United States v. Molina-Gazca ( 2009 )

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
FILED
June 11, 2009
Charles R. Fulbruge III
Nos. 08-50619 & Clerk
08-50620
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Plaintiff-Appellee
v.
ALEJANDRO MOLINA-GAZCA,
also known as Alejandro Martinez
Defendant-Appellant
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Texas
Before JONES, Chief Judge, ELROD, Circuit Judge, and GUIROLA, District
Judge.*
LOUIS GUIROLA, JR., District Judge:
Alejandro Molina-Gazca appeals the revocation of his supervised release
contending that the district court lacked jurisdiction. In this case, the court is
*
D is t r ict J u d g e , S ou t h e r n D is t r ict of M is s is s ip p i, s it t in g b y d e s ign a t ion .
called upon to interpret the breadth of the supervised release tolling provision
in 18 U.S.C. § 3624(e). Finding that Molina-Gazca’s pretrial detention was “in
connection with” a conviction and thus tolled the period of supervised release,
we affirm.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
In 1999, Molina-Gazca pleaded guilty to possession with the intent to
distribute and importation of marijuana. The district court sentenced
Molina-Gazca to concurrent terms of sixty-four months imprisonment and three
years of supervised release. After release from imprisonment, Molina-Gazca’s
term of supervised release commenced on November 3, 2003. The term of
supervised release was scheduled to expire on November 2, 2006.
According to the record, New Mexico authorities arrested Molina-Gazca
and charged him with several serious felony offenses on July 8, 2005. He
remained in custody pending trial. On November 15, 2006, Molina-Gazca was
convicted. He was sentenced to 39 years imprisonment on September 24, 2007.
At sentencing Molina-Gazca was given credit for the time he served in pretrial
custody.
The government moved to revoke Molina-Gazca’s supervised release. The
government cited the New Mexico conviction and asserted that “terms of
supervision are tolled (i.e., do not run) while the offender is imprisoned for 30
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or more consecutive days in connection with a conviction.” A revocation warrant
was issued on May 3, 2007, almost six months after Molina-Gazca’s period of
supervised release was set to expire and after his November 15, 2006, New
Mexico conviction. At the revocation hearing, Molina-Gazca argued that the
district court lacked jurisdiction over the matter because pursuant to § 3624(e)
his time in pretrial custody did not toll his term of supervised release.
In determining that it had jurisdiction to revoke Molina-Gazca’s
supervised release, the district court recognized that although there was no
binding precedent in this circuit, two other circuit courts had considered the
issue and reached opposite conclusions. The Ninth Circuit, in United States v.
Morales-Alejo, 193 F.3d 1102 (9th Cir. 1999), held that a conviction must occur
within the term of supervised release for the pretrial detention period to toll the
period of supervised release. Instead, the district court relied on United States
v. Goins, 516 F.3d 416 (6th Cir. 2008), which held that when a defendant is held
for thirty days or longer in pretrial detention, and he is later convicted for the
offense for which he was held, and his pretrial detention is credited as time
served toward his sentence, then the pretrial detention is “in connection with”
a conviction and tolls the period of supervised release under § 3624(e).
The district court ultimately concluded that Molina-Gazca had violated
the terms of his supervised release and sentenced him to concurrent terms of
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fifteen months imprisonment. The fifteen-month terms were ordered to run
consecutively with the New Mexico judgment.
STANDARD OF REVIEW
Molina-Gazca timely appealed from both judgments, invoking the court’s
jurisdiction over final sentencing decisions. See 18 U.S.C. § 3742(a). His appeal
challenges the district court’s jurisdiction to revoke his supervised release. “We
review the district court's jurisdiction to revoke a defendant’s supervised release
de novo.” United States v. Garcia-Avalino, 444 F.3d 444, 445 (5th Cir. 2006)
(quoting United States v. English, 400 F.3d 273, 275 (5th Cir. 2005)); see also
United States v. Jimenez-Martinez, 179 F.3d 980, 981 (5th Cir. 1999).
