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
*
District Judge, Southern District of Mississippi, sitting by designation.
court is 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.
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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 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
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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 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
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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 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
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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 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
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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
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
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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
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”
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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 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).
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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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. 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.
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CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, the district court’s judgments are AFFIRMED.
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