Background
Jose Tamayo-Amaya pleaded guilty to illegal reentry under 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a). The district court sentenced him to four months in prison and one year of supervised release, including conditions requiring him to report to the U.S. Probation Office within 72 hours of release and to report to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
After Tamayo-Amaya allegedly failed to report to either office, the Probation Office petitioned to revoke his supervised release. The district court found that he violated both conditions, revoked his supervised release, and sentenced him to four months in custody followed by eight months of supervised release. He timely appealed.
While the appeal was pending, Tamayo-Amaya completed the four-month custodial sentence. His subsequent eight-month term of supervised release expired on July 29, 2026.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Circuit dismissed the appeal as moot. Because mootness determines whether an Article III case or controversy remains, the court reviewed the issue de novo and asked whether it could still grant Tamayo-Amaya any effective relief.
Once Tamayo-Amaya had completed both the imprisonment and supervised-release portions of his revocation sentence, he bore the burden of identifying an ongoing collateral consequence traceable to that sentence that a favorable ruling would likely redress. He identified none and did not respond after the government noted that the appeal would become moot when his supervised release expired. The court therefore concluded that no live controversy remained.
Key Takeaways
- A challenge to a supervised-release revocation and the resulting sentence generally becomes moot after the entire sentence has expired.
- A defendant seeking to continue such an appeal must identify a concrete, ongoing collateral consequence that a favorable decision would likely remedy.
- Because Tamayo-Amaya had completed his imprisonment and supervised release without identifying any redressable collateral consequence, the Fifth Circuit lacked a live case or controversy to decide.
Why It Matters
The decision underscores that completing a revocation sentence can eliminate appellate jurisdiction even when the appeal was timely filed. Defendants approaching the end of both custody and supervised release must identify specific continuing consequences if they want appellate review to proceed.