United States v. Charles D. St. Clair
Opinion
Defendant-appellant Charles D. St. Clair admitted that he violated several conditions of his supervised release. The district court revoked his release and sentenced him to another term of imprisonment, followed by an additional term of supervised release. St. Clair appeals the conditions for the new term of supervised release. He argues first that the district court failed to justify the twelve discretionary conditions it ordered. He also argues that the court violated his due process rights by imposing a vague condition based on a superseded version of the Sentencing Guidelines.
We affirm. St. Clair waived his right to challenge his supervised release conditions at his revocation hearing when he (1) acknowledged that he received prior notice of the proposed conditions and discussed them with counsel, and then (2) told the judge that he had no objections to or questions about them when asked.
I. Factual and Procedural Background
In September 2016, St. Clair pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm as a felon in violation of
St. Clair began his original term of supervised release in August 2017. Within the first month, he started violating the conditions of his release. By December, the government had moved to revoke St. Clair's release, citing sixteen violations of release conditions by using marijuana, failing to submit to drug tests, and not reporting to probation. A probation officer prepared a written "summary report of violations" recommending that the court sentence St. Clair to imprisonment followed by supervised release and that the court also impose seventeen of the twenty conditions from St. Clair's original term of supervision.
At a revocation hearing in April 2018, St. Clair admitted to the sixteen violations. Critical to our decision, when the judge asked about the proposed conditions of supervised release, defense counsel confirmed that he had reviewed the conditions with St. Clair and explained them to him, *388 and St. Clair said that he had no objections to or questions about them. St. Clair also waived a formal reading of the conditions and acknowledged that the court might later incorporate them by reference. The court then revoked St. Clair's supervised release and sentenced him to another year in prison, followed by another year-long term of supervision. With no objection from St. Clair, the court included the seventeen proposed supervised release conditions in the revocation sentence.
II. Analysis
St. Clair challenges the discretionary conditions of supervised release, which he says the court never justified. He also contests one of the conditions-forbidding him from "physically, voluntarily, and intentionally be[ing] present at a place that he knows or has reason to know ... controlled substances are illegally sold, used, manufactured, distributed, or administered." He argues the condition-especially its use of the term "place"-is impermissibly vague and based on inaccurate information because the court cited an outdated version of the Sentencing Guidelines. (The United States Sentencing Commission removed a version of this standard but discretionary condition from U.S.S.G. § 5D1.3(c) beginning in November 2016, after St. Clair's original sentencing but well before his April 2018 revocation hearing.)
The government argues that St. Clair has waived these arguments by opting not to present them to the district court. We agree with the government's waiver argument. St. Clair expressly acknowledged at the revocation hearing that he had reviewed the conditions with his lawyer and that he did not object to any of them. That is quintessential waiver for supervised release conditions, as it is for other matters, such as jury instructions. See
United States v. Gabriel
,
"The sentencing in the district court is the main event."
Lewis
,
*389
St. Clair reviewed the proposed conditions and, when invited by the judge, said that he had no objections. St. Clair does not-and cannot-argue that he was surprised. See
Bloch
,
St. Clair argues that our line of recent waiver cases in appeals challenging supervised release conditions (e.g., Gabriel , Bloch , and Lewis ) should not apply because no presentence investigation report was prepared for his revocation hearing. Without a presentence report, St. Clair maintains, he was given no notice of the proposed supervised release conditions before the hearing.
The "summary report of violations," however, served as a functional equivalent of a presentence report. See
United States v. Salinas
,
St. Clair argues that the summary report was insufficient to provide notice because it contained no justification for any condition. But a challenge to the sufficiency of the justifications for the conditions concerns the merits of the sentencing. It has no bearing on our consideration of St. Clair's waiver of his merits arguments. If St. Clair was not satisfied with the summary report's lack of justifications, he should have objected when he was asked. Instead, he told the judge he had no objection and waived a formal reading of the conditions.
If that were not enough for waiver, and it is, the particular facts of St. Clair's case make his waiver all the more obvious. The same judge and defendant, joined by the same prosecutor and defense counsel, had faced essentially identical issues just nineteen months earlier at St. Clair's original sentencing. In the absence of objections or any indication of changed circumstances, the district judge did not need to belabor the obvious. To the extent St. Clair argues that the justification requirement
cannot
be waived, he is incorrect. See
Lewis
,
One final note. Because St. Clair has waived his appellate arguments, we do not reach the merits of his appeal. We take the opportunity, though, to remind St. Clair and other defendants that if they believe a condition poses a problem, they may move their sentencing or supervising courts under
St. Clair's sentence is
AFFIRMED.
Defendants ordinarily should have even more advance notice of proposed conditions of supervised release than they have for proposed jury instructions, so similar waiver standards seem appropriate. See also
United States v. Ajayi
,
The time to challenge the validity of an arguably vague condition, however, is at sentencing or through § 3583(e)(2), not as a defense in a revocation proceeding. See
United States v. Preacely
,
Reference
- Full Case Name
- UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Charles D. ST. CLAIR, Defendant-Appellant.
- Cited By
- 15 cases
- Status
- Published