United States v. Harris

Defendant plead guilty to conspiracy to traffic in narcotics and was sentenced to 188 months in prison and five years of supervised release. On appeal, defendant challenged the revocation of his supervised release and imposition of an additional prison term of 27 months based on a finding that he had engaged in new criminal conduct while on federal supervision, specifically, assault, as proscribed by New York Penal Law 120.00(1), and narcotics distribution, in violation of New York Penal Law 220.39. The court concluded that Title 18 U.S.C. 3583(e)’s use of the disjunctive in identifying the actions a district court may take with respect to defendants serving terms of supervised release does not limit a court’s authority so as to preclude it from revoking supervised release after conduct is proved that, when reported, had prompted modification of supervision conditions. Therefore, the district court had authorization to revoke defendant's supervised release in this case. The court also concluded that the district court acted within its discretion in admitting the victim's hearsay statements in determining that defendant, while on federal supervision, had committed a new state crime of assault. In this case, the district court properly balanced defendant's confrontation interest against the assault victim's reasons for refusing to testify. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Harris" on Justia Law