Tag Archives: supervised release violation

Supervised Release Revocation and Conditions: The Gifts That Keep On Giving – Update for April 13, 2026

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

THE GOVT GETS ITS WAY ON SUPERVISED RELEASE

The Prison Policy Initiative reported last week that 3.6 million people – twice as many as in federal and state prisons and jails – are on probation, supervised release or parole. In the federal system, supervised release – the federal version of post-incarceration parole – is so pervasive that Congress conditioned getting a 12-month sentence reduction under 18 USC § 3624(g)(3) to the inmate having supervised release as part of his sentence.

So it’s pervasive if not popular. And while how the feds manage supervised release is not very important to people who are still currently locked up, it will be very soon.

Two Circuit decisions in the past week addressed two important details of supervised release, how far a court may go in imposing conditions that govern a person on supervised release and how a court can impose if someone violates those conditions.

Joe Castellano did 12 years transporting child sexual abuse material in violation of 18 USC § 2252A(a)(1). After he got out, he started a lifetime term supervised release with special conditions, one of which prohibited his from accessing or possessing “any pornographic material or pictures displaying nudity or any magazines using juvenile models or pictures of juveniles.”

He violated this condition within weeks of getting out by possessing legal, adult porn, and was sent back to prison for 9 months. After that return, he quickly violated the adult porn ban again, and went back for another 20 months. After he did that time, he violated the adult porn ban a third time and got sent back for another 24 months.

Joe tried to get the ban dropped for adult porn, arguing that the condition was vague, overbroad and didn’t advance the goals of supervision. The district court refused.  Joe appealed, and the 4th Circuit threw the condition out because it wasn’t supported by any “individualized evidence to meet 18 USC § 3583(d)’s ‘reasonably related’ standard” and that “the government didn’t offer any individualized evidence, like the testimony from a witness responsible for Joe’s treatment.”

Joe then got caught having contact with minors, and the district court sent him back to prison for 12 months. Joe then consented to a new condition that banned him from looking at any ‘visual depiction’ of ‘sexually explicit conduct,’ a ban that did not include legal porn. Joe violated that one in two months.

The government then asked the district court to impose a special condition prohibiting Joe’s access to any pornography (even legal), in any form. The government called Joe’s sex offender treatment provider as a witness. She testified in detail that Joe’s use of even legal porn “are barriers to him to be able to make any progress in treatment.” She recommended the total porn ban be reinstated, and the district court agreed.

Joe appealed, but last week, the 4th Circuit upheld the district court. The Circuit ruled that the treatment provider gave “an individualized assessment for why a legal pornography restriction was necessary… [b]ased on six years of clinical observation and treatment.” The 4th held that “[t]he district court relied on individualized evidence, not categorical reasoning,” and for that reason the modification was upheld.

Meanwhile, in the 8th Circuit, Jessie Farmer – who had served the statutory maximum sentence for a drug offense – was sent back to prison for 12 months for violating a supervised release condition. Jessie argued that the 12-month additional term – required by 18 USC § 3583(g) where the defendant refuses to comply with drug testing or tests positive for illegal drugs more than three times in a year – required a jury finding beyond a reasonable doubt to extend prison time beyond the statutory maximum he had already served.

The 8th Circuit rejected Jessie’s claim, holding that a badly split Supreme Court decision in the 2019 United States v. Haymond case did not support his position. In Haymond, a provision of § 3583 requiring a court to revoke supervised release and impose a mandatory 5-year term for a new sex offense was declared unconstitutional under Apprendi v. New Jersey. But here, supervised release was revoked not for a new federal offense (that would require a jury and reasonable-doubt standard), but for simple drug testing failures. The mandatory additional prison term could be skipped by the judge under § 3583(d), and if a prison term was imposed, the judge could select how long that term could be. The fact Jessie had already served the statutory max for his underlying offense simply did not matter.

