Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Brandon Roy Alvarez pleaded guilty to knowingly enticing and coercing a minor to engage in unlawful sexual activity, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b). The district court sentenced him to 210 months in prison followed by 10 years of supervised release. At sentencing, the court adopted an electronic-device monitoring condition contained in the current presentence report.
The written judgment went further, requiring Alvarez to obtain his probation officer’s permission before possessing or using computers, electronic communications or data-storage devices, or media. Alvarez did not object at sentencing. After his counsel initially sought to withdraw under Anders v. California, the Fifth Circuit directed counsel to address a possible conflict between the oral sentence and written judgment and the reasonableness of the supervised-release conditions.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Circuit held that the written judgment conflicted with the district court’s oral pronouncement. The district court had referred at sentencing to the monitoring condition in the final presentence report, which required Alvarez to consent to ongoing monitoring of electronic devices but did not require advance permission to possess or use them. Because the written judgment added that more burdensome preapproval requirement, the oral sentence controlled.
The court affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded with instructions to conform the written judgment to the oral sentence. It did not decide whether the preapproval language improperly delegated judicial authority to the probation officer or made the supervised-release condition substantively unreasonable. Judge Oldham concurred in the judgment while reiterating his criticism of the circuit’s precedent governing oral pronouncement of supervised-release conditions.
Key Takeaways
- A discretionary supervised-release condition must be orally pronounced so the defendant has an opportunity to object before sentencing is complete.
- When a written judgment imposes a more burdensome condition than the oral sentence, an actual conflict exists and the oral pronouncement controls.
- The remand was limited to correcting the written judgment; the Fifth Circuit did not resolve Alvarez’s improper-delegation or substantive-reasonableness arguments.
Why It Matters
The decision underscores that courts and counsel must compare the written judgment with the precise conditions pronounced at sentencing and with the correct, final version of the presentence report. A written condition requiring probation-officer approval cannot stand when the oral sentence imposed only electronic monitoring.
The case also illustrates that an unpreserved discrepancy may still require correction when the written judgment materially increases the restrictions stated in open court.