United States v. Reyes-Solosa

A three week postponement of a supervised release revocation hearing is not an unreasonable amount of time when waiting for the judgment of a criminal case.

Irma Reyes-Solosa (“Solosa”) is a Mexican citizen who was arrested on May 8^th, 2013 for illegal entry into the United States. At the time of the arrest, Solosa was on supervised release from the United States for a similar infraction. Entering the United States was in direct violation of the terms of her supervised release from the previous incident. At Solosa’s supervised release revocation hearing, the district court determined that it would halt the proceedings until the underlying criminal case could be decided so that a consecutive sentence could be imposed. Eventually the district court determined, that based on Solosa’s criminal history, a revocation of Solosa’s supervised release was appropriate. The court imposed a twelve-month imprisonment term for the release violation and a six-month prison term for her illegal reentry to be served consecutively. Solosa objected on the grounds of unreasonableness and claims that the 3-week postponement of her revocation hearing was erroneous as untimely. The Ninth Circuit begins its analysis by pointing out that Rule 32 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure indicates that post-revocation sentencing must be conducted “within a reasonable time.” The panel determined that the district court’s continuance of the revocation hearing was not unreasonable given Solosa’s criminal history. The panel explained that the breach of trust that follows a breach of a supervised release agreement calls for strong action by the United States. Therefore, the panel held that the postponement of the revocation hearing to wait for the sentence of the underlying crime so that the sentences could be imposed consecutively was not unreasonable. AFFIRMED