United States v. Lipscomb, 66 F.4th 604

Eddie Lipscomb pleaded guilty in 2008 to being a felon in possession of a firearm and was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment plus 5 years supervised release (SR); the court applied the Armed Career Criminal Act enhancement.
After Johnson (2015), Lipscomb moved under 28 U.S.C. § 2255; the district court vacated the ACCA enhancement and resentenced him in 2018 to 10 years imprisonment and 3 years SR.
While the reduced sentence was in effect Lipscomb began SR, violated it, and the district court twice revoked SR, imposing additional prison terms tied to his credit status.
The government appealed the resentencing, and this court (and later the Supreme Court denials) reinstated the original 20-year sentence, vacating the 10-year sentence.
Lipscomb appealed the two revocation judgments; the Fifth Circuit held that because the revocations were part of the vacated reduced sentence, they too must be vacated; the court rendered judgment vacating the revocation orders.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument (United States)	Defendant's Argument (Lipscomb)	Held
Mootness / jurisdiction over appeals of revocation judgments	Appeals moot because original 20-year sentence superseded revocations and BOP is crediting time, so no live controversy	Revocations remain on the books and BOP could change computation; thus concrete stake persists	Court found case justiciable (BOP had not unequivocally foreclosed future adverse computation) and in any event may vacate under its authority; jurisdiction exists
Effect of reinstating original sentence on revocation judgments	Government concedes revocations currently have no legal effect but argues district court had power to impose them	Vacatur of reduced sentence voids the revocation judgments because revocations are part of that underlying sentence	Vacatur of the reduced sentence required vacatur of the two revocation judgments; court vacated and rendered judgment accordingly
Merits claim that revocations rest on constitutional misinformation	District court had authority and no constitutional error in revocations	Revocations rested on misinformation of constitutional magnitude and were therefore invalid	Court did not reach merits; disposition rests on vacatur of reduced sentence

Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591 (2015) (invalidating ACCA residual clause)
Johnson v. United States, 529 U.S. 694 (2000) (postrevocation penalties are part of the original sentence)
United States v. Haymond, 139 S. Ct. 2369 (2019) (reaffirming that postrevocation sanctions relate to the underlying penalty)
U.S. Bancorp Mortg. Co. v. Bonner Mall P’ship, 513 U.S. 18 (1994) (court may vacate judgments even if Article III mootness arises)
Preiser v. Newkirk, 422 U.S. 395 (1975) (prisoner-transfer mootness where agency action undone and file notation removes future consequences)
United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U.S. 36 (1950) (vacatur of lower-court judgment when case becomes moot to prevent legal consequences)