Supreme Court grants cert on (im)permissible factors for revocation of supervised release

The US Supreme Court released this order list this morning with a few cert grants.  The grants concerning challenges to actions by the EPA are likely to get a lot more attention than the one criminal case grant.  But sentencing fans should be intrigued by the grant in Esteras v. United States.  Here is how John Elwood described the case in a past “relist watch” post at SCOTUSblog: 

In setting forth factors a court may consider in revoking a term of supervised release and ordering a person to serve a prison sentence for violating a supervised-release condition, the supervised-release statute, 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e), cross-references some, but not all, subprovisions of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a).  Congress omitted the factors set forth in Section 3553(a)(2)(A) — the need for the sentence to reflect the seriousness of the offense, promote respect for the law, and provide just punishment for the offense.  Edgardo Esteras contends that five courts of appeals, including the 6th Circuit in his case, have concluded that district courts may rely on the Section 3553(a)(2)(A) factors, but four other courts of appeals have concluded that they may not.  The government contends that courts can properly consider such factors and that “[a]ny modest disagreement among the courts of appeals on the question presented has no practical effect.”

Put in (fancy?) punishment theory terms, Congress only expressly stated that utilitarian, crime-control considerations (deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation) are to be considered in supervised release revocation proceedings, but many circuits seems fine if judges also consider retributivist, just-desert matters in this context.  In many respects, this case feels like the flip side of the Tapia case from nearly 15 years ago where SCOTUS was focused on statutory sentencing factors at initial sentencing.  The Court in Tapia unanimously held that the “Sentencing Reform Act precludes federal courts from imposing or lengthening a prison term in order to promote a criminal defendant’s rehabilitation.”