Reported / Citable
Background
William Scott Kendall pleaded guilty in February 2024 to possession of a firearm and ammunition by a convicted felon under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). He was sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release, with conditions including substance abuse treatment, mental health treatment, and anger management. Kendall timely appealed his conviction, which this circuit affirmed in July 2025.
Within weeks of his August 2024 release on supervised release, the Probation Office filed a petition alleging two violations: refusal to participate in substance abuse treatment and sending threats to his probation officer under 18 U.S.C. § 111(a)(1). Kendall admitted both violations. The district court revoked his supervised release and imposed six months in custody plus thirty months of new supervised release (the “First Revocation Judgment”), with conditions including home detention listed under “location monitoring.”
While Kendall’s appeal of the First Revocation Judgment remained pending, his supervised release was revoked again in July 2025 for failing to participate in location monitoring and follow probation officer instructions. The district court imposed three months in custody plus twenty-four months of supervised release (the “Second Revocation Judgment”), reimposing the same conditions. Kendall now appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Circuit first resolved a jurisdictional threshold: whether the subsequent revocation rendered the appeal moot. Under Article III, a case becomes moot when a court cannot grant effectual relief. The court rejected the Government’s mootness argument by invoking the collateral consequences doctrine. Although Kendall could not directly appeal the Second Revocation Judgment, the validity of the conditions in the First Revocation Judgment directly affected the legality of the second revocation. If those conditions were invalid, Kendall’s second revocation would rest on a defective foundation, allowing him to challenge his current sentence through a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Therefore, the case was not entirely moot—only as to the specific conditions that were the predicate for the second revocation.
On the merits, the court held that the district court violated Kendall’s due process rights by failing to orally pronounce the home detention condition and Standard Condition 13. At sentencing, the judge enumerated special conditions—substance abuse treatment, mental health treatment, anger management—and stated it would impose “location monitoring for a period of six months.” The judge then adopted conditions “as set out in the Appendix” to a sentencing worksheet. However, the record showed no evidence that Kendall or his counsel reviewed this appendix. Under Fifth Circuit precedent (Diggles, decided en banc), a defendant must receive notice and an opportunity to object before a court may adopt written documents at sentencing. Here, the appendix was never disclosed, and the defendant was not told it contained additional requirements beyond the enumerated special conditions.
The court emphasized that home detention is an exceptionally restrictive condition—Congress designates it only as “an alternative to incarceration” under 18 U.S.C. § 3563(b)(19). It is not a natural corollary to “location monitoring” that would alert a defense attorney to its imposition. Accordingly, the court could not impose home detention without explicit oral pronouncement and an opportunity to object. The court VACATED the home detention and Standard Condition 13, DISMISSED challenges to other conditions as moot, and REMANDED for amendment of the written judgment.
Key Takeaways
- An appeal of a revoked sentence is not moot under the collateral consequences doctrine when a challenged condition from the first revocation becomes the predicate for a later revocation, even if the later revocation judgment itself is not appealed.
- Oral pronouncement at sentencing controls over the written judgment when they conflict; pronouncement of a general category (e.g., “location monitoring”) does not implicitly include restrictive sub-conditions (e.g., home detention) unless explicitly stated.
- Courts must disclose and permit review of sentencing worksheets and other documents before adopting them at sentencing; failure to do so violates due process and prevents a defendant from objecting to the conditions they contain.
- Home detention is a specially restrictive condition requiring clear, explicit pronouncement—it cannot be bundled into a broader condition without explicit notice and opportunity to object.
Why It Matters
This decision clarifies critical procedural safeguards in supervised release sentencing. Courts often adopt conditions from worksheets or PSRs; this opinion requires them to affirmatively ensure disclosure and review before adoption, preventing hidden or ambiguous conditions from entrapping defendants post-sentencing. The holding also reinforces that the collateral consequences doctrine permits appellate review of earlier revocation judgments when they directly precipitate later ones—an important check on mootness dismissals in serial revocation scenarios common in criminal practice.
For practitioners, the decision underscores that the oral pronouncement is paramount and that generic conditions like “location monitoring” will not be read to encompass more severe restrictions like home confinement. Defense counsel must demand clarity at sentencing and ensure disclosure of all proposed conditions before adoption, particularly when conditions are cross-referenced to external documents.