Opinion ID: 163645
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: the failure to state reasons for kravchuk's term and conditions of supervised release

Text: 47 We review a district court's decisions on supervised release for abuse of discretion. United States v. Pugliese, 960 F.2d 913, 915 (10th Cir.1992). 48 A sentence for supervised release should be, at minimum, remanded if a district court fails to give its reasons for imposing the sentence on the record. See United States v. Zanghi, 209 F.3d 1201, 1205 (10th Cir.2000). When the district court has not given its reasons for the imposition of a sentence on the record, we decline to enter the `zone of appellate speculation' in reviewing for abuse of discretion. Id. 49 Kravchuk was sentenced to twenty-seven months imprisonment plus three years of supervised release, at least the first three months of which he was to serve in home confinement. The maximum term of imprisonment for Kravchuk's sentence under the guidelines otherwise was twenty-seven months. 50 A district court must impose a term of supervised release on a defendant when his term of imprisonment is for more than one year. U.S.S.G. § 5D1.1(a). 10 The appropriate term of supervised release for Class C felonies, such as Kravchuk's crime, is two to three years. U.S.S.G. § 5D1.2(a)(2). 11 Nevertheless, the condition of home confinement is only to be substituted for imprisonment. U.S.S.G. § 5D1.3(e)(2). 12 Kravchuk argues on appeal both that the district court should not have increased his sentence of imprisonment (or the equivalent) beyond the guideline maximum in requiring three months of home confinement, and that the district court failed to record its reasons on the record for the term and conditions of any of the three years of supervised release it gave him. 51 The government concedes that the three months of home detention was improper in the absence of an explicit departure upward from the guideline, and we agree. Accordingly, we remand for resentencing on the matter of post-incarceration home detention. 13 52 The government also concedes that the district court failed to provide its reasons for the terms and conditions of the remainder of Kravchuk's supervised release on the record. It argues, however, that our precedent in Zanghi can be distinguished from Kravchuk's case because we could speculate about what the district court intended when it imposed the sentence. But this very argument violates the principal of Zanghi. We will not enter the zone of appellate speculation, and postulate about what the district court's reasons were for the imposition of the sentence when it did not provide them to us on the record. Zanghi, 209 F.3d at 1205. 53 Accordingly, we REMAND for the district court to state its reasons on the record for imposing the three months to be served in home confinement, and to make explicit its upward departure from the guidelines in imposing this condition. In the alternative, the district court must resentence Kravchuk in accordance with the guidelines. Id. 54 VII. THE FAILURE TO MAKE PARTICULARIZED FINDINGS REGARDING THE CONTESTED PARTS OF KRAVCHUK'S PRESENTENCE REPORT AND TO REDUCE THEM TO WRITING 55 We review a district court's compliance with the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure de novo. United States v. Roman-Zarate, 115 F.3d 778, 781 (10th Cir.1997). 56 Our case law interprets Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32(c)(1) 14 to mandate not only that findings regarding the contested parts of presentence reports be made on the record, but that they be reduced to writing. See, e.g., United States v. Henning, 77 F.3d 346, 349 (10th Cir.1996) (citing United States v. Pedraza, 27 F.3d 1515, 1530-31 (10th Cir.1994)). The government does not contest that the district court failed to reduce its findings regarding the contested amount of victim restitution in Kravchuk's presentence report to writing, but argues that the issue is moot in Kravchuk's case. 57 The district court found that Kravchuk owed $9,000 to the convenience store in Broken Arrow for the cash he took from the store's safe. Kravchuk objected at sentencing, and objects again on appeal, that this amount should have been less than $9,000. Because there was evidence in the record to support the district court's factual determination of the $9,000, we upheld the substance of its finding. We now address, however, the consequences of its failure to reduce the reasons for its finding regarding the $9,000 to writing. 58 The government asserts that this issue is moot in Kravchuk's case because, even if the district court had accepted Kravchuk's figure for this component of the restitution as $6,720 instead of $9,000, the total sum of his restitution would still have exceeded the threshold of $30,000 for the category length of his sentence. U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1. 15 We disagree that this fact renders Kravchuk's argument moot. It was not only the term of Kravchuk's supervised release that was at issue in the district court's determination of the appropriate number, but most immediately the amount of restitution that he must pay to his victims under 18 U.S.C. § 3663(a)(1)(A) 16 and U.S.S.G. § 5E1.1(a)(1). 17 It certainly would be significant to Kravchuk to be able to pay $2,280 less to those victims depending on how the court reached its conclusion. 59 Accordingly, we REMAND to the district court for it to reduce to writing its factual findings regarding Kravchuk's objections to his presentence report.