Background
Jeremy Jarrett pleaded guilty in 2010 to two counts of first-degree sexual abuse of a nine-year-old girl. The Kanawha County Circuit Court sentenced him to consecutive one-to-five-year prison terms and fifty years of supervised release. Its 2011 order imposed conditions including restrictions on living or working around minors and a general requirement that Jarrett follow supervising-officer directives.
After Jarrett began supervision, probation officers gave him additional written sex-offender conditions. Those conditions prohibited him from being within two blocks of places where children congregate and from remaining near a minor where verbal or nonverbal communication could occur. In 2023, Jarrett accompanied his pregnant wife to a hospital for an emergency cesarean section and waited there for several hours. The circuit court revoked his supervised release based on the supplemental conditions and sentenced him to four years in prison.
Jarrett also sought permission to have contact with his newborn daughter. The circuit court denied that request, while permitting him to seek supervised visitation upon appropriate safety assurances and treatment-provider approval.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court of Appeals reversed the revocation. The two conditions Jarrett was found to have violated were not imposed by the sentencing court in the 2011 order; probation officers added them later without a hearing at which Jarrett had counsel. Under West Virginia law and Rule 32.1(b), a probation officer may administer and enforce court-imposed conditions, but may not unilaterally add restrictions that materially expand a probationer’s liberty restraints.
The Court held that the added geographic and proximity restrictions were substantive enlargements, not mere implementation details of the original conditions. They were therefore void and unenforceable, making a revocation based on them unsustainable. The Court did not reach Jarrett’s vagueness and evidentiary challenges.
The Court affirmed the denial of Jarrett’s request for contact with his daughter. Because his offense was a qualifying child-sex offense, Jarrett bore the statutory burden to show that modifying the no-visitation condition was in the child’s best interest. The circuit court reasonably relied on his history, prior supervision violations, admissions, and a therapist’s assessment placing him at average/moderate risk of reoffending.
Key Takeaways
- A general requirement to follow a probation officer’s directives does not authorize the officer to create new, materially more restrictive supervised-release conditions.
- Materially enlarged supervised-release conditions require a court hearing with counsel for the probationer; otherwise, they are void and cannot support revocation.
- A probationer seeking to relax the statutory bar on living with or visiting a minor child bears the burden of proving the change serves the child’s best interest.
Why It Matters
The decision draws a firm line between routine probation administration and judicial sentencing authority. Probation officers may manage reporting, treatment, and other implementation details, but new categorical restrictions on movement, association, or similar liberties must be imposed through the court process.
For sex-offense supervision, the ruling also confirms that child-contact restrictions remain subject to individualized judicial modification, with the child’s best interest—not the probationer’s interest in family contact—carrying the controlling statutory weight.