United States v. Nolan Morin

United States Court of Appeals
For the Eighth Circuit
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No. 23-2221
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United States of America
Plaintiff - Appellee
v.
Nolan Ryan Morin
Defendant - Appellant
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Appeal from United States District Court
for the District of North Dakota - Eastern
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Submitted: January 8, 2024
Filed: March 8, 2024
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Before SMITH, Chief Judge, GRUENDER and SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges.
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GRUENDER, Circuit Judge.
In 2019, Nolan Morin pleaded guilty to a false-statements charge, a class D
felony. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1001(a), 3559(a)(4). He faced imprisonment of “not more
than 5 years,” id. § 1001(a), and “not more than three years” of supervised release,
id. § 3583(b)(2). Morin was sentenced to time served (slightly more than 3 months)
and 2 years of supervised release.
Morin violated the conditions of his initial period of supervision, so his
supervised release was revoked, and he was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment
and 3 years of supervised release. After his release, Morin violated again. His
supervised release was again revoked, and he was sentenced to 18 months’
imprisonment and 6 months of supervised release. After release, Morin once more
violated the conditions of his supervised release. The district court 1 revoked Morin’s
supervised release and sentenced him to 24 months’ imprisonment with no term of
supervised release to follow. When Morin is released from prison later this year, he
will have served slightly more than 57 months in prison for his false-statements
offense. Of that time, 54 months were imposed after revocation of a term of
supervised release.
The district court revoked Morin’s supervised release under 18 U.S.C.
§ 3583(e)(3), which provides that:
The court may . . . revoke a term of supervised release, and
require the defendant to serve in prison all or part of the term of
supervised release authorized by statute for the offense that resulted in
such term of supervised release without credit for time previously
served on postrelease supervision . . . except that a defendant whose
term is revoked under this paragraph may not be required to serve on
any such revocation . . . more than 2 years in prison if such offense is a
Class C or D felony. . . .
This section “imposes two limitations on the term for a sentence resulting
from the revocation of supervised release, and both are based on the ‘offense that
resulted in the term of supervised release.’” United States v. Perkins, 526 F.3d 1107,
1110 (8th Cir. 2008). “First, the revocation sentence may not exceed ‘the term of
supervised release authorized by statute for the [original offense] without credit for
time previously served on postrelease supervision.’” Id. (alteration in original). This
arises from the “all or part” clause. Second, the revocation sentence “may not exceed
1
The Honorable Peter D. Welte, Chief Judge, United States District Court for
the District of North Dakota.
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the absolute maximum revocation sentence provided in § 3583(e)(3) with respect to
the class of the original offense.” Id. This second limitation appears in the “except
that” clause. We have held that this second provision acts as a per-revocation limit
and does not require “consider[ation] or aggrega[tion]” of prior revocation terms of
imprisonment. United States v. Lewis, 519 F.3d 822, 825 (8th Cir. 2008).
Morin appeals his most recent 24-month revocation term of imprisonment.
He acknowledges that his 24-month revocation sentence complies with the “except
that” clause’s per-revocation limit of 2 years for class D felonies. Morin argues
instead that, unlike the “except that” clause, the “all or part” clause requires
aggregation. Put differently, Morin claims that a sentencing court must credit
previous revocation terms of imprisonment up to a maximum of “the term of
supervised release authorized by statute for” the underlying offense.
Because “the term of supervised release authorized by statute for” a class D
felony like Morin’s is “not more than 3 years,” Morin claims that the “all or part”
clause caps at 3 years the total length of all revocation imprisonment he may serve
based on his false-statements conviction. Morin already served 30 months in prison
on his first two revocations, so he contends that the maximum revocation term of
imprisonment that the district court was authorized to impose on the present
revocation was 6 months. We review Morin’s argument de novo because it concerns
the legality of his sentence and involves statutory interpretation. See United States
v. Walker, 513 F.3d 891, 893 (8th Cir. 2008).
Morin candidly admits that every circuit to consider his argument has rejected
it. See United States v. Hampton, 633 F.3d 334, 337-42 (5th Cir. 2011); United
States v. Hunt, 673 F.3d 1289, 1291-93 (10th Cir. 2012); United States v. Spencer,
720 F.3d 363, 368-70 (D.C. Cir. 2013); see also United States v. Moore, 22 F.4th
1258, 1269 n.10 (11th Cir. 2022) (rejecting argument on plain-error review). And
they did so for good reason.
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Take § 3583(e)(3)’s plain language. It permits the court to “revoke a term of
supervised release.” When that happens, the court may send the defendant to
“prison” for “all or part of the term of supervised release authorized by statute for
the [underlying] offense . . . without credit for time served on postrelease
supervision.” Id. In Morin’s case, the “term of supervised release authorized by
statute” for his underlying offense is 3 years. See § 3583(b)(2). Nowhere does
§ 3583(e)(3) require the court “to consider or aggregate” prior revocation terms of
imprisonment. See Lewis, 519 F.3d at 825. Instead, the “all or part” clause imposes
a per-revocation limit. No single revocation term of imprisonment may exceed “the
term of supervised release authorized by statute for the [original offense] without
credit for time previously served on postrelease supervision.” See Perkins, 526 F.3d
at 1110 (alteration in original). Here, Morin’s 24-month sentence is a full year short
of the 3-year per-revocation limit imposed by the “all or part” clause.
