of supervised release following the further
incarceration. And if we were to concentrate exclusively on
the verb “revoke,” we would not detect any suggestion that
the reincarceration might be followed by another term of
supervised release, the conventional understanding of “re-
voke” being simply “to annul by recalling or taking back.”
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1944 (1981).
There are reasons, nonetheless, to think that the option of
further supervised release was intended.

First, there are some textual reasons, starting with the
preceding subsection (e)(1). This is an unequivocal provi-
sion for ending the term of supervised release without the
possibility of its reimposition or continuation at a later time.
Congress wrote that when a court ﬁnds that a defendant’s
conduct and the interests of justice warrant it, the court may
“terminate a term of supervised release and discharge the
person released,” once at least a year of release time has
been served.
If application of subsection (3) had likewise
been meant to conclude any possibility of supervised release
later, it would have been natural for Congress to write in
like terms.
It could have provided that upon ﬁnding a de-
fendant in violation of the release conditions the court could
“terminate a term of supervised release” and order the de-