YANSANE v. WARDEN

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
SHEKU DEEN YANSANE,
Petitioner,
v.
WARDEN, et al.,
Respondents.
Case No. 24-cv-1947 (JMC)
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Sheku Deen Yansane filed a pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The Court dismisses
the petition. Insofar as Yansane is challenging his pretrial detention, that challenge was rendered moot
when he was sentenced. And the one claim Yansane put forward that presents a live controversy—
whether another federal district court had the authority to revoke Yansane’s supervised release and
impose a term of imprisonment—fails on the merits. Yansane has not plausibly alleged that the district
court lacked the authority to do so.1
I. 	BACKGROUND
In November 2023, Yansane was charged in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia
with possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance while armed. See United States v.
Yansane (Yansane II), No. 2023 CF2 008042 (D.C. Super. Ct.), Dkt. at Nov. 2, 2023 Charge Filed.2
Yansane was initially detained without bond but, a few days later, released on his own recognizance.
1 Unless otherwise indicated, the formatting of citations has been modified throughout this opinion, for example, by
omitting internal quotation marks, emphases, citations, and alterations and by altering capitalization. All pincites to
documents filed on the docket in this case are to the automatically generated ECF Page ID number that appears at the top
of each page.
2 On a motion to dismiss, the Court can “look to [the] record of another proceeding.” Covad Commc’ns Co. v. Bell Atl.
Corp., 407 F.3d 1220, 1222 (D.C. Cir. 2005).
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See id. at Nov. 3, 2023 Release Status: No Bond; id. at Nov. 6, 2023 Release Status: PR PSA.
At the time of his Superior Court charges, however, Yansane was already serving a two-year
term of supervised release for a conviction in the United States District Court for the District of
Maryland. See United States v. Yansane (Yansane I), No. 17-cr-0435 (D. Md.), ECF 178. Shortly after
he was released by the Superior Court, Yansane’s probation officer notified the District of Maryland
about his new charge and moved to revoke Yansane’s supervised release. See id. at ECF 291. When
Yansane appeared for his next hearing at the Superior Court in early December, the United States
Marshals served him with a warrant for his alleged violations of his supervised release conditions and
took him into custody. See Yansane II, Dkt. at Dec. 6, 2023 Release Status: PR PSA; ECF 5 at 5.
Two days after that, the District of Maryland held an initial hearing on the petition to revoke
Yansane’s supervised release. See Yansane I, ECF 293. A Magistrate Judge ordered Yansane
temporarily detained pursuant to the Bail Reform Act and then, a few days later, ordered his continued
detention. See id. at ECF 293, ECF 297, ECF 300, ECF 301. Yansane asked the Magistrate Judge to
reconsider that ruling and later appealed those detention orders to a District Judge, but his requests
for release were all denied. See id. at ECF 305, ECF 311, ECF 312, ECF 323.
Meanwhile, at the end of January 2024, Yansane was indicted in the Superior Court on seven
counts. Yansane II, Dkt. at Jan. 31, 2024 Indictment. In early July, Yansane entered a guilty plea to
unlawful possession of a firearm. See id. at July 3, 2024 Change of Plea to Guilty. The Superior Court
ordered Yansane detained pending sentencing. See id. at July 3, 2024 Commitment Pending
Disposition.
Around the same time, Yansane filed his habeas petition in this Court. See ECF 1. He alleged
that, since he was taken into custody by the Marshals in December 2023, he had been in custody
related to his alleged supervised release violations. See id. at 2; see also ECF 3 at 1; ECF 4 at 1–2.
His term of supervised release, however, was scheduled to end in April 2024. See ECF 1 at 2; see also
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Yansane I, ECF 178 at 3 (two year term of supervised release); id. at ECF 291 at 1 (supervision began
in April 2022). Yansane argued that the conditions predicate to exercising a “delayed revocation”
power—that is, the power to “revoke a term of supervised release” after the “expiration of the term
of supervised release”—were not satisfied in his case. ECF 1 at 3. For that reason, he challenged his
ongoing detention for the purpose of revocation proceedings. See id. at 5; see also ECF 3 at 4.
