Will SCOTUS take up supervised release revocation issue?
I am very pleased to discover that SCOTUSblog has listed the Faulks case I involved with in its list of “petitions to watch” in the Supreme Court’s upcoming conference this Thursday. I have previously discussed the Faulks case here and here, and I will have my fingers crossed hoping for good news when the Justices announce new cert grants next Monday. Here our pitch for cert and the main questions presented from our initial petition (which is available hereherehere):
In 1998, following a jury conviction, Judge Rebecca Beach Smith sentenced Celestine Faulks to the Guidelines-maximum term of 30 months in prison and five years’ supervised release. Seven years later, as Faulks’s term of supervision was nearing completion, a federal probation officer alleged that Faulks had committed a state crime in violation of a condition of her release. Faulks denied the allegation. At a revocation hearing under 18 U.S.C. § 3583, Judge Smith decided disputed questions of identity, actus reus, mens rea, and witness credibility using a civil standard of proof. Judge Smith found Faulks guilty of the alleged offense and sentenced her to a three-year term of imprisonment. This case presents two questions:
1. Whether a federal judge may, consistent with Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), and Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004), impose upon a former federal offender a new three-year term of imprisonment based solely on the judge’s disputed factual findings, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the former offender committed a state offense during her term of supervised release.
2. Whether proceedings in which federal judicial officials initiate, investigate, and adjudicate disputed allegations that a former federal offender has violated a condition of supervised release by committing a state offense violate the constitutional guarantees of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments as set forth in Apprendi, Blakely, and Mine Workers v. Bagwell, 512 U.S. 821 (1994).