The Third Circuit affirmed revocation of a defendant’s supervised release and a 48-month sentence where the district court credited hearsay statements from the alleged stabbing victim. The Court held the statements were sufficiently reliable, and the government showed good cause for the witness’s absence.
In a 7-2 opinion, the Supreme Court reversed a revocation sentence, holding that courts may not consider retribution (the need for the sentence imposed “to reflect the seriousness of the offense, promote respect for the law, and provide just punishment for the offense”) when deciding whether to revoke a defendant’s supervised release under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e).
The Court struck a defendant’s condition of supervised release that allowed the probation officer to determine whether the defendant poses a risk to third parties and then require the defendant to notify those third parties, holding that this was an improper delegation of judicial authority to the probation officer.
The Court held that the district court lacked jurisdiction to revoke the defendant’s supervised release since the defendant was not served with a formal revocation notice until after he had served the rest of his term of supervised release in custody while awaiting the revocation proceeding. The Court also rejected the Government’s argument that the defendant’s supervised release term was tolled once he was detained with two months left in the term.
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