Johnson, Cornell v. U.S. (05/15/2000)

By: Noelle Straub, Medill News Service

Questions presented

Did the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals err in concluding that the district court properly imposed the ""tail"" of a supervised release following incarceration after revoking Johnson's initial term of supervised release, in violation of the constitution's ex post facto clause?

Brief

In early 1994, Cornell Johnson pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to produce and use counterfeit credit cards. He was convicted and sentenced to 25 months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release.

Johnson served his time in prison. While on supervised release, he broke state laws in Virginia and left the judicial district without permission, both of which violated the terms of his supervised release. At a hearing in April 1998, Johnson admitted that he had violated the terms and was sentenced to 18 months in prison and 12 months supervised release.

However, Johnson felt he should not have to serve another term of supervised release. He appealed his case to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that his new term of supervised release violated the ex post facto clause of the Constitution.

Between the time Johnson was originally sentenced and the time he violated his release terms, Congress had amended the law dealing with supervised release. For the application of a new sentencing law to violate the ex post facto clause, it must apply retroactively to events before its passage and put the offender at a disadvantage.

At the time Johnson committed the credit-card conspiracy offense, federal law stated that upon violation of supervised release, the court could revoke the offender's release and send him to jail for part or all of the length of the supervised release term, without credit for the time he had already spent on release.

The law did not specify whether the court could only order the person back to prison, or if the court could order the person to both reimprisonment and another term of supervised release. Various appeals courts disagreed on this issue.

On Sept. 13, 1994, Congress amended the federal law to state that when a person violates supervised release, the court may send the person back to prison and also require a term of supervised release.

The new amendment took effect after Johnson had committed the credit card fraud, but before he violated the requirements of his supervised release. Johnson argued the new law should not be applied to his situation because the crime for which he was under supervision was committed before the new law. He argued that he was being subjected to a greater punishment for his original crime than was available at the time he committed it.

The appeals court, however, ruled that Johnson had been properly sentenced. The court held that since Johnson's violation of his supervised release took place after the new law took effect, his case did not violate the ex post facto clause.

There was disagreement on the issue among the federal courts. Other circuit courts had ruled that the application of the newer law to offenders who committed their crimes before the law went into effect does violate the ex post facto clause.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari on Oct. 18, 1999.

On May 15, 2000, the Court affirmed, holding that the federal statute was not applied retroactively, so no ex post facto issue actually arose in the case.

Justice David Souter wrote the opinion for an 8-1 majority.

In dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia noted in conclusion that though the case was not important since it dealt with the interpretation of a statute that has since been amended, ""an institution that is careless in small things is more likely to be careless in large ones; and an institution that is willful in small things is almost certain to be willful in large ones.""