USCA4 Appeal: 21-4037 Doc: 48 Filed: 01/03/2023 Pg: 1 of 6
UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 21-4037
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
WELDON MOTIC JACKSON,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, at
Greenville. Richard E. Myers, II, Chief District Judge. (4:20-cr-00020-M-1)
Submitted: September 21, 2022 Decided: January 3, 2023
Before AGEE and HARRIS, Circuit Judges, and Lydia K. GRIGGSBY, United States
District Judge for the District of Maryland, sitting by designation.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
ON BRIEF: G. Alan DuBois, Federal Public Defender, Stephen C. Gordon, Assistant
Federal Public Defender, Eric Joseph Brignac, Chief Appellate Attorney, OFFICE OF THE
FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellant. Michael F.
Easley, Jr., United States Attorney, David A. Bragdon, Assistant United States Attorney,
OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
USCA4 Appeal: 21-4037 Doc: 48 Filed: 01/03/2023 Pg: 2 of 6
PER CURIAM:
Weldon Motic Jackson pleaded guilty to drug and firearm offenses and was
sentenced to a prison term and a three-year term of supervised release. He now appeals
two discretionary conditions of his supervised release, arguing that the district court failed
to orally pronounce those conditions at sentencing as required by United States v. Rogers,
961 F.3d 291 (4th Cir. 2020). We disagree. The district court clearly incorporated by
reference the conditions in question, as permitted by our precedents. Accordingly, we
affirm Jackson’s sentence.
I.
On June 25, 2020, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North
Carolina adopted Standing Order 20-SO-8 (“the Standing Order”), which remained in
effect at all relevant times. 1 The Standing Order enumerated 15 “standard” discretionary
conditions of supervised release. Among them were the two “financial conditions” at issue
in this appeal: “You must not incur new credit charges or open additional lines of credit
without the approval of the probation officer,” and “You must provide the probation officer
with access to any requested financial information.” J.A. 92. The Standing Order further
specified that unless otherwise indicated by the sentencing judge, “any reference in the
pronouncement of a sentence to the ‘Standard Conditions of Supervision as adopted in the
1
The June 2020 Standing Order has since been replaced with a new standing order.
2
USCA4 Appeal: 21-4037 Doc: 48 Filed: 01/03/2023 Pg: 3 of 6
Eastern District of North Carolina’ shall be deemed to refer to and incorporate” the
Standing Order and its listed conditions. J.A. 89.
Weldon Motic Jackson pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute heroin,
crack cocaine, and marijuana, and to being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was
sentenced in the Eastern District of North Carolina on January 26, 2021, seven months after
the Standing Order was issued. At that hearing, the district court sentenced Jackson to 154
months’ imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release. As to the conditions
of supervised release, the district court announced the following:
Further, after careful consideration of the provisions of Title 18
United States Code Section 3583(d) and the sentencing factors
outlined in Title 18 United States Code Section 3553(a), the
defendant shall comply with the mandatory and standard
conditions of supervision as adopted in the Eastern District of
North Carolina . . . .
J.A. 72. The court went on to discuss certain specific conditions but did not otherwise
address the two financial conditions now at issue.
Those conditions did appear, however, in the written judgment later issued by the
district court. That judgment included all 15 “standard” conditions from the Standing
Order. As relevant here, the written judgment stated, “The defendant shall not incur new
credit charges or open additional lines of credit without approval of the probation office,”
and “The defendant shall provide the probation office with access to any requested
financial information,” J.A. 82 – conditions substantively identical to the fourteenth and
fifteenth conditions in the Standing Order.
3
USCA4 Appeal: 21-4037 Doc: 48 Filed: 01/03/2023 Pg: 4 of 6
Jackson timely appealed his sentence on the ground that the district court failed to
orally pronounce the two financial conditions that later appeared in the judgment, which
constituted an error under United States v. Rogers, 961 F.3d 291 (4th Cir. 2020). 2
II.
In Rogers, we held that because a defendant has the right to be present for
sentencing, a district court must orally announce during sentencing all discretionary
conditions of supervised release. 961 F.3d at 296–97. If a discretionary condition appears
for the first time in a written judgment after the sentencing hearing, it is a “nullit[y] and
necessitat[es] a remand for resentencing.” Id. at 295; United States v. Singletary, 984 F.3d
341, 344 (4th Cir. 2021).
At the same time, we made clear that a district court may satisfy its obligation to
orally announce discretionary conditions in ways other than specifying each individual
condition at sentencing. Rogers, 961 F.3d at 299. Instead, “a district court may incorporate
by reference a condition or set of conditions,” Singletary, 984 F.3d at 346, including “a
court-wide standing order that lists certain conditions of supervised release,” Rogers, 961
F.3d at 299. “[S]o long as the defendant is informed orally that a certain set of conditions
will be imposed on his supervised release, . . . a later-issued written judgment that details
2
The government moved to dismiss Jackson’s appeal as barred by the appeal waiver
in his plea agreement. In United States v. Singletary, however, we held that a valid appeal
waiver does not preclude a Rogers claim. 984 F.3d 341, 344 (4th Cir. 2021). We therefore
denied the motion to dismiss.
4
USCA4 Appeal: 21-4037 Doc: 48 Filed: 01/03/2023 Pg: 5 of 6
those conditions may be construed fairly as a clarification” of the earlier oral
pronouncement. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
That is precisely what happened here. The district court announced that the
conditions it was imposing included the “standard conditions of supervision as adopted in
the Eastern District of North Carolina,” J.A. 72, pointing directly to the district’s Standing
Order. It used exactly the language the Standing Order prescribes for incorporation by
reference. See J.A. 89 (“[A]ny reference in the pronouncement of a sentence to the
‘Standard Conditions of Supervision as adopted in the Eastern District of North Carolina’
shall be deemed to refer to and incorporate [the Standing Order].”). And even assuming,
for the sake of argument, some ambiguity as to the contours of the oral sentence, the written
judgment would have clarified it, see Rogers, 961 F.3d at 299, because the list of
discretionary conditions in the judgment mirrors the standard discretionary conditions from
the Standing Order. Compare J.A. 81–82 (judgment), with J.A. 90–92 (Standing Order).
In short, the district court complied with Rogers when it clearly and specifically
incorporated by reference the Standing Order’s standard discretionary conditions, among
them the two financial conditions Jackson challenges on appeal. It follows that the district
court did not err when it included those two conditions of supervised release in its later-
issued written judgment. 3
3
Given this holding, we need not address the parties’ debate about the proper
standard of review for Jackson’s claim. Whether our review is de novo or only for plain
error makes no difference; there is no Rogers error in this case, plain or otherwise.
5
USCA4 Appeal: 21-4037 Doc: 48 Filed: 01/03/2023 Pg: 6 of 6
III.
For the reasons given above, the judgment of the district court is affirmed.
AFFIRMED
6