United States v. Donte Island
Opinion of the Court
In this appeal, we determine whether a defendant can count toward the service of his supervised release term a period of time he is fugitive, that is, absent from the court's supervision. The statutory provisions governing supervised release do not contain plain language-or indeed any language-that expressly resolves that question. But, as the majority of Courts of Appeals to address the question have concluded, a defendant does not in fact serve his supervised release term while he deliberately absconds from the court's supervision. Accordingly, a defendant's supervised release term tolls while he is of fugitive status.
Defendant Donte Island appealed to challenge the District Court's order revoking his supervised release and sentencing him to a term of imprisonment. Island primarily contended that under
I.
Following a jury trial in 2004, the District Court sentenced Island to 110 months' imprisonment and 3 years' supervised release for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon,
Island completed the first two years of his release term without incident, but on September 18, 2015, Island's probation officer filed a petition of violation. The petition alleged Island had breached the terms of his release by committing several technical, i.e. , noncriminal or minor, violations, such as failing to notify his probation officer of a changed address and failing several drug tests. The petition noted that "[m]ore troublesome" among the violations was Island's failure to report to his probation officer. App'x 34. The officer relayed that Island "ceased reporting as instructed" on July 17, 2015, after which his "whereabouts [were] unknown." App'x 34, 28. The petition chronicled over half a dozen attempts to contact Island in the coming months, none of which were successful. Island failed to report for a scheduled meeting, then did not respond to phone calls, voicemails, letters, or emails sent to him at several possible numbers and addresses. The Court issued a warrant on the basis of that petition the day it was filed, but that warrant remained outstanding.
On June 27, 2016-just over three years after Island's supervised release term had begun-the probation office filed a second petition of violation, styled as an "[a]mended" version of the first. App'x 35. The Court again issued a warrant the same day, now based on a new violation. The second petition alleged Island had committed a serious violation of the terms of his release on June 21-just under three years after Island's supervised release term had begun-by firing a weapon at two police officers, hitting one. Island was arrested and taken into custody by Delaware County authorities that day. The District Court held a teleconference with the government and Island's counsel soon after receiving the petition, and the parties then agreed to delay a hearing on both petitions of violation until after the disposition of Island's Delaware County charges. Island was convicted in July 2017 of attempted murder and other charges, then sentenced in the Court of Common Pleas of Delaware County, Pennsylvania to 33 to 100 years' imprisonment.
The District Court held a supervised release revocation hearing on December 13, 2017. The government sought the statutory maximum revocation term of 24 months' imprisonment; at the hearing, it stressed the severity of the officer shooting underlying the second violation petition. The government further emphasized Island "wasn't within hours of completing his sentence on this.... He was 11 months a fugitive, right, so it's not like he committed the crime on the 11th hour." App'x 57-58. In response, Island emphasized he would already be serving 33 to 100 years in prison and argued "it would be excessive and unnecessary based on the practical realities of his case" to also enforce a revocation term of imprisonment. App'x 62. The court imposed the government's recommended revocation sentence of 24 months, to run consecutively after Island's state sentence, on the basis of only the second violation petition. Island now appeals.
II.
Island asserts on appeal that the District Court lacked jurisdiction under
A.
We begin with an overview of the purpose of the supervised release scheme before turning to how fugitive tolling supports that scheme. Congress designed supervised release, laid out in
The plain language of the supervised release statutory provisions is, contrary to the dissent's suggestion, silent on how a defendant's failure to comply with release terms effects the running of his sentence.
See
The fugitive tolling doctrine reflects two key principles that align with the purposes of supervised release.
First
, the rehabilitative goals of supervised release are served only when defendants abide by the terms of their supervision-those goals are not served simply by the passage of time during the release term. "Mere lapse of time without imprisonment or other restraint contemplated by the law does not constitute service of sentence."
Anderson v. Corall
,
Second
, the fugitive tolling doctrine reflects the settled principle that defendants are not generally credited for misdeeds, such as failing to comply with the terms of supervised release.
See
Buchanan
,
Because the fugitive tolling doctrine helps realize the design and purpose of supervised release, we join the majority of circuits to have considered the question and recognize a supervised release term tolls while a defendant is of fugitive status. A defendant cannot count toward his sentence time spent out of the court's supervision as a consequence of his own doing. At the same time, the defendant's absence does not free him to violate the terms of his supervised release without consequence; the defendant remains responsible for his violating conduct.
This conclusion follows readily from our existing law. We considered the application of tolling doctrines to supervised release in
United States v. Cole
,
We find unconvincing the reliance of Island and the dissent on
Cole
to contend imprisonment is the only context in which supervised release may be tolled. We found "persuasive Cole's argument that the canon of
expressio unius est exclusio alterius
suggests that where Congress has explicitly allowed for tolling only when the defendant is imprisoned on another charge, it does not intend for district courts to toll supervised release under any other circumstance."
Indeed, Congress was silent on the question. While the dissent suggests that silence counsels in favor of proscribing fugitive tolling, we note, as some of our sister Circuits have, "[t]he normal rule of statutory construction is that if Congress intends for legislation to change the interpretation of a judicially created concept" such as the one that a defendant cannot profit from his misdeeds, "it makes that intent specific."
Midlantic Nat. Bank v. New Jersey Dep't of Env. Protection
,
Our reasoning in
Cole
accords with the premises of fugitive tolling and reflects the distinction between defendants who deliberately defy the conditions of supervised release and those who leave the jurisdiction not on their own but at the government's order.
