Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 133

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UNITED STATES v. JOHNSON

Opinion of the Court

current running of a term of supervised release with terms
of probation, parole, or with other, separate terms of super-
vised release. The statute instructs that concurrency is per-
mitted not for prison sentences but only for those other types
of sentences given speciﬁc mention. The next sentence in
the statute does address a prison term and does allow con-
current counting, but only for prison terms less than 30 days
in length. When Congress provides exceptions in a statute,
it does not follow that courts have authority to create others.
The proper inference, and the one we adopt here, is that
Congress considered the issue of exceptions and, in the end,
limited the statute to the ones set forth. The 30-day excep-
tion ﬁnds no application in this case; each of respondent’s
sentences, to which the term of supervised release attached,
exceeded that amount of time. Finally, § 3583(e)(3) does not
have a substantial bearing on the interpretive issue, for this
directive addresses instances where conditions of supervised
release have been violated, and the court orders a revocation.
Our conclusion ﬁnds further support in 18 U. S. C.
§ 3583(a), which authorizes the imposition of “a term of su-
pervised release after imprisonment.” This provision, too,
is inconsistent with respondent’s contention that conﬁnement
and supervised release can run at the same time. The stat-
ute’s direction is clear and precise. Release takes place on
the day the prisoner in fact is freed from conﬁnement.

The Court of Appeals reasoned that reduction of respond-
ent’s supervised release term was a necessary implementa-
tion of § 3624(a), which provides that “[a] prisoner shall be
released by the Bureau of Prisons on the date of the expira-
tion of the prisoner’s term of imprisonment . . . .” All con-
cede respondent’s term of imprisonment should have ended
It does not follow, however, that the
earlier than it did.
term of supervised release commenced, as a matter of law,
once he completed serving his lawful sentences.
It is true
the prison term and the release term are related, for the
latter cannot begin until the former expires. Though inter-