Criminal – Defendant granted resentencing for violation of supervised release

Where the district court sentencing a man for violation of his supervised release did not consider his argument that he should get some credit for the 19 months he spent on supervised release while the revocation petition was pending, it erred.

Background

Preston Mills Jr. appeals the district court’s revocation of his supervised release and his 24-month revocation sentence.

Sufficiency

Mills first argues that the district court abused its discretion by revoking his supervised release because the finding that he committed the crime of strangulation was clearly erroneous. This court disagrees.

The district court did not clearly err in finding that Mills violated his supervised release based on the evidence presented and did not abuse its discretion in revoking his term of supervised release. Mills’ primary argument is a nonstarter as it does no more than take issue with the district court’s decision to credit Ms. Rodriguez’s version of events over his. Simply put, the court did not clearly err by crediting Ms. Rodriguez’s testimony.

The court did not, as Mills contends, “fail[] to grapple with the evidence that undercut [Ms. Rodriguez’s] credibility[,]” nor did it “ignore[] significant discrepancies in [her] testimony.” Instead, the court painstakingly tackled each of the alleged discrepancies between her federal and state court testimony and found either that there was in fact no inconsistency or that any inconsistency was immaterial. It is not this court’s role to second guess those determinations.

In the end, Mills has not cleared the high hurdle of demonstrating that the district court clearly erred by finding Ms. Rodriguez’s testimony credible. That testimony and the host of other evidence introduced at the hearing is more than sufficient for the district court to find Mills guilty of the strangulation violation by a preponderance of the evidence. Accordingly, the district court did not abuse its discretion in revoking Mills’ supervised release based on that finding.

Sentencing

Mills separately contends that his revocation sentence is plainly unreasonable because the district court didn’t consider one of his non-frivolous mitigation arguments—that he should get some credit for the additional 19 months he spent on supervised release while the revocation petition was pending when his sentence here is determined. This court agrees.

Based on this court’s review of the record, it agrees with Mills that the record does not reflect that the district court adequately considered or addressed that argument when selecting his sentence. The government agrees that the court did not expressly address this point. But the government maintains that the district court adequately addressed Mills’ mitigation argument during a colloquy with counsel at the beginning of the sentencing hearing. Under the facts of this case, this court must disagree.

The actual discussion at the hearing was about whether it was legally permissible for the court to impose an additional term of supervised release given the extended term Mills had been serving. That inquiry about the court’s authority is quite different from what role, if any, the extended 19-month term of supervised release should play in the district court’s ultimate sentencing decision.

Because this court has no assurance that the district court considered Mills’ potentially non-frivolous mitigation argument regarding the effect of his extended period of supervised release, the revocation sentence is clearly and obviously unreasonable such that it is plainly unreasonable.

Affirmed in part, vacated in part and remanded.

United States v. Mills, Case No. 25-4075, April 20, 2026. 4th Cir. (Agee), from EDVA at Richmond (Payne). Salvatore M. Mancina for Appellant. Olivia L. Norman for Appellee. VLW 026-2-140. 17 pp.

Full-Text Opinion

VLW 026-2-140
Virginia Lawyers Weekly