Compare § 3583(e)(3) with § 3583(h), the subsection that provides for the
imposition of additional supervised release after the defendant serves a revocation
term of imprisonment. Section 3583(h) says:
When a term of supervised release is revoked and the defendant
is required to serve a term of imprisonment, the court may include a
requirement that the defendant be placed on a term of supervised release
after imprisonment. The length of such a term of supervised release
shall not exceed the term of supervised release authorized by statute for
the offense that resulted in the original term of supervised release, less
any term of imprisonment that was imposed upon revocation of
supervised release.
(emphasis added). “[T]he fact that § 3583(h) explicitly provides for aggregation of
revocation imprisonment in connection with the phrase ‘term of supervised release
authorized by statute,’ whereas § 3583(e)(3) does not for the identical phrase, is
strong evidence of congressional intent not to require aggregation in § 3583(e)(3).”
Hampton, 633 F.3d at 340; Hunt, 673 F.3d at 1293 (“Like the Fifth Circuit, we are
persuaded that the inclusion of an explicit aggregation requirement in § 3583(h) is
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further evidence Congress did not intend § 3583(e)(3), which has no such language,
to require aggregation.”).
Morin points out that the “all or part” clause of § 3583(e)(3) allows the
revoking court to sentence the defendant to prison for “all or part of the term of
supervised release authorized by statute . . . without credit for time previously served
on postrelease supervision” but does not explicitly allow the district court to ignore
prior revocation imprisonment. Morin argues that the inclusion of one is the
exclusion of another, so the reference to postrelease supervision without a reference
to postrelease incarceration implies that Congress intended the “all or part” clause
to limit aggregate revocation imprisonment by requiring the court to consider time
served on prior revocations. We disagree.
The “all or part” clause is best “read to mean what it literally says.” 2 Ali v.
Fed. Bureau of Prisons, 552 U.S. 214, 228 (2008). As we recognized in Lewis,
Congress long ago abolished the “except that” clause’s former requirement that
previous revocation terms of imprisonment be aggregated together when calculating
a revocation sentence. 519 F.3d at 824; see also Prosecutorial Remedies and Other
Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003, Pub. L. No. 108-21,
117 Stat. 650. “Had Congress intended the first half of § 3583(e)(3) to require
aggregation, it would not have amended the second half of the statute to preclude
such an interpretation.” Hunt, 673 F.3d at 1293; Hampton, 633 F.3d at 341; see also
Ali, 552 U.S. at 228 (“[I]nterpretive canons must yield when the whole context
dictates a different conclusion.” (internal quotation marks omitted)).
2
For this reason, we note that neither legislative history nor the rule of lenity
aids Morin. See United States v. I.L., 614 F.3d 817, 820 (8th Cir. 2010) (“When the
words of a statute are unambiguous . . . judicial inquiry is complete.” (internal
quotation marks omitted)); United States v. Buford, 54 F.4th 1066, 1068 (8th Cir.
2022) (noting that we consider “the rule of lenity only when, after employing all
other tools of construction, a grievous ambiguity or uncertainty in the statute
remains” (internal quotation marks omitted)).
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Morin argues that this interpretation renders the “all or part” clause
superfluous. It is true that the “except that” clause’s per-revocation limitation based
on the particular class of felony at issue is shorter than the “all or part” clause’s per-
revocation limitation. Yet the “all or part” clause is not meaningless. It “expand[s]
the sentencing court’s authority,” Hunt, 673 F.3d at 1292, granting it the power “to
impose a revocation sentence in excess of the amount of supervised release
authorized by the original sentencing court, . . . thereby removing the otherwise
arguable limitation that a prison term imposed could never be longer than the term
of the revoked supervised release,” Hampton, 633 F.3d at 339; see also Johnson v.
United States, 529 U.S. 694, 705 (2000).
As a final parry, Morin argues that our interpretation of § 3583(e)(3) raises
“serious Fifth and Sixth Amendment concerns” because it could allow a defendant
to “end up spending more time in prison for revocation sentences than the statutory
maximum authorized by his original conviction, all based on findings found by a
judge by a preponderance of the evidence.” Cf. United States v. Haymond, 558 U.S.
---, 139 S. Ct. 2369, 2384 (2019) (plurality opinion); Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530
U.S. 466, 490 (2000). Morin will serve a total of slightly more than 57 months in
prison for his false-statements conviction, including revocation terms of
imprisonment—less than the statutory maximum for a violation of 18 U.S.C.
§ 1001(a). Thus, to the extent that Morin’s constitutional concerns are legitimate,
this case does not implicate them. See Haymond, 139 S. Ct. at 2384.
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The 24-month term of revocation imprisonment Morin received was
authorized by statute. Thus, we affirm the judgment of the district court.
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