Shortly after he filed the habeas petition, Yansane asked to withdraw his guilty plea in the
Superior Court case. See Yansane II, Dkt. at Aug. 9, 2024 Notice of Intent of Pro Se Mot. to Withdraw
Guilty Plea. The Superior Court granted that request. See id. at Aug. 23, 2024 Guilty Plea Withdrawn.
Yansane was ultimately tried and found guilty by a jury of several charges. See id. at Feb. 14, 2025
Case Disposed–Jury Trial Guilty. Yansane was eventually sentenced by the Superior Court to a 23-
month term of incarceration. See id. at July 24, 2025 Judgment and Commitment Order Filed.
After he was found guilty in the Superior Court, but around a month before he was sentenced,
the District of Maryland held a final hearing on the motion to revoke Yansane’s supervised release.
See Yansane I, ECF 374. The court entered a judgment revoking Yansane’s supervised release and
sentenced him to a term of 18 months imprisonment. See id. at ECF 377. When the Superior Court
sentenced Yansane the next month, it ordered its sentence to run “consecutive” to “any other
sentence”—meaning Yansane’s Superior Court and federal sentences would run consecutively.
Yansane II, Dkt. at July 24, 2025 Judgment and Commitment Order Filed.
Yansane’s habeas petition has remained pending in this Court while these criminal
proceedings were ongoing. The Government moved to dismiss the petition, and the District of
Columbia Central Detention Facility Warden joined the Government’s motion. See ECF 11; ECF 14.
II. 	LEGAL STANDARD
“[A] case is moot when the issues presented are no longer live or the parties lack a legally
cognizable interest in the outcome.” Larsen v. U.S. Navy, 525 F.3d 1, 3 (D.C. Cir. 2008). “Federal
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courts lack jurisdiction to decide moot cases because their constitutional authority extends only to
actual cases or controversies.” Id. at 4. “If the court determines at any time that it lacks subject-matter
jurisdiction, the court must dismiss the action.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(h)(3).
“To survive” a Rule 12(b)(6) “motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual
matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal,
556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009). The Court “must treat the complaint’s factual allegations as true . . . and
must grant [the] plaintiff the benefit of all inferences that can be derived from the facts alleged.”
Sparrow v. United Air Lines, Inc., 216 F.3d 1111, 1113 (D.C. Cir. 2000). “[T]he pleadings of pro se
parties are to be liberally construed and held to less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted
by lawyers.” Tyson v. Brennan, 277 F. Supp. 3d 28, 35 (D.D.C. 2017).
III. 	ANALYSIS
Much of Yansane’s petition was focused on his pretrial detention. See, e.g., ECF 1 at 2
(arguing he is “[e]ntitled to a revocation hearing in a reasonable time after being taken into custody”);
id. at 3 (“The District of Maryland Judges . . . would not release me pending the adjudication of the
matter they were alleging.”); ECF 3 at 3 (“[T]he court failed to set a . . . date[] for violation
proceedings, which would’ve preserved [its] jurisdiction.”). But Yansane’s supervised release has
now been revoked and he was sentenced for that violation. He was found guilty and sentenced in his
Superior Court case, too. That moots any challenge to his pretrial detention. See United States v.
Weissberger, 951 F.2d 392, 396 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (explaining that a challenge to an order “requiring
pretrial detention . . . becomes moot upon conviction and sentence”); see also United States v. Young,
428 F. App’x 9, 10 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (holding that claims related to pretrial detention were “rendered
moot” by conviction).
Yansane’s claim that the district court lacked the authority to revoke his supervised release
after his term of supervised release ended, however, presents a justiciable question. Yansane is still
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serving—or will serve after his Superior Court sentence runs, depending on which sentence is being
served first—his sentence for the supervised release violation. If he is right that the district court had
no authority to impose that sentence, he could be entitled to relief. See Spencer v. Kemna, 523 U.S.
1, 7 (1998) (“An incarcerated convict’s . . . challenge to the validity of his conviction always satisfies
the case-or-controversy requirement.”).
