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           A  Congressional                                            ______
           *.Research Service






Which Punishment Fits Which Crime?:

Supreme Court to Consider Whether Portion

of Supervised Release Statute is

Unconstitutional



Updated June 27, 2019
UPDATE:   On June 26, 2019, the Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Haymond, with
five Justices agreeing that applying 18 US. C. § 3583(k) with respect to the defendant's conduct was
unconstitutional. Justice Gorsuch, writing for a plurality offour Justices, observed that Section 3583(k)
permitted the judge in the defendant's case, rather than the jury, to find facts that resulted in the
defendant 'fac[ingJ a minimum offive years in prison instead of as little as none. For the plurality, this
judicial fact-finding increased 'the legally prescribed range of allowable sentences'in violation of the
Fifth and Sixth Amendments.  The plurality limited its opinion to Section 3583(k)'s unusual
mandatory-minimum  sentencing provision for certain violations ofsupervised release conditions as it
applied in the case before the Court, opting not to pass judgment on ordinary supervised release
revocation proceedings that typically involve judicial discretion and lack a mandatory-minimum
sentencing requirement.
In a separate opinion, Justice Breyer, writing only for himself agreed that Section 3583(k) was
unconstitutional but underscored that he did not see a problem with the ordinary supervised-release
regime and would not apply the Court's Sixth Amendment jurisprudence to that regime more broadly. In
Justice Breyer's view, three aspects ofSection 3583(k) specifically, considered in combination, 
rendered it distinct from ordinary revocation and more like punishment for a new offense, to which the
jury right would typically attach : (1) that it applies only when a defendant commits one ofa discrete
set offederal criminal offenses specified in the statute ; (2) that it removes the judge's discretion with
respect to imprisonment and term length; and (3) that it imposes a mandatory-minimum term of
imprisonment upon afinding that commission of a listed criminal offense occurred.
Having concluded that Section 3583(k-)'s mandatory-minimum provision violated the defendant's right to
a jury trial, the plurality and Justice Breyer agreed that the court of appeals should be given the
opportunity, in the first instance, to address the government's argument that the proper remedy would not
be to strike down the relevant portion of Section 3583(k), but rather would be to empanel a jury to decide
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