United States of America v. John Hale

RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION
Pursuant to Sixth Circuit I.O.P. 32.1(b)
File Name: 25a0022p.06
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
JOHN HALE,
Defendant-Appellant.
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No. 24-5362
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee at Nashville.
No. 3:11-cr-00221-1—Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr., District Judge.
Decided and Filed: January 30, 2025
Before: GILMAN, STRANCH, and LARSEN, Circuit Judges.
_________________
COUNSEL
ON BRIEF: Molly Rose Green, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER,
Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant. S. Carran Daughtrey, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S
OFFICE, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellee.
_________________
OPINION
_________________
LARSEN, Circuit Judge. Appellant John Hale moved for early termination of supervised
release four years and four months into his ten-year term of supervision. The district court
denied his motion. For the reasons stated, we VACATE and REMAND for reconsideration of
Hale’s motion.
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No. 24-5362 United States v. Hale Page 2
I.
In 2010, John Hale pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual battery by unlawful sexual
contact. He was sentenced in Tennessee state court to eight years of imprisonment and lifetime
supervision. As a result of his conviction, Hale was required to register as a sex offender in
Tennessee. See Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-39-203; see also 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a).
In October 2011, Hale was indicted in the Middle District of Tennessee for traveling out
of the state and failing to update his sex-offender registration in Tennessee as required under the
federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), 18 U.S.C. § 2250(a). He
pleaded guilty and was sentenced to fifteen months’ imprisonment, to be served consecutive to
his state sentence, and, upon release, to a term of ten years’ supervised release with special
conditions.
On June 8, 2018, after serving his sentences, Hale was released, and his supervision
began. In January 2020, Hale violated a condition of his supervised release by consuming
alcohol, and he was placed on a formal random-drug-testing program. Nearly three years later,
he moved for early termination of his federal term of supervised release, having served
approximately four years and four months of his ten-year term. He argued that, despite his
January 2020 violation, he had otherwise complied with the conditions of his supervision,
warranting early termination. For support, he cited his sex-offender treatment, his limited
number of violations, and letters from his state probation officer, therapist, and long-time friend
attesting to his compliance. Hale’s federal probation officer could not recommend early
termination for a convicted sex offender due to office policy. The United States did not oppose
Hale’s motion for early termination.
The district court denied Hale’s motion. The court commended Hale for his positive
behavior, but determined that early termination of supervised release was not appropriate. Hale
timely appealed.

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No. 24-5362 United States v. Hale Page 3
II.
We review the district court’s denial of a motion for early termination of supervised
release under the abuse-of-discretion standard. United States v. Webb, 30 F.3d 687, 688 (6th Cir.
1994). “A district court abuses its discretion when it relies on clearly erroneous findings of fact,
or when it improperly applies the law or uses an erroneous legal standard.” United States v.
Carter, 463 F.3d 526, 528 (6th Cir. 2006) (citation omitted). Hale argues that the district court
relied on both an improper legal standard and clearly erroneous facts when rejecting his motion.
A.
We begin with the legal standard that governs a motion for early termination of
supervised release. A district court may, after considering a subset of the sentencing factors set
forth in § 3553(a), terminate a term of supervised release “at any time after the expiration of one
year of supervised release . . . if it is satisfied that such action is warranted by the conduct of the
defendant released and the interest of justice.” 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(1). “The expansive phrases
‘conduct of the defendant’ and ‘interest of justice’ make clear that a district court enjoys
discretion to consider a wide range of circumstances when determining whether to grant early
termination.” United States v. Melvin, 978 F.3d 49, 52 (3d Cir. 2020) (quoting United States v.
Emmett, 749 F.3d 817, 819 (9th Cir. 2014)). “The conjunction ‘and’ used in the statute clearly
indicates that a district court must conclude that the early termination of supervised release is
warranted both by the individual’s conduct and also by the interest of justice.” United States v.
Suber, 75 F. App’x 442, 444 (6th Cir. 2003).
In United States v. Atkin, we stated that “[e]arly termination of supervised release is a
discretionary decision that is only warranted in cases where the defendant shows changed
circumstances—such as exceptionally good behavior.” 38 F. App’x 196, 198 (6th Cir. 2002)
(per curiam) (emphasis added). And our subsequent unpublished decisions have consistently
reiterated Atkin’s rule. See, e.g., United States v. Zai, 2024 WL 84084, at *2 (6th Cir. Jan. 8,
2024); United States v. Bey, 2023 WL 8043044, at *2 (6th Cir. Nov. 16, 2023) (order); United
States v. Butler, 2023 WL 6552878, at *2 (6th Cir. June 14, 2023) (order). The district court
here understandably followed suit. Relying on Atkin, the district court determined that Hale