But on the merits, this claim fails. “Congress contemplated that a term of supervised release
might expire before a violation could be resolved. So it enacted 18 U.S.C. § 3583(i).” United States
v. Reddick, 778 F. Supp. 3d 121, 126–27 (D.D.C. 2025). Section 3583(i) grants federal courts the
“power” to “revoke a term of supervised release for [a] violation of a condition of supervised release,
and to order the defendant to serve a term of imprisonment,” even after “the expiration of the term of
supervised release” so long as two conditions are satisfied. 18 U.S.C. § 3583(i). First, before the term
of supervised release’s expiration, a “warrant or summons [was] issued on the basis of an allegation
of . . . a violation” that occurred during the term of supervised release. Id. And second, the power
must be exercised within the “period reasonably necessary for the adjudication of matters arising
before” the term of supervised release ended. Id.; see also Reddick, 778 F. Supp. 3d at 127 (explaining
same).
Both conditions were satisfied here. A warrant was not only issued, but Yansane was served
with that warrant in December 2023, five months before his supervision term was set to elapse. See
Yansane II, Dkt. at Dec. 6, 2023 Event Resulted: Hearing Held (“PSA Mckenzie notified the court
that the defendant has an extraditable Parole warrant from Maryland. The marshals served the
warrant.”). “[I]t is plain,” then, “that a warrant was issued and executed”—the statute only requires
the first of those two things—“within [Yansane’s] supervised release term relating to a potential
violation of the terms of his supervised release.” United States v. Venable, 416 F. Supp. 2d 64, 74
(D.D.C. 2006). That satisfies section 3583(i)’s first condition.
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As for the second condition, there is no question that the district court resolved the revocation
petition within the “period” of time that was “reasonably necessary.” 18 U.S.C. § 3583(i). The court
waited until after Yansane’s jury trial in the Superior Court to resolve the revocation petition. See
Yansane I, ECF 374, ECF 377. The “period of time during which the state was adjudicating . . . state
criminal charges obviously and easily falls within the scope of reasonable necessity provided by
§ 3583(i).” United States v. Ramos, 401 F.3d 111, 117 (2d Cir. 2005). “Although federal courts are
not required . . . to rely on state adjudications to determine whether a supervised release violation has
occurred, state adjudications are plainly relevant to the federal determination of whether or not a
releasee has committed a crime in violation of state law.” Id. It is therefore generally “reasonable for
[a] District Court to wait for the adjudication of the state court charges before proceeding with [a]
revocation hearing.” United States v. Poellnitz, 372 F.3d 562, 571 (3d Cir. 2004). Yansane has
therefore failed to plausibly allege any defect in the revocation proceedings and the resulting
imposition of a term of incarceration.
In addition to his failure to plead a violation of section 3583(i), Yansane also fails to plausibly
plead that he has satisfied the threshold procedural requirements for habeas relief via 28 U.S.C.
§ 2241. “[T]he general rule is that a federal prisoner[] who attacks the legality of his sentence or
conviction[] must first file a motion pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255 before petitioning for a writ of
habeas corpus under § 2241.” Larsen v. Garland, No. 20-cv-840, 2021 WL 1061207, at *1 (D.D.C.
Mar. 19, 2021). The docket in the District of Maryland, however, shows that Yansane has not filed a
2255 motion since his supervised release was revoked. See Yansane I, ECF 377 (last entry). And
“even if [Yansane’s] petition could” be “construed as a habeas petition brought under 28 U.S.C.
§ 2255,” this was “not the court [that] sentenced” Yansane for his violation of his conditions of
supervised release, “and is thus” not the court to “entertain his § 2255 petition either.” Larsen,
2021 WL 1061207, at *1; see 28 U.S.C. § 2255(a).
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* 	* 	*
Respondents’ motions to dismiss are GRANTED, ECF 11, ECF 14, and this action is
DISMISSED. A separate order will issue.
__________________________
JIA M. COBB
United States District Judge
Date: March 16, 2026
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