DISCUSSION
No Fifth Circuit case decides the precise question of whether
“imprisonment in connection with a conviction” applies to pretrial detention
when the resulting conviction occurs after the period of supervised release is
scheduled to expire. Despite both parties’ arguments to the contrary, United
States v. Jackson, 426 F.3d 301 (5th Cir. 2005) does not decide the question
because of an important factual distinction. In Jackson, the defendant’s
toll-triggering conviction occurred before the end of the term of supervised
release. In fact, the conviction in Jackson occurred before the term of supervised
release had begun. Id. at 302–05. The only occasion to address the nature of the
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imprisonment-conviction “connection” in Jackson was unrelated to the
conviction’s timing. Id. at 304-05.
“The appropriate starting point when interpreting any statute is its plain
meaning.” United States v. Elrawy, 448 F.3d 309, 315 (5th Cir. 2006). “In
ascertaining the plain meaning of the statute, the court must look to the
particular statutory language at issue, as well as the language and design of the
statute as a whole.” K Mart Corp. v. Cartier, Inc., 486 U.S. 281, 291, 108 S.Ct.
1811, 100 L.Ed.2d 313 (1988). The “supervision after release” provision of
§ 3624(e) provides in part that:
The term of supervised release commences on the day the person is
released from imprisonment and runs concurrently with any
Federal, State, or local term of probation or supervised release or
parole for another offense to which the person is subject or becomes
subject during the term of supervised release. A term of supervised
release does not run during any period in which the person is
imprisoned in connection with a conviction for a Federal, State, or
local crime unless the imprisonment is for a period of less than 30
consecutive days.
18 U.S.C. § 3624(e) (emphasis added).
Molina-Gazca argues that a conviction within the period of supervised
release is necessary to trigger the tolling provision under § 3624(e). We
disagree. In Jackson, the court held that the statutory text of § 3624(e) was
unambiguous and provided that the period of supervised release does not run
during imprisonment, without exception. 426 F.3d at 304. Congress could have
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elected to restrict the application of § 3624(e) in the manner Molina-Gazca
suggests. For example, Congress could have limited tolling to periods of
imprisonment in connection with a conviction that “occurs during supervised
release.” However, § 3624(e) makes no distinction between pre-trial or post-
conviction periods of imprisonment, but instead requires that “any period” of
imprisonment be “in connection with a conviction” for tolling to apply. The
phrase “imprisoned in connection with a conviction” plainly lacks any temporal
limitation.
During oral argument, Molina-Gazca suggested that tolling the period of
pretrial detention leaves a defendant in a state of “jurisdictional limbo” while
the district court waits to see if a conviction will actually occur. We are aware
that on rare occasions the tolling of supervised release during pretrial detention
periods that are later connected to a conviction may create potential problems
for judges seeking to establish whether they have jurisdiction to revoke a
defendant’s supervised release. However, it is the function of the court to apply
§ 3624(e) as written. To the extent that Congress’s omission of a causal or
temporal term results in uncertainty as to a defendant’s status, our role is not
to imply those limits when Congress could have done so in the first instance.
Molina-Gazca also argues that detention and imprisonment are not
synonymous, and during his supervised release period, he suffered only
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detention, and not imprisonment. In Morales-Alejo, the Ninth Circuit framed
the § 3624 question as whether “pretrial detention operates to toll a term of
supervised release” under § 3624, id. at 1105 and began with textual analysis:
We conclude that the intent of Congress is apparent from the
language of the statute. Section 3624(e) provides for tolling when
the person is “imprisoned in connection with a conviction.” A plain
reading of this language suggests that there must be an
imprisonment resulting from or otherwise triggered by a criminal
conviction. Pretrial detention does not fit this definition, because a
person in pretrial detention has not yet been convicted and might
never be convicted.
Id. at 1103, 1105. In support of this construction, Morales-Alejo argued that
“Congress uses the terms ‘imprisonment’ and ‘detention’ very differently in
federal criminal statutes,” and that while “‘imprisonment’ consistently is used
to refer to a penalty or sentence . . . ‘detention’ is used to describe a mechanism
to insure a defendant’s appearance and the safety of the community.”
