Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals - Published Opinions

Friday, March 11, 2011

Jackson: Rule 32 does not apply to revocation hearings

In U.S. v. Jackson, No. 10-13019 (Feb. 24, 2011), the Court affirmed a 21-month sentence imposed on a revocation of supervised release.

The Court held that Fed. R. Crim. P. 32(i)(1)(A), which requires a district court to verify at sentencing that the defendant and the defendant’s attorney have read and discussed the presentence report, does not apply to probation office reports prepared for a revocation hearing. Therefore, the district court’s failure to so verify during Jackson’s revocation hearing was not in error.

The Court rejected Jackson’s substantive reasonableness challenge to the length of his sentence, noting that he had not shown how a lesser sentence would help his “anger management problem.”