Opinion
15-CR-537 (VEC)
10-31-2022
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. JORGE GONZALEZ, Defendant.
ORDER
VALERIE CAPRONI, United States District Judge:
On October 25, 2022, the Court received a letter from Mr. Gonzalez, pro se, seeking early termination of his supervised release. See Dkt. 1754. The request is DENIED.
On April 28, 2017, Mr. Gonzalez was sentenced to a term of incarceration of 60 months to be followed by three years of supervised release. See Dkt. 934. Mr. Gonzalez commenced supervised release in 2020 when the pandemic was raging. Although he reports that he has been in “full compliance” with the terms of supervised release, the Court has been informed that he has only recently obtained employment, even though full-time employment is a standard condition of supervised release. In other respects, he has maintained stable residence with his mother, has reported as directed, has abstained from illicit drug use, and has completed his required community service hours. He has not been arrested since he was released from prison.
With the encouragement of the Probation Office, Mr. Gonzalez recently obtained employment as a porter in an apartment building. The Court is pleased that Mr. Gonzalez has taken a substantial step toward rehabilitation by obtaining full-time employment, although it wishes that he had taken that step earlier in the term of supervised release.
His request to the Court for early termination of supervised release stated that he “is in the process of obtaining [his] CDL License so that [he] may pursue a career in the trucking industry.” See Letter, Dkt. 1754. He argues that terminating supervised release would allow him to travel freely to pursue opportunities in other states as a truck driver. Eventually, he explained, he wants to own his own truck and start his own trucking business.
The Court is pleased that Mr. Gonzalez has ambition to pursue employment beyond being a porter. But ambition is not the same as a proven track record. At the moment, it appears to the Court that Mr. Gonzalez has been gainfully employed for less than three months (despite having been out of prison for more than two years and even though demand for workers, particularly in the service industry, has been exceedingly high since at least the summer of 2021) and does not yet have a CDL. It is also unclear to the Court how long Mr. Gonzalez has been working to obtain a CDL and whether his stated goal of owning a truck and starting a trucking business is a serious pursuit.
Mr. Gonzalez is encouraged to be an excellent employee (meaning: show up on time; call out sick only if truly ill; and give his employer a full day's work for a full day's pay) and to continue his efforts to obtain a CDL if that is truly his passion. But consistent with the Court's normal practices, it will not grant early termination to a defendant who cannot show at least twelve months of full-time employment.
The Clerk of Court is respectfully directed to mail a copy of this Order to Mr. Gonzalez at 320 Morris Avenue, Apt. 11C, Bronx, New York 10451, and to note the mailing on the docket.
SO ORDERED.