Background
Michael Chase Watson pleaded guilty in the Southern District of Texas to receipt and possession of child pornography. At sentencing, the district court imposed discretionary conditions of supervised release that had been listed in Watson’s presentence report (PSR) and its appendix. Watson appealed, arguing that the district court failed to adequately pronounce those conditions at the sentencing hearing.
Watson’s central claim on appeal was that the district court erred by not expressly inquiring, on the record, whether he had reviewed the PSR and its appendix with his counsel prior to sentencing. The Government urged the court to enforce an appeal waiver contained in Watson’s plea agreement, but the Fifth Circuit declined to reach that question.
The Court’s Holding
A per curiam panel of Judges Davis, Wilson, and Douglas affirmed the sentence. The court held that Watson failed to demonstrate plain error — or any error — arising from the district court’s omission of an express on-record inquiry into whether Watson had reviewed the PSR with counsel. Relying on United States v. Villafana-Mondragon, 170 F.4th 360 (5th Cir. 2026), the panel reasoned that the existing record supported the fact that Watson had an opportunity to review the PSR with counsel, and permitted a reasonable inference that he actually did so.
Judge Douglas concurred in the judgment but wrote separately to reiterate her view — consistent with her dissent in Villafana-Mondragon — that the district court should affirmatively confirm on the record that a defendant reviewed the PSR before sentencing proceeds, as required by the court’s en banc decision in United States v. Diggles, 957 F.3d 551 (5th Cir. 2020) (en banc). She applied the panel precedent she disagreed with, but preserved her objection.
Key Takeaways
- Under current Fifth Circuit panel precedent, a district court does not commit reversible error by failing to expressly ask whether the defendant reviewed the PSR with counsel, so long as the record supports a reasonable inference that review occurred.
- The court declined to address the enforceability of Watson’s plea-agreement appeal waiver, disposing of the case on the merits instead.
- A concurrence signals ongoing internal tension in the Fifth Circuit: Judge Douglas maintains that Diggles (en banc) requires an affirmative on-record confirmation of PSR review, and that Villafana-Mondragon improperly diluted that requirement.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the practical standard applied in the Fifth Circuit for PSR-review challenges at sentencing: defendants face a high bar when the record, even without an explicit judicial inquiry, reflects that counsel had access to the PSR and an opportunity to review it with the client. Defense counsel should be aware that silence in the record on this point — without more — is unlikely to yield a remand.
The concurrence, however, keeps alive a potential en banc or Supreme Court question about whether Diggles‘ affirmative-confirmation requirement has been properly applied by subsequent panels. Practitioners in the Fifth Circuit who want to preserve sentencing objections on this ground should ensure the record reflects — or contests — PSR review explicitly, rather than relying on inferences.