Jackson Daniel Bowers v. United States

In United States v. Haymond, 139 S. Ct. 2369 (2019), a 4-1-4 decision, this Court left undecided the question of how the Sixth Amendment’s jury-trial right applied in federal supervised-release proceedings. Justice Gorsuch, writing for the plurality, recognized that traditional parole and probations systems (where a defendant owes time remaining on a sentence) was fundamentally different from supervised release (where a defendant owes no time)—and that “structural difference bears constitutional consequences.” In dissent, Justice Alito highlighted the unresolved question left in Haymond’s wake: whether “the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial applies to any supervised release revocation proceeding.” That is the issue presented here. – ii –