Opinion ID: 2499996
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Johnson v. United States

Text: ¶ 26 Mr. Flint maintains, however, that a contrary result is required under Johnson. ¶ 27 In Johnson, 18 U.S.C. § 3583(h) [8] was enacted after the defendant's original conviction and sentence. The statute granted district courts the power to impose an additional, second term of supervised release following reimprisonment of a defendant for violation of conditions of an initial term of supervised release. Johnson, 529 U.S. at 698, 120 S.Ct. 1795. The United States Supreme Court rejected the argument that the additional term of supervised release was merely punishment for violating the conditions of supervised release and concluded that postrevocation penalties are attributable to the original offense. Id. at 701, 120 S.Ct. 1795. To apply the new statute in the case at hand, the Court reasoned, would be to apply it retroactively and raise the ex post facto question of whether the statute's application would make the defendant worse off. Id. ¶ 28 In Johnson, however, the challenged statutory provision imposed a postrevocation penalty for the original offense, a second term of earned early release, following reincarceration. The same is not true in Mr. Flint's case. RCW 9.94A.737(2) does not impose any additional punishment, as explained, and for this reason does not violate the ex post facto clauses of the state and federal constitutions. U.S. Const. art. I, § 10; Wash. Const. art. I, § 23. Accordingly, the ex post facto issue in Mr. Flint's case is not the same as in Johnson. ¶ 29 After deciding that the new law at issue in Johnson would impose a postrevocation penalty for the original offense, the Court then concluded that there was no congressional intent that the statute be applied to cases where the convictions occurred prior to the statute's enactment and accordingly no ex post facto issue was implicated. Johnson, 529 U.S. at 702, 120 S.Ct. 1795. The Court examined the law as it had existed prior to amendment and concluded that under the prior version of the law the district court had discretion to order terms of supervised release following reimprisonment. Id. at 713, 120 S.Ct. 1795. Thus, the Court upheld the district court's decision to revoke the petitioner's supervised release and impose an additional term of supervised release following the reimprisonment. ¶ 30 This part of Johnson also confirms that, even if we were to decide that RCW 9.94A.737(2) could not be applied to Mr. Flint, his return to total confinement was proper. As we have explained, the department had discretion to return Mr. Flint to total confinement under the prior law. The record shows that Mr. Flint repeatedly violated community custody conditions and that sanctions of temporary confinement imposed for earlier violations had not resulted in his compliance with the conditions. Each of the two prior hearings involved multiple violations, and at the third hearing the hearing officer noted that shortly after Mr. Flint entered a stipulation regarding use of drugs, he violated the terms of community custody in that he possessed drug paraphernalia (including a pipe and scales), failed to report to his community custody corrections officer, and failed to attend substance abuse treatment. Resp. of DOC, Attach. B (Community Custody Hr'g Report at 6). Under the circumstances, Flint's return to total confinement would have been within the department's discretion under the law that existed prior to RCW 9.94A.737(2), if that law were the applicable law.