Court Opinion

ID: 9494063
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:28:32.443571+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:12.328897
License: Public Domain

BERZON, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
The majority recognizes that it is not “technically ‘necessary’ ” for the federal government to await a defendant’s release from state custody before federal adjudication of the revocation of his supervised release can take place. Majority Opinion at 447. Rather, the government can issue a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum for the period of time necessary to conduct a hearing, determine whether violations occurred and, if so, impose the federal sentence for the supervised release viola*451tions charged. The majority holds, nonetheless, that under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(i), the government can wait until the end of a defendant’s state pretrial detention and imprisonment on a state charge to begin the revocation proceedings. I read the statute, instead, as quite explicitly stating otherwise: The court’s authority to revoke a term of supervised release extends for as long as it reasonably takes to hold a fair and adequate hearing on revocation, not longer.
If the statutory question were simply whether the delay in this case was “unreasonable,” then it might be sensible to conclude that Congress intended in enacting § 3583(i) to codify the standard applied in United States v. Bartholdi, 453 F.2d 1225, 1226 (9th Cir.1972) and similar cases,1 and the majority’s reliance on that case would be understandable. But § 3583 did not simply enact the general “unreasonable delay” standard articulated in Bartholdi. Rather, the statute is considerably more specific.
Under the statute, the term of supervised release is not itself extended or tolled by a close-to-end-of-term violation. Rather, it is only the “power of the court to revoke” the supervised release that is extended, and only for so long as “reasonably necessary for the adjudication of matters arising before its expiration.” § 3583(i) (emphasis added). So the statute does not simply add the “necessary” requirement, but also provides a benchmark for measuring what the delay must be “reasonably necessary” to accomplish— namely, “the adjudication of’ any supervised released violations that occurred before the expiration of the supervised release term.
The majority, moreover, imports into § 3583(i) something that is simply not there — an additional power automatically to further delay revocation proceedings until the defendant is in federal custody. The absence of any statutory basis for such post-term authority is particularly significant, in my view, because the statutory provisions governing supervised release do adjust in another respect for periods of incarceration on charges other than those giving rise to the term of supervised release in question. See 18 U.S.C. § 3624(e) (suspending the running of a term of supervised release while the defendant is imprisoned); cf. United States v. Morales-Alejo, 193 F.3d 1102 (9th Cir.1999) (holding that § 3624(e) does not apply until after conviction). Had Congress intended, as the majority supposes, similarly to extend, automatically, the post-expiration extended revocation period contained in § 3583(i), it had only either to modify § 3624(e) accordingly, or to include language similar to § 3624(e) in § 3583(i). Congress did neither when it amended § 3583 in 1994.2
The majority nonetheless reads a provision parallel to § 3624(e) into § 3583(i)’s limited grant of post-expiration jurisdiction, justifying this statutory revision by stating its firm “belief that the purpose of § 3583(i) was to assure reasonable speed of federal adjudication after the defendant is in federal custody; it was not to overrule Moody and Bartholdi.” (Maj. Op. at 450.) We do not ordinarily disregard the words of a statute on the strength of our own belief that Congress could not have meant what it said. Pinter v. Dahl, 486 U.S. 622, 653, 108 S.Ct. 2063, 100 L.Ed.2d *452658 (1988); see also United States v. Wells, 519 U.S. 482, 497, 117 S.Ct. 921, 137 L.Ed.2d 107 (1997).
Moreover, as the majority initially recognizes and then later forgets, Moody was a case concerned only with whether the constitution requires that revocation proceedings occur promptly even when a prisoner is incarcerated, not with whether it would be preferable as a policy matter to provide for prompt hearings, when feasible, even for incarcerated defendants. (See Maj. Op. at 448) (“The absence of a constitutional right to a prompt revocation hearing prior to the execution of a violation warrant does not foreclose the argument that a defendant may possess such a right under the express statutory language of § 3583(i).”). The dissent in Moody presented strong policy arguments favoring a contrary approach to revocation hearings: The uncertainty associated with pending charges can adversely affect “efforts to involve the offender in correctional programs” while imprisoned, 429 U.S. at 94 n. 9, 97 S.Ct. 274 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (quoting Bureau of Prisons, Policy Statement 7500.14A (Jan. 7, 1970)), while a long-delayed hearing3 is likely to make it difficult for the defendant to marshal evidence relevant to the revocation proceedings as well as to shift the focus of those proceedings to the defendant’s behavior while incarcerated. Moody, 429 U.S. at 95, 97 S.Ct. 274 (Stevens, J., dissenting).
