United States v. Leon, No. 10-4090 (2d Cir. 2011)

Annotate this Case

Defendant appealed from a judgment of the district court following his plea of guilty to a violation of the conditions of his supervised release. On appeal, defendant argued that the district court exceeded its authority by imposing a post-revocation term of supervised release that extended beyond the end-date of the originally imposed term of supervision. Therefore, defendant argued that his sentence was impermissible under Johnson v. United States. The court joined a number of other circuits in rejecting the approach urged by defendant where the court failed to see how the decision could be read to impose the limitation which defendant sought. In the alternative, defendant argued that the term of supervised release was a substantively unreasonable sentence. The court held that because this was not an exceptional case where the trial court's decision could not be located within the range of permissible decisions, the court found that the district court did not abuse its discretion in imposing a 59-month term of supervised release. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed.

Download PDF

10-4090 United States v. Leon 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT August Term, 2011 (Submitted: October 21, 2011 Decided: November 23, 2011) Docket No. 10-4090 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -x UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Appellee, - v.JAMES LEON, Defendant-Appellant. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -x Before: JACOBS, Chief Judge, WESLEY, Circuit Judge, and SULLIVAN, District Judge.* 28 29 Defendant appeals from a judgment of the United States 30 District Court for the Southern District of New York 31 following his plea of guilty to a violation of the 32 conditions of his supervised release. * Defendant argues that The Honorable Richard J. Sullivan, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, sitting by designation. 1 the district court exceeded its authority by imposing a 2 post-revocation term of supervised release that extended 3 beyond the end-date of the originally imposed term of 4 supervision. 5 supervised release was a substantively unreasonable 6 sentence. 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 In the alternative, he argues that the term of STEVEN M. STATSINGER, Federal Defenders of New York, Inc., New York, NY, for Appellant. BRIAN R. BLAIS, JUSTIN S. WEDDLE, for PREET BHARARA, United States Attorney, Southern District of New York, New York, NY, for Appellee. PER CURIAM: James Leon appeals from a judgment entered in the 22 United States District Court for the Southern District of 23 New York (Kaplan, J.), following his plea of guilty to a 24 violation of the conditions of his supervised release. 25 initial sentence of supervised release was 60 months; on 26 revocation, he was sentenced to a new 60-month term: one 27 month of the time served in prison pre-sentence, plus 59 28 months of supervised release. 29 court exceeded its authority by imposing a post-revocation The Leon argues that the district 2 1 term of supervised release that extended beyond the end-date 2 of the originally imposed term of supervision. 3 alternative, he argues that the 59-month term of supervised 4 release was a substantively unreasonable sentence. 5 In the Affirmed. 6 BACKGROUND 7 8 9 In 1994, James Leon pled guilty in the District of Minnesota to aiding and abetting the possession of cocaine 10 with the intent to distribute and was sentenced to 192 11 months imprisonment to be followed by 60 months of 12 supervised release. 13 Leon s supervision was transferred to the Southern District 14 of New York. 15 expire on May 1, 2013. After release from prison in May 2008, The term of supervision was scheduled to 16 In early 2010, officers from the New York Police 17 Department went to Leon s apartment to arrest him for 18 possession of stolen goods. 19 ultimately charged by state authorities. 20 incident, however, Leon failed to report for a scheduled 21 office visit with his probation officer on February 16, 22 2010. Leon fled, and was never Following this After several unsuccessful attempts to contact him, 3 1 Leon was charged with failing to report to the Probation 2 Office as directed, in violation of the conditions of his 3 supervised release, and was arrested on August 24, 2010. 4 pled guilty to violating the conditions of his supervised 5 release. 6 He At Leon s sentencing, he sought leniency as the sole 7 caregiver for an aged mother suffering from various ailments 8 and disabilities. 