Court Opinion

ID: 9367871
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-02-02 01:00:30.629189+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:04.118878
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-30211     Document: 00516631536         Page: 1   Date Filed: 02/01/2023

           United States Court of Appeals
                for the Fifth Circuit                          United States Court of Appeals
                                                                        Fifth Circuit

                                                                      FILED
                                                                 February 1, 2023
                                  No. 22-30211
                                                                  Lyle W. Cayce
                                                                       Clerk

   United States of America,

                                                           Plaintiff—Appellee,

                                      versus

   Charles Joseph Greer,

                                                        Defendant—Appellant.

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Western District of Louisiana
                    USDC No. 3:19-CR-235-TAD-KDM-1

   Before Richman, Chief Judge, and King and Higginson, Circuit
   Judges.
   Stephen A. Higginson, Circuit Judge:
         Charles Joseph Greer was convicted in 2015 of possessing child
   pornography and sentenced to an 86-month term of imprisonment and six
   years of supervised release.   In 2019, Greer violated conditions of his
   supervised release, and the district court sentenced him to fifteen more
   months of imprisonment to be followed by five years of supervised release.
   See United States v. Greer, 812 F. App’x 272 (5th Cir. 2020) (per curiam)
   (unpublished). After starting his second term of supervised release, Greer
   again violated its conditions. The district court revoked Greer’s supervised
Case: 22-30211      Document: 00516631536           Page: 2    Date Filed: 02/01/2023

                                     No. 22-30211

   release and sentenced him to eighteen more months of imprisonment. Greer
   timely appealed, arguing that his constitutional rights were violated at his
   preliminary revocation hearing, that the district court erred in detaining him
   pending the final revocation hearing, and that the district court imposed an
   unreasonable sentence upon revocation. For the reasons stated below,
   Greer’s challenges to his preliminary revocation hearing and pre-revocation
   detention are moot.      However, we VACATE Greer’s sentence and
   REMAND for resentencing.
                                          I.
          Article III of the Constitution limits our jurisdiction to “Cases” and
   “Controversies.” A case is moot and no longer justiciable under Article III
   “when the issues presented are no longer live or the parties lack a legally
   cognizable interest in the outcome.” Already, LLC v. Nike, Inc., 568 U.S. 85,
   91 (2013) (cleaned up). This is only true “when it is impossible for a court to
   grant any effectual relief whatever to the prevailing party.” Chafin v. Chafin,
   568 U.S. 165, 172 (2013); see United States v. Heredia-Holguin, 823 F.3d 337,
   340 (5th Cir. 2016) (en banc).
          Applying these principles, Greer’s challenges to his preliminary
   revocation hearing and pre-revocation detention are moot. When “a person
   is in custody for violating a condition of . . . supervised release,” the Federal
   Rules of Criminal Procedure require that a judge “promptly conduct a
   hearing to determine whether there is probable cause to believe that a
   violation occurred.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 32.1(b)(1)(A). If the judge finds
   probable cause at the preliminary hearing, then the judge must conduct a final
   revocation hearing. Id. 32.1(b)(1)(C). If not, “the judge must dismiss the
   proceeding.” Id.       Because the preliminary hearing merely determines
   whether a final hearing will be held, the disposition of the final hearing
   generally renders challenges to the preliminary hearing moot, see United

