United States v. Daniel Kemp, Sr., 88 F.4th 539

Defendant Daniel Kemp, Sr. was charged with nine counts of sexually abusing his adopted children while serving in the U.S. Army.
Kemp entered a plea agreement, pleading guilty to one count of aggravated sexual abuse; the other counts were dismissed.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment and a lifetime of supervised release. The court’s written judgment included discretionary supervised release conditions not orally announced at sentencing.
Kemp appealed his conviction and sentence; his counsel filed an Anders brief (stating the appeal lacked merit but raising two issues), and the Fourth Circuit identified additional issues for supplemental briefing.
The government eventually moved to dismiss the appeal as untimely but did not raise timeliness as a ground in its initial motion to dismiss; it only did so later.
The appellate court considered issues including the timeliness of the appeal, errors in the plea colloquy, ineffective assistance, and the failure to orally pronounce non-mandatory supervised release conditions.

Issue	Kemp's Argument	Government's Argument	Held
Timeliness of appeal	Timeliness defense forfeited by gov't	Appeal is untimely under Rule 4(b)	Government forfeited timeliness objection by not raising it when initially able.
Validity of guilty plea (Rule 11 errors)	Plea colloquy was deficient and cumulative	Omissions had no effect; plea was voluntary and informed	No plain error affecting substantial rights; conviction affirmed.
Ineffective assistance of counsel	Counsel misled about possible sentence	Claim not conclusively shown by record, thus inappropriate on appeal	Not addressed on direct appeal; left for possible § 2255 motion.
Written vs. oral supervised release terms	Discretionary conditions not orally announced	Remedy should be to strike unannounced terms, not resentence	Full resentencing required under circuit precedent for Rogers error.

Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738 (standard for when appellate counsel finds no meritorious grounds for appeal)
United States v. Rogers, 961 F.3d 291 (4th Cir. 2020) (discretionary supervised release conditions must be orally pronounced; remedy is resentencing)
United States v. Singletary, 984 F.3d 341 (4th Cir. 2021) (Rogers error not covered by appeal waiver; requires resentencing)
United States v. Hyman, 884 F.3d 496 (4th Cir. 2018) (Rule 4(b) is a mandatory claim-processing rule, subject to waiver/forfeiture)
United States v. Vonn, 535 U.S. 55 (court must ensure defendant understands plea and rights; plea errors require plain error review on collateral challenge)
United States v. Faulls, 821 F.3d 502 (4th Cir. 2016) (ineffective assistance claims generally not resolved on direct appeal)