9 sentence within the applicable Sentencing Guidelines range The Government recommended a prison 10 of 8 to 14 months. After soliciting the parties views 11 regarding the permissible length of supervised release that 12 Leon could be ordered to serve following any imprisonment, 13 the district court revoked Leon s 60-month term of 14 supervised release and sentenced him to time served 15 (approximately one month) to be followed by a term of 16 supervised release of 59 months, on the same terms and 17 conditions that governed his original term of supervised 18 release. 19 the district court denied. Leon moved for a correction of his sentence, which This appeal followed. 20 21 4 1 DISCUSSION 2 3 On appeal, Leon challenges the district court s 4 imposition of a 59-month term of supervised release on two 5 grounds: [1] that the court was not authorized to impose an 6 additional term of supervised release that exceeded what 7 remained of his original 60-month term of supervised release 8 at the conclusion of his post-revocation imprisonment, and 9 [2] that the term of supervised release imposed was 10 substantively unreasonable. 11 I 12 13 Leon s new 59-month term of supervised release exceeded 14 the end-date of his original 60-month term of supervised 15 release. 16 impermissible under Johnson v. United States, 529 U.S. 694 17 (2000). 18 He argues that the sentence was therefore In an appeal from a sentence, we review a district 19 court s legal determinations de novo. 20 Kinney, 211 F.3d 13, 19 (2d Cir. 2000). 21 sentence is governed by the law prevailing at the time of 22 the defendant s original offense. 5 See United States v. A post-revocation Johnson, 529 U.S. at 700- 1 01. On September 13, 1994 (after Leon committed the 2 underlying offense for which he initially received 3 supervised release), Congress amended the supervised release 4 statute to expressly permit courts to impose an additional 5 term of supervised release following the revocation of an 6 original term of supervised release. 7 § 3583(h).1 8 retroactively, but that, even prior to its enactment, 9 district courts had the authority to impose an additional 10 term of supervised release to follow any post-revocation 11 imprisonment by virtue of § 3583(e). 12 713. 13 term of supervised release, and require the person to serve 14 in prison all or part of the term of supervised release 15 without credit for the time previously served on postrelease 16 supervision, if it finds by a preponderance of the evidence See 18 U.S.C. Johnson held that § 3583(h) did not apply Johnson, 529 U.S. at That section permits a district court to revoke a 1 Under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(h), The length of such a term of supervised release shall not exceed the term of supervised release authorized by statute for the offense that resulted in the original term of supervised release, less any term of imprisonment that was imposed upon revocation of supervised release. Thus, the statute in its current form clearly permits district courts to impose a combination of post-revocation imprisonment and additional supervised release that is equal in duration to the authorized term of supervised release for the original offense. 6 1 that the person violated a condition of supervised release. 2 Id. at 704 (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3)). 3 Leon contends that this provision bears only upon the 4 prison component of a post-revocation sentence, allowing the 5 court to deny credit for time already served on supervised 6 release in deciding the length of post-revocation 7 imprisonment. 8 post-revocation term of supervised release should have 9 reflected a credit for the supervised release time he served Leon s argument on appeal is that any new 10 under the initial sentence. 11 court to sentence a defendant to serve only part of the 12 original term of supervised release in prison and the rest 13 (potentially the greater part of the term) through 14 additional supervised release. 15 statute is to deny credit with respect to the entire term of 16 supervised release regardless of how the court allocates 17 that term between imprisonment and additional supervised 18 release. 19 However, the statute allows a The clear import of the Leon s approach seems to run counter to one of the 20 purposes of release on supervision. 