Prison Policy Initiative, Punishment Beyond Prisons 2026: Incarceration and supervision by state (April 8, 2026)

United States v. Farmer, Case No. 25-1134, 2026 U.S.App. LEXIS 10371 (8th Cir. April 10, 2026)

United States v. Castellano, Case No. 25-4012, 2026 U.S.App. LEXIS 9822 (4th Cir. April 6, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

On the Lam from Supervised Release Still Runs Out the Clock, SCOTUS Says – Update for March 30, 2026

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

BEAT FEET

Isabel Rico has traveled a rocky road. Her federal drug trafficking sentence ended in 2018, but her 48-month supervised release term was revoked pretty quickly for some transgression not recounted in court records. She served two months in prison for that and, upon release, faced another 46 months of supervised release time.

Izzy did no better on that second supervised release stint. At some point, she decided to “beat feet,” moving without telling her Probation Officer and no longer bothering to make monthly visits to the Probation Office. Her disappearing act prompted the judge to issue a revocation warrant. But the warrant went unserved because Izzy could not be found. She thus became an “absconder.”

While wild and free, Izzy got picked up by local police for possession of drugs and fleeing the cops. When her federal Probation Officer finally caught up with her, Izzy was hauled into court for the revocation warrant.

The failure to report her new address was a mere Grade C supervised release violation, which would net her only 8 – 14 months of additional prison time. The fleeing offense likewise was just a Grade C violation. But the drug possession charge was a Grade A violation, with a Guidelines sentencing range of 33-36 months.

The rub: While Izzy was off the grid, that is, an “absconder,” her supervised release term expired. The fleeing and drug possession charges both happened after her supervised release ended. When the district court sentenced her to 16 months in prison for all three supervised release violations, Izzy argued that the fleeing and drug possession couldn’t count because they happened after her supervised release ended.

The district court disagreed. It held that while Izzy was in “absconder” status, her supervised release was tolled, that is, on hold. The clock only started running again when she was found and served with her revocation warrant.

Izzy appealed, but the 9th Circuit agreed with the district court in a terse opinion.

Last week, the Supreme Court reversed.

By an 8-1 decision, SCOTUS held that while the 9th Circuit may think absconding “tolls” supervised release, what it was really saying was that absconding automatically extended supervised release beyond the term imposed by the judge, something that Congress did not provide for in the Sentencing Reform Act’s carefully detailed scheme.

True tolling, the Supremes said, pauses the running of a term, but the 9th Circuit’s approach wants it both ways. It stops the running of supervised release but holds that the defendant is still under supervision and subject to punishment. This, Justice Gorsuch wrote for the 8-1 majority, is not a pause in the supervised release but rather an automatic extension of the term (and the defendant’s exposure to revocation).

The Court anchored its analysis in the clear statutory language of the Act. Under 18 USC 3624(e), supervised release begins “the day the person is released from imprisonment. Section 3583(b) provides that supervised releaselasts for a set term of years, depending on the underlying offense. SCOTUS found “no hint” of an abscondment-based automatic extension, observing that the risk of such a court-made rule would be to let supervised releaseterms exceed statutory maximums. What’s more, the supervised release statute provides for precisely crafted sanctions for violations. Adding an unlisted additional consequence — automatic term extension — would be an unauthorized judicial supplement, the Court ruled.

The supervised release statute allows a district court to extend a period of supervision, but only after a defendant receives a hearing. While a district court can hold a revocation hearing after the supervised release term expires, it can do so only for “matters arising before its expiration” and only if a warrant or summons was issued before expiration. Finally, the fact that the statute provides that the supervised release term “does not run” during imprisonment of 30 consecutive days or more in connection with a conviction, suggests that Congress intended to address when supervised release tolls and when it does not. “To our eyes,” Gorsuch wrote, “the absence of anything like the Ninth Circuit’s rule in all these exacting instructions is striking and strongly suggestive that the Ninth Circuit’s rule more nearly represents an adornment to Congress’s work than a permissible interpretation of it.

Rico suggests prosecutors and probation offices will need to ensure timely issuance of a warrant or summons before a term expires if they wish to preserve revocation jurisdiction for violations “arising before” expiration. That could lead to more supervised release violator warrants being issued in a post-sentencing regime that already “violates” too many people.

Rico v US, Case No. 24-1056, 2026 U.S. LEXIS 1490 (March 25, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root