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No. 24-5362 United States v. Hale Page 4
“d[id] not satisfy [Atkin’s] standard” because, “[a]lthough . . . Hale’s behavior is admirable, it is
far from exceptional and does not warrant early termination of supervised release.” R. 51 Dist.
Ct. Order, PageID 144–45.
We agree with Hale that Atkin did not correctly state the legal standard when it said that
early termination of supervised release is “only warranted” upon a showing of “exceptionally
good behavior.” Atkin, 38 F. App’x at 198 (emphasis added). Section 3583(e)(1) requires the
district court to determine whether early termination “is warranted by the conduct of the
defendant released and the interest of justice,” in addition to certain § 3553(a) factors. The text
does not make “exceptionally good” conduct an absolute prerequisite to relief. Compare 18
U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A) (requiring a finding of “extraordinary and compelling” circumstances to
warrant compassionate release); and United States v. McCall, 56 F.4th 1048, 1053–54 (6th Cir.
2022) (en banc) (same); with 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(1) (requiring consideration of “the conduct of
the defendant released and the interest of justice”).
That is not to say that a district court may not consider whether a defendant exhibited
“exceptionally good behavior” when exercising its broad discretion to resolve motions for early
termination of supervised release. Indeed, we might expect that district courts will “generally”
find early termination proper only when exceptionally good conduct or other changed
circumstances are present. See Melvin, 978 F.3d at 53. After all, compliance with all conditions
“is expected of an individual on supervised release,” Butler, 2023 WL 6552878, at *2, and
non-compliance is a ground for revocation, see 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3). But we cannot find in
the text of the statute a “blanket rule” requiring exceptional conduct as a prerequisite to early
termination. United States v. Ponce, 22 F.4th 1045, 1048 (9th Cir. 2022).
We, like other circuits, seem to have gotten the idea that the statute invariably demands a
showing of exceptionally good behavior from United States v. Lussier, a Second Circuit opinion.
See Atkin, 38 F. App’x at 198 (citing United States v. Lussier, 104 F.3d 32, 36 (2d Cir. 1997));
see also Melvin, 978 F.3d at 53 (discussing prior, but mistaken, reliance on Lussier); Ponce,
22 F.4th at 1047 (same). But, of course, Lussier does not bind us. What’s more, Lussier did not
even involve the early-termination-of-supervised-release provision before us now, § 3583(e)(1).
Instead, the question in Lussier was whether a district court could use a neighboring provision

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governing modifications of supervised release—§ 3583(e)(2)—to correct an allegedly illegal
restitution condition. See 104 F.3d at 33. Section 3583(e)(2) makes no mention of the “conduct
of the defendant” or “the interest of justice,” which is the critical language here. See 18 U.S.C.
§ 3583(e)(1). And it’s worth noting that, even with respect to § 3583(e)(2)’s modification
provision, the Second Circuit has since clarified that Lussier “d[id] not require new or changed
circumstances relating to the defendant in order to modify conditions of release, but simply
recognize[d] that changed circumstances may in some instances justify a modification.” United
States v. Parisi, 821 F.3d 343, 347 (2d Cir. 2016) (per curiam) (second emphasis added); see
also United States v. Abbring, 2023 WL 3476310, at *2 (6th Cir. May 12, 2023) (order)
(“Although a change in circumstances is not explicitly covered by § 3583(e)(2), this court has
previously explained that ‘Section 3583(e)(2) allows district courts to adjust supervised release
conditions to account for new or unforeseen circumstances.’” (quoting United States v. Faber,
950 F.3d 356, 359 (6th Cir. 2020))).
Like the other circuits that originally relied on Lussier, we clarify today that § 3583(e)(1)
does not require a finding of exceptionally good behavior before a district court may grant a
motion for early termination of supervised release, though such behavior remains a relevant
consideration. See Melvin, 978 F.3d at 53 (holding that “a district court need not find that an
exceptional, extraordinary, new, or unforeseen circumstance warrants early termination of a term
of supervised release before granting a motion under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(1)”); see also Ponce,
22 F.4th at 1047 (explaining that it is incorrect as a matter of law to require a threshold showing
of “exceptionally good behavior” under § 3583(e)(1)). Because the district court here appears,
understandably, to have read our unpublished caselaw to require a showing of “exceptionally
good” behavior as a threshold to relief, we vacate the district court’s order and remand for
reconsideration under the proper standard.
Because we remand for reconsideration, we do not reach Hale’s argument that the district
court relied on clearly erroneous facts about the terms of his state supervision. Hale’s motion
argued generally that he “no longer needs simultaneous state and federal supervision,” and he
noted that his state “supervision terms are extensive.” R. 46 Motion for Early Termination,
PageID 122, 124–25. Hale offered a long list of these terms. But the motion made no mention

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of any mandatory state-imposed sex-offender treatment. The district court concluded that Hale’s
“continued state supervision fails to erase the utility of his remaining federal term” because not
all of his “state conditions overlap with his federal requirements.” R. 51 Dist. Ct. Order, PageID
145. The court noted, in particular, that “only his federal conditions . . . explicitly require
ongoing sex offender treatment.” Id. Hale now argues that his state terms do require mandatory
sex offender training, so the district court’s finding was clearly erroneous. Because we remand
for reconsideration under the proper legal standard, we decline to reach this question. On
remand the district court may, in the exercise of its discretion, reconsider this question, including
whether Hale’s argument was properly developed in the initial motion.
* * *
We VACATE and REMAND in accordance with this decision.

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