21 Congressional intent to use the district courts 22 discretionary judgment to allocate supervision to those 7 Johnson referenced a 1 releasees who needed it most. 2 that forbidding the reimposition of supervised release 3 after revocation and reimprisonment would be fundamentally 4 contrary to that scheme because a defendant s violation of 5 the terms of his supervised release tends to confirm the 6 judgment that help was necessary, and if any prisoner might 7 profit from the decompression stage of supervised release, 8 no prisoner needs it more than one who has already tried 9 liberty and failed. Id. Id. at 709. It reasoned In view of Johnson s expansive 10 interpretation of district courts statutory authority to 11 impose additional supervised release following revocation in 12 order to ease reintegration into society for those prisoners 13 that violate the conditions of their release, we fail to see 14 how the decision can be read to impose the limitation which 15 the defendant seeks. 16 We join a number of other Circuits in rejecting the 17 approach urged by Leon. See, e.g., United States v. 18 Gresham, 325 F.3d 1262, 1268 (11th Cir. 2003) (holding that, 19 under § 3583(e)(3), a defendant is not entitled to credit 20 for pre-revocation time served on supervised release ); 21 United States v. Russell, 340 F.3d 450, 454 (7th Cir. 2003) 22 (interpreting Johnson to mean that a district court may, 8 1 upon revoking a term of supervised release under 2 § 3583(e)(3), sentence a defendant to serve a combined term 3 of reimprisonment and additional supervised release, so long 4 as that sentence does not exceed the original term of 5 supervised release ). 6 II 7 8 Leon also argues that even if the district 9 court possessed the legal authority to impose it, a 59-month 10 period of supervised release was substantively unreasonable. 11 We review a district court s sentence for substantive 12 reasonableness under an abuse of discretion standard. 13 v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007). 14 conducting substantive review, we take into account the 15 totality of the circumstances, giving due deference to the 16 sentencing judge s exercise of discretion, and bearing in 17 mind the institutional advantages of district courts. 18 United States v. Cavera, 550 F.3d 180, 190 (2d Cir. 2008) 19 (in banc). 20 substantive determination only in exceptional cases where 21 the trial court s decision cannot be located within the 22 range of permissible decisions. Gall [W]hen We will set aside a district court s 9 Id. at 189 (internal 1 quotation marks omitted). 2 unreasonableness standard provide[s] a backstop for those 3 few cases that, although procedurally correct, would 4 nonetheless damage the administration of justice because the 5 sentence imposed was shockingly high, shockingly low, or 6 otherwise unsupportable as a matter of law. 7 v. Rigas, 583 F.3d 108, 123 (2d Cir. 2009). 8 9 Thus, the substantive United States According to Leon, the sentence was substantively unreasonable because the district court s record findings do 10 not support the need for a long period of supervised 11 release, and instead operate to justify the imposition of a 12 below-Guidelines term of imprisonment (time served of one 13 month versus the 8-14 month Guidelines recommendation). 14 explaining its sentence, the court primarily focused on 15 sympathetic factors that counseled in favor of a below- 16 Guidelines term of imprisonment, including the defendant s 17 role as a caregiver for his elderly mother. 18 also signaled distrust of Leon s use of liberty, citing his 19 idiocy in severing all contact with the Probation Office 20 after fleeing the NYPD. 21 to hedge against [a] relatively lenient term of 22 imprisonment by imposing a longer term of supervised In But the court District courts are permitted thus 10 1 release. See United States v. Rivera, 192 F.3d 81, 87-88 2 (2d Cir. 1999). 3 reintegrating into society after a lengthy prison sentence 4 and had thus far proven incapable of complying with the 5 terms of his supervised release. 6 therefore reasonably conclude that a relatively long term of 7 supervised release was necessary to prevent recidivism in 8 view of the lenient prison sentence it imposed. 9 district court s decision to offset a short prison sentence Leon had only recently begun the process of The district court could The 10 with a long period of supervised release is a matter of 11 fine-tuning rather than inconsistency. 12 this is not an exceptional case[] where the trial court s 13 decision cannot be located within the range of permissible 14 decisions, we find the district court did not abuse its 15 discretion in imposing a 59-month term of supervised 16 release. 17 marks omitted). Id. at 88. Because See Cavera, 550 F.3d at 189 (internal quotation 18 CONCLUSION 19 20 21 For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED. 11

Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.