Accord
Barinas
,
Finally, the dissent contends
The power of the court to revoke a term of supervised release for violation of a condition of supervised release ... extends beyond the expiration of the term of supervised release for any period reasonably necessary for the adjudication of matters arising before its expiration if, before its expiration, a warrant or summons has been issued on the basis of an allegation of such a violation.
We have held " § 3583(i) is in fact jurisdictional and thus not subject to equitable tolling,"
United States v. Merlino
,
B.
For at least the period between the court's issuance of the first warrant for violating supervised release in September 2015 and the shooting leading to Island's apprehension by law enforcement in June 2016, Island was of fugitive status.
The District Court had jurisdiction over the original charges under
The parties dispute the appropriate standard of review for the question whether the District Court had jurisdiction under
As the Fourth Circuit explained:
When a defendant absconds while on supervised release, his absence precludes the sentencing court from exercising supervision over him. Tolling is necessary in that instance to ensure that, upon being apprehended, the defendant will be subject to judicial supervision for a complete term. However, that does not mean that a defendant who has absconded thereby nullifies the terms and conditions of the supervised release order during his flight. Rather, the terms and conditions remain in effect, and the fugitive-defendant is not at liberty to embark on a "holiday" from them. To the extent that this result may seem harsh, it is the defendant's own misconduct which creates it.
Buchanan
,
To the extent Island suggests the fugitive tolling doctrine poses administrability problems because the precise date a defendant becomes fugitive may be difficult to ascertain, such concerns are overblown-and not at issue in this case. We note the Ninth Circuit has applied the fugitive tolling doctrine for decades without noteworthy administrability problems.
See
United States v. Ignacio Juarez
,
In fact, had Island actually been under the court's supervision, the first warrant following technical violations of his supervised release could have been executed.
Dissenting Opinion
The Majority opinion focuses on the goals of supervised release and concludes that tolling for fugitives from supervised release is appropriate. I believe this is
incorrect for two reasons. First, the proper focus should be on the plain language of
Section 3583(i) grants the court the power to extend supervised release "beyond the expiration of the term of supervised release for any period reasonably necessary for the adjudication of matters arising before its expiration if, before its expiration, a warrant or summons has been issued on the basis of an allegation of such a violation."
In addition, Congress did incorporate tolling under
That is the case here. Section 3624 is an express exception to § 3583. At a minimum, § 3624 is evidence that Congress considered tolling, and nonetheless only found imprisonment to be an adequate justification. More telling is that, as the First Circuit noted, "the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, which ... codified prior case law that provided for tolling when a probationer was imprisoned for another offense, [ ] made no similar reincorporation of prior case law" for fugitive status.
United States v. Hernandez-Ferrer
,
We have reasoned similarly and reached the same conclusion in the deportation context. In
United States v. Cole
, we held that the District Court plainly erred when it ordered the defendant's supervised release be tolled during the period he is removed from the country.
While the Majority suggests that defendants would receive a windfall without a tolling provision, the opportunity to benefit from absconding is small. "If an offender absconds before the expiration of his supervised release term, he will not do so with impunity."
Hernandez-Ferrer
,
The ease and clarity of the current regime of a defined term of supervised release only makes the decision to permit tolling for fugitivity more troubling, especially considering the difficulties associated with defining a "fugitive" in the supervised release context. Contrary to the Majority's assertion, Maj. Op. at 256, n.4, in the Ninth Circuit, district courts have extended the deadline of supervised release for "merely [ ] failing to comply with the terms of supervised release."
United States v. Ertell
, Case No. 1:11-cr-00278-SAB
* * *
The First Circuit correctly noted that, "[i]n the end, this dispute boils down to a matter of statutory construction."
Hernandez-Ferrer
, 599 F.3d at 66. Congress chose not to toll when a person absconds from supervised release, and in the absence of clear congressional intent, the plain language of § 3583(i) should control. Moreover, requiring the Government to fulfill the minimal burden of issuing a warrant before the expiration date is preferable to creating a new amorphous exception to a strictly jurisdictional statute. Thus, I respectfully dissent and would vacate the sentencing order and remand to the District Court for further proceedings.
Section 3624(e) provides: "A term of supervised release does not run during any period in which the person is imprisoned in connection with a conviction for a Federal, State, or local crime unless the imprisonment is for a period of less than 30 consecutive days."
Prior case law in the probation context lends further support to the conclusion that Congress intended § 3583(i) 's warrant requirement to govern the extension of a term of supervised release for fugitivity. In
United States v. Martin
, the Tenth Circuit addressed a defendant who absconded from federal supervision for three years, and determined that the period of supervision "tolled from the time the New Jersey court
issued its violator warrant
until the time Martin was returned to federal supervision after release from the Colorado state prison."
I can only speculate as to what those proceedings might entail. There would remain the issue of whether the Court would re-sentence Island believing that it had jurisdiction over the violation contained in the June warrant based on the earlier September warrant issued for factually unrelated violations.
See
Maj. Op. at 251. I would conclude that it does not have jurisdiction.
See, e.g.,
United States v. Campbell
,
Reference
- Full Case Name
- UNITED STATES of America v. Donte ISLAND, A/K/A Norman Tomas, A/K/A Norman Thomas Donte Island, Appellant
- Cited By
- 35 cases
- Status
- Published