United States v. Terry Davis

Citations: 404 U.S. App. D.C. 269; 711 F.3d 174; 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 6283; 2013 WL 1266021Docket: 11-3035

Court: Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; March 29, 2013; Federal Appellate Court

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Terry Davis was convicted of bank fraud and other charges related to misappropriating funds from the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity. After the D.C. Circuit Court vacated his convictions due to the erroneous admission of certain statements as evidence, Davis pled guilty to a single count of bank fraud. He was sentenced to the time already served, plus five years of supervised release. Davis argued that his supervised release should start from the date he was released on his own recognizance pending appeal. The court disagreed, ruling that his supervised release only began after his sentencing following the guilty plea. Davis's initial conviction stemmed from activities between 1999 and 2003, where he misused over $50,000 of fraternity funds. He was indicted in June 2006, found guilty in May 2007, and sentenced in August 2007. Following his successful appeal, he was released on modified pretrial conditions in December 2009, leading to a retrial and subsequent guilty plea in November 2010.

Davis argues that the district court incorrectly set March 14, 2011, as the start date for his five-year term of supervised release, asserting that it should have commenced on December 17, 2009, the date he was released pending appeal. He bases this claim on 18 U.S.C. § 3624(e), which states that supervised release begins on the day a prisoner is released from imprisonment. Although Davis did not object to the start date in the district court, his claim is reviewed for plain error. The court finds no error and clarifies that the December 2009 date is irrelevant because the supervised release term he challenges did not exist at that time. On December 17, 2009, Davis was under a different sentence that had been vacated, and he was not under any sentence until March 14, 2011, when the new sentence—including the supervised release—was imposed. Additionally, his December 2009 release was not under the supervision of a probation officer but required reporting to the D.C. Pretrial Services Agency. Thus, the court and the government agree that the term of supervised release correctly began on March 14, 2011.

Davis was released in December 2009 under conditions set by the district court, pending the resolution of his appeal, rather than 'supervised release' as defined in the law. The release was governed by Chapter 207 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, which pertains to pretrial and appellate releases, requiring him to report to Pretrial Services instead of Probation. Consequently, the provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 3624(e), which relate to supervised release after sentencing, were not applicable to his situation since he had not yet begun serving his sentence.

The Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Johnson clarified that supervised release begins only after release from imprisonment, not with every instance of release. Davis argued that his pretrial conditions were similar to supervised release conditions imposed later, but this was not accurate; the conditions differed significantly in restrictiveness and purpose. Pretrial conditions aimed to ensure appearance at hearings and prevent crime, while post-sentence conditions focused on community reintegration and rehabilitation.

Since no statute allowed for an earlier commencement of supervised release based on his prior pretrial conditions, it was determined that Davis's supervised release term only began on March 14, 2011, when he was sentenced. Therefore, the district court's judgment was affirmed.