Moody held that these considerations do not create a constitutional due process right to a prompt revocation hearing if the defendant is incarcerated. But Moody did not limit Congress’ authority to credit the policy considerations spelled out by the Moody dissent, and to enact legislation in accord therewith. By adopting as the touchstone for the permissible period of delay not all stretches of incarceration but only any period “reasonably necessary for the adjudication” of an alleged supervised release violation, Congress, it seems to me, chose — once a term of supervised release had expired — to prefer prompt adjudication, where possible, over the indefinite delay involved in awaiting the end of any and all terms of imprisonment.
I recognize that where § 3624(e) does apply, there can be a delay in the instigation of federal revocation proceedings until after the end of state incarceration, however long that might be, because the term of supervised release will not end until then and there is no other limitation in the statute on the timing of revocation hearings.4 The statute as I read it, in other words, permits delay for incarceration due to a conviction as long as that incarceration begins before the termination of the term of supervised release but not if it begins thereafter. As such, the statutory scheme is certainly not a tidy one. And why Congress chose to make that distinction I can only speculate. Perhaps the factors stressed by the Moody dissent were thought entitled to greater weight where a defendant had gotten through his entire term of supervised release without a second conviction and resulting incarceration than where he had not. Perhaps the defendant’s right to a prompt hearing was thought stronger once he was no longer subject to court supervi*453sion on account of his earlier conviction. Whatever the case, the distinction is one that could not be clearer in the statute— which is quite explicit regarding the fact that the delayed revocation period does not extend the term of supervised release but only the power of the court to revoke an expired period of supervised release— and is therefore a distinction that we are obliged to respect.
Whether the practical difficulties involved in arranging for the presence in court of a defendant incarcerated by a state can sometimes meet the statutory “reasonably necessary for ... adjudication” standard is a question that need not be addressed in this case. Obviously, the defendant needs to be present for any revocation hearings, and obtaining the defendant’s presence may at times be quite burdensome. So it may at times be “reasonably necessary for the adjudication” of revocation to wait some period of time before obtaining custody over the defendant.
That is the case, though, not only when the defendant is imprisoned, but also when he or she is for other reasons out of the jurisdiction, or, while in the jurisdiction, has not yet been arrested for violation of supervised release. The statute as written draws no distinction between incarcerated defendants and others. I doubt that, under the terms of the extended jurisdiction conferred by § 3583(i), the government could wait indefinitely to arrest a defendant on a revocation warrant if the defendant was in his known dwelling place and therefore easy to find. Yet the majority’s supposition that “the purpose of § 3583© was to assure reasonable speed of federal adjudication after the defendant is in federal custody” (Maj. Op. at 450) appears to suggest otherwise.
In any event, whatever burden might be involved in other circumstances in obtaining temporary custody over the defendant for purposes of holding the revocation and sentencing hearings, there was none here. During the period when the revocation proceedings could have taken place, Garrett was in pretrial state custody a few blocks from the federal courthouse. Obtaining the defendant’s presence would have been simply a matter of arranging with state authorities for his temporary attendance in federal court. Indeed, the government in this case has essentially conceded that the delay was in no respects necessary or the result of an undue burden, but argues only that no burden at all, or even inconvenience, need be shown if the defendant is incarcerated. I would reject that proposition, and therefore I respectfully dissent.

. See, e.g., Barr v. Parker, 453 F.2d 865 (9th Cir.1971); Shelton v. United States Board of Parole, 388 F.2d 567, 571 (D.C.Cir.1967) (cited in both Barr and Bartholdi).

. See § 110505 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Pub.L. No. 103-322, 108 Stat. 1796.

. Several courts of appeal have also held, applying Moody, that there is no due process violation where there is a lengthy delay because of the § 3624(e) tolling rule, unless there is an showing of actual prejudice. See United States v. Sanchez, 225 F.3d 172, 175-77 (2d Cir.2000), and cases cited therein.