A man who received the statutory maximum of two years imprisonment after violating the terms of his supervised release lost his appeal to undo the sentence Thursday.
Duane Gibson argued that the sentencing judge impermissibly relied on his need for rehabilitation when fashioning his sentence—what’s known as a Tapia violation.
But the discussion about rehabilitation was invited by Gibson, and the judge had an obligation to address non-frivolous arguments, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said in a divided, unpublished ruling.
The sentencing statute prohibits courts from imposing a prison term to promote an offender’s rehabilitation. But ...