Court Opinion

ID: 9394747
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-05-16 14:01:17.521652+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:19:02.531394
License: Public Domain

20-3845
   United States v. Santiago

                             UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                 FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

                                          SUMMARY ORDER
RULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT. CITATION TO
A SUMMARY ORDER FILED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2007, IS PERMITTED AND IS
GOVERNED BY FEDERAL RULE OF APPELLATE PROCEDURE 32.1 AND THIS COURT’S
LOCAL RULE 32.1.1. WHEN CITING A SUMMARY ORDER IN A DOCUMENT FILED WITH
THIS COURT, A PARTY MUST CITE EITHER THE FEDERAL APPENDIX OR AN
ELECTRONIC DATABASE (WITH THE NOTATION “SUMMARY ORDER”). A PARTY
CITING TO A SUMMARY ORDER MUST SERVE A COPY OF IT ON ANY PARTY NOT
REPRESENTED BY COUNSEL.

         At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,
   held at the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, in the
   City of New York, on the 16th day of May, two thousand twenty-three.

   PRESENT:
              AMALYA L. KEARSE,
              DENNIS JACOBS,
              RICHARD J. SULLIVAN,
                    Circuit Judges.
   _____________________________________

   UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

                            Appellee,

                            v.                                                    No. 20-3845

   FELIX SANTIAGO III, a.k.a. URKEL,

                    Defendant-Appellant. *
   _____________________________________

   *   The Clerk of Court is respectfully directed to amend the official case caption as set forth above.
For Defendant-Appellant:                        SAMUEL M. BRAVERMAN, Fasulo
                                                Braverman & Di Maggio, LLP, New
                                                York, NY.

For Appellee:                                   MITZI    S.    STEINER       (David
                                                Abramowicz, on the brief), Assistant
                                                United States Attorneys, for
                                                Damian Williams, United States
                                                Attorney for the Southern District
                                                of New York, New York, NY.

      Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern

District of New York (Denise L. Cote, Judge).

      UPON      DUE    CONSIDERATION,            IT   IS   HEREBY      ORDERED,

ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the appeal is DISMISSED.

      Felix Santiago III appeals from the district court’s judgment revoking his

term of supervised release and sentencing him to thirteen months’ imprisonment

for various violations of the conditions of supervised release imposed in

connection with his 2010 conviction for narcotics conspiracy. We assume the

parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts, procedural history, and issues on

appeal.

      Following an evidentiary hearing, the district court found that Santiago

committed four of the six specifications of violation alleged by the United States

Probation Office, including leaving his district of supervision without the

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probation officer’s prior authorization (Specification Two); lying to the probation

officer regarding his residence and possession of cellphones (Specifications Three

and Four); and failing to notify the probation officer regarding his change in

residence (Specification Five).         1   The district court imposed a concurrent

thirteen-month term of imprisonment on each of the four specifications, with no

additional term of supervised release to follow. On appeal, Santiago contends that

the district court did not have jurisdiction over Specifications Two through Five

because they were reported by the Probation Office after his term of supervised

release had already ended, and that even if the district court had jurisdiction over

the specifications, its sentence of thirteen months’ imprisonment – which Santiago

completed on April 13, 2021 – is substantively unreasonable. 2

       “Article III, Section 2 of the United States Constitution limits the federal

judicial power to ‘cases’ and ‘controversies.’” United States v. Blackburn, 461 F.3d

259, 261 (2d Cir. 2006) (quoting U.S. Const. art. II, § 2). Once a defendant has

1The district court dismissed Specification One at the government’s request and dismissed
Specification Six for lack of jurisdiction.

2Santiago was subsequently charged and convicted of bail jumping for failing to surrender for
service of his sentence on the date ordered by the district court, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 3146.
The district court in that matter sentenced Santiago to a year and a day of imprisonment, to be
followed by a three-year term of supervised release. Santiago has completed the custodial portion
of that sentence and is now on supervised release.

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completed his sentence, “some concrete and continuing injury other than the

now-ended incarceration or parole – [namely,] some collateral consequence of the

conviction – must exist if the suit is to be maintained.” Spencer v. Kemna, 523 U.S. 1,

7 (1998) (internal quotation marks omitted).          While challenges to criminal

convictions are presumed to have “continuing collateral consequences” even after

the defendant has completed his sentence, id. at 8, that presumption does not apply

to violations of probation, parole, or supervised release, see, e.g., Nowakowski v. New

York, 835 F.3d 210, 218 (2d Cir. 2016) (noting that “the presumption of continuing

collateral consequences” applies “only to criminal convictions” and that the

Supreme Court has “expressly declined to extend [the presumption] outside of

that context” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Instead, a defendant who

challenges a judgment of revocation but has completed his term of re-incarceration

“bears the burden of demonstrating that some concrete and continuing injury

continues to flow from the fact of the revocation.” United States v. Probber, 170 F.3d

345, 348 (2d Cir. 1999).

      Here, Santiago argues that he has met that burden because the district

court’s judgment of revocation may (1) expose him to impeachment if he “were to

ever testify at a future trial,” Santiago Br. at 22; (2) cause him to face “an increased

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sentence in a possible future proceeding,” id. at 23; and (3) subject him to other

unspecified “collateral consequences” if he were to violate the conditions of

supervised release in the bail-jumping case, id. at 24. None of these alleged

injuries, however, is sufficient to satisfy the case-or-controversy requirement of

Article III.

       With respect to Santiago’s first argument, the Supreme Court has held that

the possibility that a defendant’s “parole revocation . . . could be used to impeach

him should he appear as a witness or litigant in a future criminal or civil

proceeding” is “purely a matter of speculation,” which is too remote to constitute

a continuing injury. Spencer, 523 U.S. at 15–16 (citing O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S.

488, 496–97 (1974)).    That holding is squarely applicable to this case, where

Santiago has not articulated any reason to think that he may be called as a witness

in a future proceeding, much less “that a prosecutor or examining counsel

would . . . use the . . . revocation [judgment]” to impeach him. Id. at 16. Santiago’s

worry that he may be impeached at a future trial is therefore “too speculative to

serve as a concrete injury for the purpose of establishing our . . . jurisdiction.”

Probber, 170 F.3d at 349.

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      Santiago’s remaining arguments are also unpersuasive. As the Supreme

Court has explained, the possibility that an “[o]rder of [r]evocation could be used

to increase [a defendant’s] sentence in a future sentencing proceeding” does not

render a mooted case justiciable, since that possibility is “contingent upon [the

defendant] violating the law, getting caught, and being convicted.” Spencer, 523

U.S. at 15; see also Probber, 170 F.3d at 349 (explaining that the Supreme Court has

“refused to recognize [any sentencing-based] collateral consequence, on the

ground that an individual presumably has the power, and the legal obligation, to

avoid committing additional crimes”). Here, although it is possible that the

district court’s revocation judgment may subject Santiago to additional

consequences should he commit a new crime or violate the conditions of

supervised release in the bail-jumping case, the fact remains that Santiago is

“able – and indeed required by law – to prevent such a possibility from occurring.”

Lane v. Williams, 455 U.S. 624, 633 n.13 (1982). Because Santiago has failed to

demonstrate any “concrete and continuing injury [that] continues to flow from the

fact of the revocation,” we cannot conclude that we have jurisdiction over this

appeal. Probber, 170 F.3d at 348.

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For these reasons, we DISMISS this appeal as moot.

                             FOR THE COURT:
                             Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, Clerk of Court

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