The term “imprisonment” consistently is used to refer to a penalty
or sentence. See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 3559 (using the term
imprisonment as meaning sentence after conviction); 18 U.S.C. §
3581 (same); 18 U.S.C. § 4101(b) (referring to imprisonment in the
context of transfers to foreign countries and defining imprisonment
as “a penalty imposed by a court under which the individual is
confined to an institution”). In contrast, the term “detention” is
used to describe a mechanism to insure a defendant's appearance
and the safety of the community. See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 3142(c)
(providing that a defendant may be held in pretrial detention in
order to insure appearance for legal proceedings or the safety of the
community).
Id. at 1105
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In Goins, the Sixth Circuit was “hesitant to credit the Ninth Circuit’s
distinction between detention and imprisonment” because the resulting
construction would render parts of the statute meaningless:
If the Ninth Circuit were correct that Congress uses “imprisonment”
only when it wishes to refer to a confinement that is the result of a
penalty or sentence, then the phrase “in connection with a
conviction” becomes entirely superfluous; “imprisonment,” according
to the Ninth Circuit’s definition, would already mean that the
confinement is the result of a conviction.
Id. at 421. The Goins court concluded that the plain meaning of “imprison”
included any instance of state detention. Id. at 422. Goins also found support
for its construction in “18 U.S.C. § 3585(b), which provides for ‘credit toward the
service of a term of imprisonment for any time [the defendant] has spent in
official detention prior to the date the sentence commences . . . as a result of the
offense for which the sentence was imposed.’” Id. (alteration in original).
Other federal criminal code provisions make any distinction between
imprisonment and detention less clear. For example, 18 U.S.C. § 3143 often uses
variations of “imprison” and “detain” in close proximity, suggesting that the
terms carry different meanings. See § 3143(a), (b)(1), (b)(2), (c)(1).1 But, 18
1
For example: “The judicial officer shall order that a person who has been
found guilty of an offense in a case described in subparagraph (A), (B), or (C) of
subsection (f)(1) of section 3142 and sentenced to a term of imprisonment, and who
has filed an appeal or a petition for a writ of certiorari, be detained.” § 3143(b)(2)
(emphasis added).
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U.S.C. § 3041, under the general arrest provisions, would seem to reject an
imprisonment-detention distinction by providing that offenders may be “arrested
and imprisoned or released as provided in chapter 207 of this title [“Release and
Detention of a Defendant Pending Judicial Proceedings”], as the case may be, for
trial before such court of the United States as by law has cognizance of the
offense.” 18 U.S.C. § 3041 (emphasis added).
We agree with the Sixth Circuit’s reasoning in Goins. If the term
“imprisonment” only refers to confinement that is the result of a penalty or
sentence, then the phrase within § 3624(e), “in connection with a conviction,”
is superfluous. “[W]hen interpreting a statute, it is necessary to give meaning
to all its words and to render none superfluous.” United States v. Rayo-Valdez
302 F.3d 314, 318 (5th Cir. 2002); see also United States v. Vargas-Duran, 356
F.3d 598, 603 (5th Cir. 2004) (holding that rules of statutory interpretation
“requires us, when possible, to give each word in a statute operative effect”).
Pretrial detention falls within “any period in which the person is imprisoned”and
tolls the period of supervised release, provided a conviction ultimately occurs.
This plain meaning interpretation of § 3624(e) gives effect to all of its terms.
Molina-Gazca was arrested and convicted. At sentencing, his period in
pretrial detention was credited as time served on his New Mexico conviction.
Thus, his pretrial period of imprisonment was in connection with the conviction.
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The district court correctly concluded that pursuant to § 3624(e) Molina-Gazca’s
supervised release period was tolled during the pretrial detention in connection
with the New Mexico conviction and that it had jurisdiction to revoke his
supervised release.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, the district court’s judgments are AFFIRMED.
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