United States v. Joseph Edward Marshall, 949 F.3d 262

In 2008 Marshall pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute oxycodone and was sentenced to 118 months imprisonment plus six years supervised release.
After release, Marshall violated a geographic condition, prompting the sentencing court to transfer supervision and briefly revoke release; the court then imposed an additional five-year term of supervised release to run concurrently with the remaining six years.
Marshall began the new supervised-release term in April 2016, later moved to Michigan with permission, and made positive progress.
The probation office recommended early termination; Marshall filed an unopposed motion to terminate supervised release, which the district court denied.
Marshall appealed the denial, arguing the court erred; the government contended the court of appeals lacked jurisdiction.
The Sixth Circuit held it lacked jurisdiction to review the denial of a motion to terminate supervised release and dismissed the appeal.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument (Marshall)	Defendant's Argument (United States)	Held
Whether 18 U.S.C. § 3742 authorizes appeal of the district court's denial of early termination of supervised release	§ 3742 permits review of sentence-related errors and thus covers denial because terminating release would change his sentence	§ 3742 applies only to appeals from an "imposed" or modified sentence within statutory timeframes; Marshall did not appeal any sentence within 14 days and denial to modify is not a new imposition	No — § 3742 does not permit this appeal; dismissal for lack of jurisdiction
Whether 28 U.S.C. § 1291 furnishes jurisdiction to review the denial instead	§ 1291 is a general grant of appellate jurisdiction and can be used when § 3742 does not apply	Congress channeled sentence appeals into § 3742; § 1291 does not rescue appeals barred by § 3742	No — § 1291 does not provide jurisdiction to review the denial of termination of supervised release
Whether alleged errors (clearly erroneous facts, failure to consider § 3553(a), denial of allocution) make the denial appealable	Even if such errors occurred, they happened in denying the motion rather than in imposing or modifying a sentence, so they are reviewable	Errors must have occurred at the time of imposition or modification of sentence to fall under § 3742	No — asserted errors are not reviewable under § 3742 because denial did not "impose" or modify a sentence

Abney v. United States, 431 U.S. 651 (1977) (there is no constitutional right to an appeal; appellate jurisdiction depends on Congress)
Flanagan v. United States, 465 U.S. 259 (1984) (historical role of § 1291 in criminal appeals prior to creation of § 3742)
United States v. Bowers, 615 F.3d 715 (6th Cir. 2010) (§ 3742 channels most sentence appeals; § 1291 is not generally available for sentence-reduction appeals)
United States v. Martirossian, 917 F.3d 883 (6th Cir. 2019) (trial decisions affecting sentences may nonetheless be ineligible for review)
Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t, 523 U.S. 83 (1998) (jurisdictional rulings require careful treatment; offhand jurisdictional assumptions lack precedential effect)
United States v. Doe, 932 F.3d 279 (5th Cir. 2019) (denial of a sentence-reduction motion does not "impose" a sentence)
United States v. Ruiz, 536 U.S. 622 (2002) (§ 3742 does not authorize appeal from a district court’s refusal to depart from an existing sentence)
United States v. Spinelle, 41 F.3d 1056 (6th Cir. 1994) (earlier assumption of jurisdiction in similar contexts does not bind future panels)