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D pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute heroin. The District Court sentenced him to 12 months in prison, to be followed by a 6-year term of supervised release. D completed his term of imprisonment, and his period of supervised release began. Three years later, the probation office notified the District Court that D had been arrested. D had threatened to kill the mother of his children and had fired three rounds into her vehicle. D was charged in municipal court with domestic violence, aggravated menacing, and criminal damaging, although the charges were ultimately dismissed at the request of the victim. The District Court held a revocation hearing and found that D had violated the conditions of his supervised release. The court held that D had been given a lenient initial sentence. The District Court revoked his supervised release and ordered 24 months of reimprisonment, an upward variation from the advisory 6-to-12-month range, with three more years of supervised release to follow. The District Court acknowledged that part of its decision was the need for the sentence imposed to promote respect for the law. D objected, arguing that the District Court had impermissibly considered “the factor in Section 3553(a)(2)(A).” The Sixth Circuit affirmed, providing two justifications for its view that district courts may consider §3553(a)(2)(A) when revoking a term of supervised release. It held that §3583(e) does not say “that the court may consider ‘only’ those factors” specifically enumerated, so there was no indication that Congress meant to displace the “considerable discretion” that district courts typically enjoy “over supervised-release decisions.” It then reasoned that a rule prohibiting district courts from considering §3553(a)(2)(A) would be unworkable. As the panel saw it, “the purportedly forbidden considerations mentioned in §3553(a)(2)(A) tend to be ‘essentially redundant’ with the permitted ones,” so “to think about the one requires the judge to think about the other.” D appealed.

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