Court Opinion

ID: 9492439
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:41:17.997192+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:18.413467
License: Public Domain

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I start with these assumptions: (1) 18 U.S.C. § 3583 authorized the district court to sentence Eske to a split sentence of imprisonment and additional supervised release aggregating three years or less; (2) the Ex Post Facto Clause of the Constitution permitted the district court to sentence Eske to two years’ imprisonment or any less severe punishment; and (3) a split sentence equal to or less severe than two years’ imprisonment is compatible with the Constitution, even though § 3583 did not authorize split sentences until after Eske committed the crime that led to his original sentence. See United States v. Withers, 128 F.3d 1167 (7th Cir.1997). The district court actually sentenced Eske to one year’s imprisonment and two years’ supervised release, the first four months of which must be served in community confinement. Unless this sentence is more onerous than two years’ imprisonment, it is constitutional. Dobbert v. Florida, 432 U.S. 282, 97 S.Ct. 2290, 53 L.Ed.2d 344 (1977). Any criminal defendant in his right mind would believe that one year in prison plus two years of supervised release is less severe than two years’ imprisonment. From this, and the three propositions above, it follows that Eske’s sentence comports with the Constitution and should be affirmed.
My colleagues agree with all three propositions but add a fourth: all forms of “restraint” count equally for constitutional purposes. Eske was sentenced to three years of official control, and because three is longer than two the sentence is constitutionally forbidden. Where does this equal-weight rule come from? Not from any decision of the Supreme Court. Not from common sense or experience. Ask 100 convicts to choose, and all 100 would trade two years of loose supervision for one year in the slammer. Indeed, the Constitution forbids equating the two. Perform a thought experiment. Suppose that in 2001 Congress changes the penalty for embezzlement from five years’ imprisonment followed by ten years’ supervised release to a straight 15-year term in prison. May that new penalty be meted out to an embezzler who committed that crime in 2000? If all years of “restraint” are equal under the Ex Post Facto Clause, then we would employ the new penalty. But surely we would say instead that prison is much harsher than supervised release and that the new law therefore may not be applied to prior offenders. Suppose the new prison term were 10 years rather than 15. Then the question would be whether prison is twice as onerous as supervised release, and again we would answer “yes” and forbid imposition of a 10-year term on the embezzler. Ten years of “restraint” may be fewer than 15, but I am confident that we would assess the total pain imposed by the sentence and not employ a mechanical rule that all years subject to any kind of supervision count equally under the Ex Post Facto Clause.
So where does the rule that “all restraint counts equally” come from? My colleagues do not justify the equivalence other than by citation to United States v. *541Shorty, 159 F.3d 312 (7th Cir.1998), which held no such thing. Shorty had been sentenced to 70 months’ imprisonment plus three years’ supervised release for distributing cocaine. He violated the terms of release, and the district judge then imposed a split sentence: 21 months’ imprisonment, plus a further three years’ supervised release. Shorty objected to the new term of supervised release, but we held that because he could have been subjected to supervised release for life as part of his original sentence, the new term of supervision could not be deemed an increase. The right question to ask is whether the split term actually imposed exceeded in severity the punishment authorized by statute at the time Shorty committed his offense. Shorty’s actual penalty, adding imprisonment and supervision together, was less than the maximum he could have received at the time he committed his original crime, and therefore did not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. The panel added that further cycles of revocation, imprisonment, and renewed supervised release might push the aggregate over the maximum, but that this had not yet occurred. One can say the sanie for Eske: his maximum for violating the terms of supervised release was two years’ imprisonment, and the sentence uses one of these (plus four months’ community confinement). We could sensibly conclude that no more than eight months of imprisonment may be imposed for any misbehavior during the final 20 months of Eske’s supervised release. But we cannot attribute to Shorty a rule that imprisonment and supervised release count equally in the constitutional calculus. Shorty held that it is sufficient to sustain a sentence that the combination of imprisonment plus supervision is less than the statutory maximum when the crime was committed; it does not hold (nor could it have held) that this is a necessary condition. Shorty did not present the question whether the Ex Post Facto Clause permits Congress to deem a year of supervised release less onerous than a year of imprisonment. Our case poses that question for the first time, and we should resolve it for ourselves rather than attribute its resolution to a case that did not concern the subject.
If we are going to hold an Act of Congress unconstitutional — which is what the majority does, even if “only” as applied to Eske and others in his situation — we need a better foundation than a negative inference drawn from another panel’s opinion. We need either a holding of the Supreme Court or a very powerful reason. Higher Authority is missing. One possible reason would be that the Ex Post Facto Clause has a so-far-unrecognized requirement that the total length of custody cannot increase. But neither the language nor the history of the Clause implies such a rule, and it would not be functionally sound. Suppose Congress replaced the current mandatory 10-year sentence for some cocaine offenses with a combination of 5 years’ imprisonment and 10 years’ participation, one day a week, in a drug-control program. By any reasonable estimate, the new sentence is less onerous. Would it be sound to say that because 15 years is more than 10, the Constitution demands that judges continue to sentence defendants to 10 years in prison?
The best reason to equate all forms of supervision (though not a reason either Shorty or my colleagues give) would be that this step avoids line drawing. If we are to differentiate prison from supervised release, just how much more severe is it? Twice as severe? Three times? Ten times? What if the sentence entails house arrest rather than imprisonment? By treating all restraint alike, we create a bright line and avoid potentially intractable problems. This bright line is not, however, reasonably imputed to the Constitution, and it is not a proper use of the judicial power to hold Acts of Congress unconstitutional just because implementing them in a constitutional fashion entails tough judgmental exercises. Hard as it may be to find the right substitution ratio between imprisonment and supervision, *542there is one indisputably wrong ratio: 1:1. (That’s the point of the embezzlement and cocaine hypotheticals.)
Eske may receive today’s decision in ill humor. He wanted us to slice a year from his term of supervision, leaving him with one year’s imprisonment and one year under a watchful eye. But the court properly remands, and the district judge is free to impose any lawful term — in particular, the district judge may sentence Eske to two years’ imprisonment. Knowing that he cannot keep Eske under supervision and dissuade him from crime by the threat of revoking that release, the district judge may opt to achieve deterrence and incapacitation via the maximum term of imprisonment. I am confident that Eske will think that matters have taken a turn for the worse.