February 09th, 2021

United States v. Martinez

Docket: 20-20148
Opinion Date: February 8, 2021
Judge: Jennifer Walker Elrod
Areas of Law: Criminal Law

The Fifth Circuit withdrew its prior opinion and substituted the following opinion. The court vacated defendant's condition of supervised release requiring defendant to "participate in an inpatient or outpatient substance-abuse treatment program" supervised by defendant's probation officer. The court concluded that the option to require inpatient rehabilitation delegates to the probation officer the judicial decision to significantly restrict defendant's liberty during treatment. In this case, because of defendant's short ten-month sentence, the district court should not have delegated the decision to further restrict defendant's liberty during the course of treatment while on supervised release. Therefore, the court remanded for further proceedings.

Read Opinion