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   States v. McFarland, 726 F. App’x 709, 712-13 (10th Cir. 2018); Antonelli v.
   U.S. Parole Comm’n, 12 F.3d 1100 (7th Cir. 1993) (unpublished), except
   where a defendant alleges that an error in the preliminary hearing affected
   the disposition of the final hearing or subsequent sentencing in some way.
           Greer alleges that the magistrate judge violated his constitutional
   rights at the preliminary hearing, but he was found to have violated the
   conditions of his supervised release at a final hearing and does not allege that
   there were any errors at the final hearing. Although Greer insists that he
   “continues to suffer from the legal errors made at the preliminary hearing”
   and that those errors have caused “his continued unjustified detention,” he
   does not explain why this is so. He does not say how the alleged errors at the
   preliminary hearing might have infected the final hearing. Nor does he cite
   any authority to support his proposition that we could vacate the district
   court’s judgment and remand for resentencing based on an error at the
   preliminary hearing.1 Indeed, vacatur of a sentence imposed after a final
   hearing is not an available remedy for errors made during a preliminary
   hearing when the alleged constitutional violation has no relation to the
   defendant’s subsequent imprisonment.2 See Collins v. Turner, 599 F.2d 657,

           1
             Greer relies on a line of cases holding that deportation does not moot a challenge
   to a term of supervised release imposed as part of the underlying sentence. Heredia-
   Holguin, 823 F.3d at 342-43, 343 n.5; see United States v. Vega, 960 F.3d 669, 673 (5th Cir.
   2020) (holding that a defendant’s challenge to a term of incarceration is not mooted where
   the defendant is released from custody and deported and only remains subject to a term of
   supervised release); United States v. Solano-Rosales, 781 F.3d 345, 355 (6th Cir. 2015)
   (similar). These cases do not speak to the remedies that are available on a challenge to a
   preliminary revocation hearing after a final hearing and sentencing.
           2
              For similar reasons, Greer’s challenge to his pre-revocation detention is moot.
   On the magistrate judge’s order, Greer was detained from March 2, 2022—the date of the
   preliminary hearing—until the final hearing on April 13, 2022. But once the district court
   entered judgment sentencing Greer to a term of imprisonment, Greer was no longer
   detained pursuant to the magistrate judge’s detention order—his current detention is the
   result of the district court’s judgment. We cannot grant Greer relief from a detention order

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   658 (5th Cir. 1979) (per curiam); United States v. Companion, 545 U.S. 308,
   313 (2d Cir. 1976).
           Accordingly, we lack jurisdiction over these challenges.
                                                II.
           The district court committed a reversible procedural error by
   sentencing Greer to two consecutive nine-month terms of imprisonment for
   violating two conditions of his supervised release.
           At the final hearing, the district court found that Greer violated two
   conditions of his supervised release by failing “to abide by the rules and
   conditions of the half-way house” and failing “to maintain a residency at a
   half-way house.”         The district court calculated the Guidelines Range
   sentence as “four to nine months,” stated that “the maximum statutory
   punishment is nine months,” and sentenced Greer to “nine months on each
   [violation]” to run consecutively “for a total of [eighteen] months, nine
   months on the first [violation], nine months on the second.” In imposing this
   sentence, the district court explained that it gave Greer a fifteen-month
   sentence the first time Greer violated the conditions of his supervised release,
   “and that didn’t seem to do any good.” The district judge also said, “[it]
   looks like really the most I can give him is nine months on each one, and that’s
   what I’m going to do.”
           Greer objected that “he should not have been sentenced to more than
   nine months.”

   that is no longer in effect. See United States v. Ruiz-Garcia, 832 F. App’x 313, 314 (5th Cir.
   2020) (per curiam) (unpublished) (finding moot appeal of pretrial detention order after
   guilty plea).

