United States v. DeRon Edwards Robinson


RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION Pursuant to Sixth Circuit I.O.P. 32.1(b) File Name: 23a0051p.06 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT ┐ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, │ Plaintiff-Appellee, │ > No. 21-6056 │ v. │ │ DERON EDWARDS ROBINSON, │ Defendant-Appellant. │ ┘ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee at Nashville. No. 3:05-cr-00196-2—William Lynn Campbell, Jr., District Judge. Decided and Filed: March 21, 2023 Before: McKEAGUE, WHITE, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges. _________________ COUNSEL ON BRIEF: Benjamin H. Perry, LAW OFFICE OF BENJAMIN H. PERRY, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Robert E. McGuire, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellee. _________________ OPINION _________________ MURPHY, Circuit Judge. This case raises two questions about supervised release. The first question concerns the exclusionary rule. That rule sometimes bars the government from using evidence at a criminal trial if the police obtained the evidence in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Does the rule also bar illegally obtained evidence from a hearing at which a court decides whether to revoke a defendant’s supervised release and send the defendant back to No. 21-6056 United States v. Robinson Page 2 prison? We answer “no” because the Supreme Court has held that the rule does not apply in the analogous parole setting. See Pa. Bd. of Prob. & Parole v. Scott, 524 U.S. 357, 359 (1998). The second question concerns the right to a jury trial. Courts have long held that defendants do not have a right to a jury at supervised-release hearings. See United States v. Johnson, 356 F. App’x 785, 790–92 (6th Cir. 2009). Yet the Supreme Court recently found that this jury-trial guarantee applied to a unique provision—18 U.S.C. § 3583(k)—that imposed a minimum 5-year prison term on a defendant who committed specified federal crimes while on supervised release. United States v. Haymond, 139 S. Ct. 2369, 2378–79 (2019) (plurality opinion); id. at 2386 (Breyer, J., concurring in the judgment). Does Haymond also render unconstitutional a separate provision—18 U.S.C. § 3583(g)—that requires a court to impose a prison term of unspecified length if a defendant has engaged in certain conduct (such as possessing a gun) while on supervised release? We again answer “no” because the narrow logic of the controlling opinion in Haymond does not cover § 3583(g). These two answers lead us to affirm the district court’s judgment. I In 2005, police officers spotted DeRon Robinson as he left a suspected stash house for illegal drugs. Robinson had a warrant out for his arrest. After officers arrested him, they uncovered a firearm and drugs in his car. Robinson pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm as a felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), and possessing drugs with the intent to distribute them, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). The district court originally sentenced Robinson to 130 months’ imprisonment, but a retroactive change in the Sentencing Guidelines led it to reduce his sentence to 92 months. Robinson finished his prison time and started a 4-year term of …

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