Supreme Court grants cert on Haymond from Tenth Circuit to address when Apprendi and Alleyne meet suprevised release!!
I am excited to report that the Supreme Court this afternoon, via this order list, added an interesting sentencing case to its docket by granting cert in United States v. Haymond, 17-1672, a case from the Tenth Circuit in which the defendant prevailed on the claim that the procedures used to sentence him following his supervised release violation was unconstitutional. The Tenth Circuit opinion below in Haymond is available at this link, and the federal government's cert petition posed this "Question Presented":
Whether the court of appeals erred in holding “unconstitutional and unenforceable” the portions of 18 U.S.C. 3583(k) that required the district court to revoke respondent’s ten-year term of supervised release, and to impose five years of reimprisonment, following its finding by a preponderance of the evidence that respondent violated the conditions of his release by knowingly possessing child pornography.
Seeking (unsuccessfully) to avoid a cert grant, the defendant's brief in opposition to cert framed the issue of the case this way:
Following his conviction for possession of child pornography, a Class C felony that carried a statutory sentencing range of zero to ten years, a district court judge in a revocation hearing specifically found by only a preponderance of the evidence that Andre Haymond had violated the terms of his supervised release by committing a “second sex offense” as set forth in 18 U.S.C. 3583(k). The statute required the district court to impose a sentence of not less than five years up to life in prison for commission of the new crime, rather than the zero to two-year statutory range ordinarily applicable for revocation in Class C felony cases. Did the enhanced sentencing range carrying a mandatory minimum sentence in the revocation proceeding violate the Court’s longstanding jurisprudence guaranteeing a defendant charged with a serious criminal offense to a right to a jury trial under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments?
Given that there are now only two members of the Supreme Court who are generally hostile to Apprendi rights under the Fifth and Sixth Amendment (Justices Alito and Breyer), I do not think it is a given that this grant of cert means that the Justices are eager to reverse the ruling below. But we really do not know just how far any of the other Justices, and especially the new guys Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, are willing to take the Fifth and Sixth Amendment in the sentencing universe, and so I am disinclined to make any predictions on any votes at this point (save for expected Justice Alito to be his usual vote against a criminal defendant).
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