Background
Andrew Fleshman pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate civil rights under 18 U.S.C. § 241. The district court for the Southern District of West Virginia sentenced him to 100 months’ imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release.
On appeal, Fleshman challenged the sentencing on a narrow procedural ground: he argued the district court failed to pronounce or properly incorporate the standard and discretionary conditions of his supervised release, contending this violated the requirements established in United States v. Rogers, 961 F.3d 291 (4th Cir. 2020).
The Court’s Holding
The Fourth Circuit affirmed the sentence and rejected Fleshman’s Rogers challenge. The court held that a district court satisfies its obligation to orally pronounce supervised release conditions by incorporating them by reference and then detailing those conditions in the written judgment. The court confirmed that a district court may incorporate “a written list of discretionary conditions of supervised release, such as the recommendations in the defendant’s Presentence Report (PSR), or those established by a courtwide standing order,” provided those conditions are “expressly incorporated.”
Applying this framework, the court found no reversible error. The district court had adopted the PSR before expressly incorporating the “conditions recommended by the United States Probation Officer,” and the standard conditions in the PSR matched word-for-word those in the written judgment. Critically, defense counsel had explicitly agreed at the sentencing hearing to incorporate conditions by reference rather than requiring the court to recite them individually.
Key Takeaways
- District courts may satisfy Rogers requirements by incorporating supervised release conditions from the PSR by reference, provided the incorporation is express.
- A word-for-word match between PSR conditions and written judgment conditions satisfies Rogers when properly adopted at sentencing.
- Defense counsel’s agreement to incorporate conditions by reference supports the conclusion that no reversible error occurred.
- Failure to expressly incorporate conditions by reference may constitute reversible error, but proper incorporation cures any deficiency.
Why It Matters
This decision provides Fourth Circuit practitioners with concrete guidance on satisfying Rogers requirements for supervised release conditions. It clarifies that sentencing courts need not recite conditions orally if they expressly adopt the PSR recommendations and the written judgment matches the oral pronouncement. This streamlines the sentencing process while maintaining defendants’ rights to know the terms of their release.
For defense counsel, the decision emphasizes the importance of explicitly consenting to incorporation by reference—silent acquiescence or failure to object may waive Rogers arguments. For prosecutors and probation officers, the ruling confirms that PSR recommendations, when properly incorporated, provide a reliable mechanism for imposing supervised release conditions.