Cite as: 511 U. S. 39 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
Thus, under the Government's in pari materia approach, drug possessors whose original offense warranted the more serious sanction of prison plus supervised release would often receive shorter revocation sentences than would drug-possessing probationers.
The Government counters that Congress might have intended to punish probationers more severely because they were "extended special leniency." Reply Brief for United States 13, n. 14. A sentence of probation, however, even if "lenient," ordinarily reflects the judgment that the offense and offender's criminal history were not so serious as to warrant imprisonment. In sum, probation sans imprisonment and supervised release following imprisonment are sentences of unlike character. This fact weighs heavily against the argument that the discrete, differently worded probation and supervised release revocation provisions should be construed in pari materia.
C
The history of the probation revocation proviso's enactment gives us additional cause to resist the Government's interpretation. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act, in which the proviso was included, was a large and complex measure, described by one Member of the House of Representatives as "more like a telephone book than a piece of legislation." 134 Cong. Rec. 33290 (1988) (remarks of Rep. Conte). The proviso seems first to have appeared in roughly its present form as a Senate floor amendment offered after both the House and the Senate had passed the bill. See id., at 24924-24925 (House passage, Sept. 22); id., at 30826 (Senate passage, Oct. 14); id., at 30945 (proviso included in lengthy set of amendments proposed by Sen. Nunn, Oct. 14). No conference report addresses the provision, nor are we aware of any post-supervised release is not more than 1 year. See 18 U. S. C. §§ 3561(b), 3583(b).
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