United States v. Betts

United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit · 2018 · Corporations

Updated August 22, 2026

CorporationsSupervised releaseSentencingSpecial conditionssubstantive reasonablenessprocedural reasonablenessalcohol bandrug testing

Facts

Betts was on supervised release following a prior conviction for conspiracy to commit bank fraud. His supervised-release violations included two arrests for driving without a license and failure to make required restitution payments, and he admitted that he failed to notify his probation officer within 72 hours of an arrest. The district court sentenced him to ten months' imprisonment and four years of supervised release, and also imposed a total ban on alcohol consumption and required substance-abuse testing with 'zero tolerance' for drug use. The record contained no evidence that alcohol was involved in his underlying offense or his supervised-release violations, or that he had seriously abused alcohol.

Issue

Whether the district court abused its discretion by imposing a four-year term of supervised release after Betts's violation, and whether the special conditions imposing a total alcohol ban and requiring substance-abuse testing were valid. More specifically, the court considered whether those special conditions were reasonably related to sentencing objectives and adequately supported by the record.

Rule

A sentence is substantively unreasonable only if it cannot be located within the range of permissible decisions, and appellate review is under a deferential abuse-of-discretion standard. A district court may impose special conditions of supervised release only if they are reasonably related to the nature and circumstances of the offense, the defendant's history and characteristics, deterrence, protection of the public, and correctional treatment, and only if they involve no greater deprivation of liberty than reasonably necessary. The district court must make an individualized assessment and state on the record the reason for imposing a special condition; absent such an explanation, the condition may be upheld only if the court's reasoning is self-evident in the record.

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One of 10 multiple-choice questions for this case. Pick an answer to see why.

Darren Cole was on supervised release in Cleveland after a federal fraud conviction. After he failed to report a local arrest, stopped making court-ordered payments despite steady income, and disappeared from contact with probation for six weeks, the district court revoked supervision and imposed a prison term and a new supervised-release term at the top of the applicable Guidelines range.

On appeal, Darren argues that the new supervised-release term is substantively unreasonable because his admitted violation was only a reporting failure. How should the appellate court most likely rule?

Explanation. The majority applied deferential abuse-of-discretion review and held a sentence is substantively unreasonable only if it cannot be located within the range of permissible decisions. It approved a within-Guidelines supervised-release term where the district court considered the defendant’s broader supervision conduct, including failure to pay despite income and absconding. A court need not treat the violation in isolation.