What happened
The Fifth Circuit on Thursday partially revived and partially ended William Scott Kendall's challenge to supervised-release conditions imposed after a revocation, ruling that only two conditions tied to a later revocation remained live and that both had to be removed from the written judgment.
The panel vacated part of the revocation sentence and remanded for the district court to amend the written judgment by deleting the unpronounced home detention condition and Standard Condition 13, which required Kendall to follow a probation officer's instructions. It dismissed his challenges to the remaining conditions as moot.
Kendall had pleaded guilty in 2024 to being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition and later had his supervised release revoked. After he appealed conditions in the first revocation judgment, the district court revoked his release again, imposed another short custodial term and put him back on supervised release.
That second revocation complicated the appeal. The Fifth Circuit said most of Kendall's challenge was moot because the first revocation judgment had been superseded, but the case remained live as to conditions from the first judgment that were later found violated and used as the basis for the second revocation.
On the merits, the panel said the standard conditions were not orally pronounced and rejected the government's argument that the court's oral reference to location monitoring was enough to impose home detention. Home detention, the panel said, is especially restrictive and is not a natural follow-on to location monitoring that would alert a defendant and lawyer that it had been imposed.
The panel also faulted the sentencing procedure because the district court referred to an appendix to a sentencing options worksheet without a record showing Kendall or his lawyer had reviewed it. Without disclosure and a meaningful chance to object, the court said, the two non-moot conditions were improperly adopted and had to be stricken.