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          The statute governing revocation of supervised release provides that
   the district court may, upon finding “that the defendant violated a condition
   of supervised release,” “revoke a term of supervised release, and require the
   defendant to serve in prison all or part of the term of supervised release
   authorized by statute for the offense that resulted in such term of supervised
   release.” 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3). Under this provision, the district court
   does not impose a term of imprisonment for a violation of a condition of
   supervised release, but rather, imposes a term of imprisonment for the
   revocation of the term of supervised release. See United States v. Mizwa, 762
   F. App’x 100, 104 (3d Cir. 2019) (“While [the defendant] violated four
   conditions of his supervised release, his original conviction derived from one
   count. Therefore, there is only one term of supervised release to revoke and
   he should only receive a single sentence for the violation.”).
          Because § 3583(e)(3) limits the district court to imposing one term of
   imprisonment upon revoking one term of supervised release, the Guidelines
   policy statement explains how district courts should calculate the advisory
   term of imprisonment if the revocation is based on multiple violations of
   conditions of supervised release. Where this is the case, “the grade of the
   violation” for purposes of calculating the term of imprisonment “is
   determined by the violation having the most serious grade.” U.S.S.G.
   § 7B1.1(b); see id. § 7B1.4 (listing recommended ranges of imprisonment
   based on violation grade and criminal history category); United States v.
   Turner, 21 F.4th 862, 865 (D.C. Cir. 2022) (summarizing this procedure). In
   other words, if a term of supervised release is revoked because of multiple
   violations of supervision conditions, the district court may consider the
   “nature and circumstances” of those multiple violations, 18 U.S.C.
   § 3553(a)(1); see, e.g., United States v. Smith, 823 F. App’x 903, 904 (11th Cir.
   2020) (per curiam) (unpublished), but should calculate the length of a single
   term of imprisonment based on the most serious violation.

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          Accordingly, a district court cannot impose multiple terms of
   imprisonment, concurrent or consecutive, upon revoking a single term of
   supervised release.
          We note that the district court tried to impose a Guidelines range
   sentence. It calculated the range as four to nine months for each violation of
   a supervision condition because it thought the statutory maximum for each
   violation was nine months. Then, the district court adopted what it believed
   to be the statutory maximum on each violation, which resulted in two
   consecutive nine-month terms, or eighteen months in total. But as the
   government acknowledges, the total advisory range for a term of
   imprisonment upon revocation of Greer’s supervised release was three to
   nine months. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252A(a)(5)(B) (offense of conviction),
   2252A(b)(2) (maximum punishment), 3559(a)(3) (describing maximum
   punishment for Class C felony); U.S.S.G. §§ 7B1.1(a)(3) (Grade C
   supervised release violation), 7B1.4(a) (applicable range of imprisonment).
          Because it is impossible to say how the district court would have
   sentenced Greer if it had known that the Guidelines range was nine months
   total, and that the total statutory maximum sentence was twenty-four
   months, not nine months per violation, see 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3), we cannot
   resolve whether the district court’s error affected Greer’s prison sentence.
   The district court may have varied or departed upwards and imposed the
   same eighteen-month sentence or a longer one, up to the twenty-four-month
   statutory maximum. Or, as evinced by the district court’s desire to follow
   the Guidelines, the district court may have imposed a more modest upwards
   variance or departure than eighteen months.               Given these unique

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   circumstances, the district court’s misunderstanding of its authority to
   sentence Greer was not harmless.3
           The judgment of the district court is VACATED and the case is
   REMANDED to the district court for resentencing in accordance with this
   opinion.4 Greer’s motion for release pending disposition of this appeal, is
   DENIED as moot.

           3
             Even under plain-error review, this error “seriously affects the fairness, integrity,
   [and] public reputation of [the] judicial proceedings.” Puckett v. United States, 556 U.S.
   129, 135 (2009) (cleaned up). In sentencing Greer, the district court departed from the
   relevant statutory framework and the Sentencing Guidelines. As a result, the district court
   gave Greer two terms of imprisonment where Congress authorized one. We will exercise
   our discretion to correct this error.
           4
               Moreover, as the government acknowledges on appeal but failed to point out
   during the sentencing, the district court also (i) incorrectly identified the most serious
   grade of Greer’s violations, (ii) incorrectly calculated the applicable Guidelines range,
   (iii) incorrectly identified the applicable statutory maximum, and (iv) incorrectly asserted
   that under § 7B1.4, the minimum term of imprisonment was at least one month but not
   more than six months. On remand, the district court should follow applicable law in
   sentencing Greer.

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