Opinion ID: 791687
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Amendment of the judgment to include supervised release

Text: 32 Carr further claims that his due process rights were violated when the district court issued an amended judgment and commitment order 23 days after the entry of the court's original judgment. He contends that the court's findings from the bench did not include ordering a term of supervised release following the sixteen month sentence imposed, and that he had a right to be heard before the court imposed the 44-month term contained in the amended judgment. See United States v. Waters, 158 F.3d 933, 944 (6th Cir.1998) ([W]e ... require the district courts in our circuit to provide defendants with an opportunity to allocute before imposing a sentence for a violation of supervised release.). Carr concedes, however, that the imposition of the 44-month sentence would be permissible if we conclude that the district court did not violate Carr's right of allocution. 33 The district court stated at Carr's sentencing hearing that the record is to reflect that the supervision is to follow for the maximum that's permissible under the law. Counsel for Carr immediately objected, insisting that Carr's supervised release could not be extended because it was due to expire. The court admitted that it had not done the calculation necessary to determine the permissible duration of Carr's term of supervised release, but the court announced its determination that, [i]f possible, [supervised release] will continue. 34 After the government informed the court that its calculations showed that the maximum sentence Carr could receive would be 44 months of supervised release, the court stated that it would impose this sentence so long as Carr's counsel did not ha[ve] a problem with it. The written judgment issued by the court a few days after the hearing, however, did not contain a term of supervised release. An amended judgment entered by the court 23 days later did provide for 44 months of supervised release to follow Carr's term of imprisonment. 35 This court in United States v. Robinson, 368 F.3d 653, 656 (6th Cir.2004), held that a district court does not have jurisdiction to amend a sentence to correct mistakes or omissions by the court, unless the amendment is made within the seven-day time limit provided by Rule 35 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 35(a) (Within 7 days after sentencing, the court may correct a sentence that resulted from arithmetical, technical, or other clear error.). Beyond seven days, however, the court has jurisdiction to amend the sentence only in conformity with Rule 36 .... Robinson, 368 F.3d at 656. Rule 36 of the Federal Rules of the Criminal Procedure permits a district court to at any time correct a clerical error in a judgment, order, or other part of the record, or correct an error in the record arising from oversight or omission. But Rule 36 authorizes a court to correct only clerical errors in the transcription of judgments, not to effectuate its unexpressed intentions at the time of sentencing. Robinson, 368 F.3d at 656-57 (citing United States v. Werber, 51 F.3d 342, 343 (2d Cir.1995)); see also United States v. Coleman, 229 F.3d 1154, 2000 WL 1182460, at  (6th Cir. Aug.15, 2000) (unpublished) ([A] clerical error must not be one of judgment or even misidentification, but merely of recitation, of the sort that a clerk ... might commit.) (citation and quotation marks omitted). 36 In the present case, the district court clearly announced its intention to sentence Carr to the maximum term of supervised release permissible under the law. The circumstances here are therefore analogous to those in United States v. Libby, No. 95-1751, 1996 WL 117499 (6th Cir. Mar.15, 1996) (unpublished), a case that the Robinson court distinguished. In Libby, the court affirmed the district court's decision to amend a sentence by modifying a term of supervised release so that it conformed with what had been orally discussed at Libby's hearing on his supervised-release violation. Robinson, 368 F.3d at 657 (citing Libby, 1996 WL 117499, at ); see also United States v. Cofield, 233 F.3d 405, 407 (6th Cir.2000) ([I]f there is a discrepancy between the oral pronouncement of a criminal sentence and the written judgment, the oral sentence generally controls.). 37 Although Rule 36 does not authorize the amendment of a sentencing order to conform with an unexpressed sentencing intention, Robinson, 368 F.3d at 657 (emphasis in original), the district court in this case unequivocally stated its intention to sentence Carr to 44 months of supervised release. This gave Carr the opportunity to be heard on his objections to the court's intended sentence. We therefore conclude that Carr's due process rights were not violated and that he was not denied the right of allocution when the district issued an amended judgment containing the 44-month term of supervised release.