Reported / Citable
Background
Skylar Antonio Braden was serving a term of supervised release following a federal conviction in the Western District of Texas. On May 13, 2026, the U.S. Probation Office filed a petition alleging that Braden had violated a condition of his supervised release and recommending revocation. A warrant issued and Braden was arrested.
Braden appeared before a U.S. Magistrate Judge on May 22, 2026, and was ordered detained pending a revocation hearing. On June 2, 2026, Braden appeared again before the magistrate judge, waived his right to a preliminary hearing and to appear before the district judge for sentencing modification, and consented to allocution before the magistrate judge. All parties also executed a waiver of the fourteen-day objection period for the magistrate judge’s report and recommendation.
The Court’s Holding
On June 5, 2026, the magistrate judge issued a report and recommendation finding, based on Braden’s original offense and intervening conduct, that revocation was warranted. The magistrate judge recommended a six-month term of imprisonment with credit for time already served since arrest, no subsequent term of supervised release, and that the federal sentence run concurrently with any sentence imposed in Bell County, Texas District Court Case No. 82605.
District Judge Christopher R. Wolfe reviewed the full record, found no plain error, and on June 15, 2026 accepted and adopted the report and recommendation in its entirety. The court revoked Braden’s supervised release and imposed a six-month term of imprisonment with no supervised release to follow, concurrent with any Bell County state sentence.
Key Takeaways
- A defendant’s waiver of the fourteen-day objection period under 28 U.S.C. § 636(b) permits the district court to immediately adopt a magistrate judge’s report and recommendation without waiting for the objection window to close.
- Failure to timely object to a magistrate judge’s report and recommendation bars a party from raising those issues on appeal absent plain error, per Douglass v. United Services Auto Ass’n, 79 F.3d 1415 (5th Cir. 1996).
- The court imposed no term of supervised release following the revocation sentence, and ordered the federal term to run concurrently with any pending state sentence in Bell County, Texas.
Why It Matters
This order illustrates the streamlined process by which supervised release can be revoked when a defendant waives procedural rights, including the right to appear before the district judge and to object to the magistrate’s recommendation. The concurrent-sentence structure also highlights coordination between federal and state proceedings arising from overlapping conduct.