The government cannot revoke your supervised release based on conditions that were never properly imposed in the first place. In United States v. McLaurin, decided March 6, 2026, the Fourth Circuit vacated a revocation judgment because the district court had relied on standard conditions of supervised release included only in the defendant’s written judgment—never announced aloud at sentencing. The ruling has significant implications for anyone currently serving a term of federal supervised release.
The Rogers Rule: Oral Pronouncement Is Required
The foundation of this decision is United States v. Rogers, 961 F.3d 291 (4th Cir. 2020), which established that a district court must orally pronounce all non-mandatory conditions of supervised release at the sentencing hearing. When discretionary conditions appear for the first time in the written judgment—without ever being announced in open court—they are legal nullities. The defendant was never actually sentenced to those conditions, even if they appear on paper. The rule is grounded in due process: if conditions are added silently to a written judgment, the defendant loses any opportunity to object to terms that may not fit his or her individual circumstances.
What Happened in McLaurin
John McLaurin pleaded guilty in 2012 to a federal drug-trafficking charge and was sentenced in January 2013 to 120 months’ imprisonment followed by five years of supervised release. At sentencing, the judge orally announced four special conditions of supervised release. However, the court never mentioned—let alone recited—the fourteen “standard” conditions that subsequently appeared in the written judgment.
Relevant here were standard condition 6 (requiring McLaurin to notify his probation officer ten days before any change of residence) and standard condition 10 (requiring him to permit home visits by his probation officer). These appeared only in the written judgment, not in anything said at the 2013 hearing.
When McLaurin began serving his supervised release term in 2022, his probation officer alleged violations of multiple conditions. McLaurin negotiated a plea agreement in the revocation proceeding: he agreed to admit to violations of standard conditions 6 and 10 in exchange for the government dropping the remaining charges. The district court accepted the agreement, revoked his supervised release, and sentenced him to 90 days’ imprisonment plus 42 additional months of supervised release.
McLaurin then appealed, arguing for the first time that standard conditions 6 and 10 were nullities under Rogers because they had never been orally pronounced at his 2013 sentencing.
The Court’s Analysis: Three Hurdles, All Cleared
The majority opinion, authored by Judge Gregory and joined by Judge Berner, addressed three issues: whether McLaurin’s 2012 appellate waiver barred his challenge, whether the appeal was timely and procedurally proper, and whether the district court’s error survived plain-error review.
On the appellate waiver, the court found that the waiver—covering appeals of “whatever sentence is imposed”—did not reach a Rogers challenge. A Rogers challenge is not an appeal of an imposed condition; it is an argument that certain conditions were never imposed at all. Because unannounced conditions are nullities, there is nothing imposed to waive an appeal of. Ambiguities were construed against the government, as is standard Fourth Circuit practice.
On timeliness, the court relied on United States v. Brantley, 87 F.4th 262 (4th Cir. 2023), and United States v. Newby, 91 F.4th 196 (4th Cir. 2024), which establish that defendants may raise a Rogers challenge through a “procedurally appropriate mechanism.” The 2024 revocation hearing, itself infected by the original error, served as that mechanism—and McLaurin timely filed his appeal two days after judgment was entered.
On plain-error review, the court found all four prongs satisfied. The error was clear under Rogers. McLaurin’s substantial rights were affected because he was sentenced to incarceration and extended supervision based on conditions that never legally existed. And the integrity of judicial proceedings was at stake: revoking a person’s liberty based on void conditions strikes at the core of due process.
The Dissent and Its Warning
Judge Niemeyer dissented sharply, arguing that McLaurin invited the error by agreeing to admit violations of the standard conditions as the basis for revocation, and that the Fourth Circuit lacked jurisdiction to review the underlying 2013 judgment in a revocation appeal. He warned the majority’s reasoning opens decade-old judgments to challenge at every future revocation hearing. Those concerns carry real practical weight: district courts may now feel compelled to examine original sentencing transcripts for Rogers compliance whenever a pre-2020 defendant faces revocation.
What This Means for Defendants Under Federal Supervision
If you or someone you know is serving a term of federal supervised release that was imposed before 2020—when Rogers was decided—it is worth examining whether the conditions being enforced were actually announced in open court at sentencing. Conditions that appear only in the written judgment and were never orally pronounced may be legal nullities, meaning any revocation proceeding premised solely on those conditions could be vulnerable to challenge.
This is not a technicality in the dismissive sense. The Rogers rule exists because defendants have a constitutional right to be present at sentencing and to object to conditions imposed on their liberty. When that right is bypassed, the resulting conditions have no legal force. As the McLaurin majority put it, appeals based on Rogers are about “the vindication of that right” and necessarily implicate the integrity of judicial proceedings. If you are facing a supervised release revocation or believe your conditions of supervision may not have been properly imposed, consulting with an experienced federal criminal defense attorney is essential.
At The Chetson Firm, we represent clients throughout North Carolina in federal criminal matters, including supervised release revocations and Fourth Circuit appeals. Damon Chetson is a Board Certified Specialist in State and Federal Criminal Law—one of fewer than 100 attorneys in North Carolina with that distinction—with extensive experience litigating sentencing and post-conviction issues in federal court. If you have questions about a supervised release matter or a potential Rogers challenge, contact us today for a consultation.