United States v. Matta

Defendant plead guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and was sentenced to 36 months' imprisonment and three years of supervised release. The district court imposed a special condition of supervised release that delegated the discretion to select between inpatient and outpatient treatments to the Probation Department. The court concluded that defendant did not have a sufficient opportunity to raise a contemporaneous objection to the challenged delegation as a condition of supervised release; defendant could not have known of the delegation until the district court had imposed sentence; and therefore the court will consider defendant's challenge under plain error review. On the merits, the court agreed with its sister circuits and concluded that the district court's delegation to the Probation Department of the discretion to require either inpatient or outpatient drug treatment was an impermissible delegation of judicial sentencing authority. The court rejected defendant's remaining claims. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded with respect to the challenged condition of supervised release. The court affirmed as to the remaining claims. View "United States v. Matta" on Justia Law