The Supreme Court today set the standard for criminal appeal waivers: They are unenforceable if they would result in a “miscarriage of justice.”
The ruling sets a uniform standard for criminal appeal waivers, which are an increasingly common part of a criminal plea in federal court. The standard is lower than the one that the Fifth Circuit applied below, and lower than the government’s proposed standard. Still, the Court emphasized that it nevertheless “sets a high bar.”
The case, Hunter v. United States, arose when Munson Hunter III entered into a plea agreement that included an appeal waiver. (This means that Hunter waived his right to appeal his agreement and his sentencing, with a narrow exception not applicable here.) The court then sentenced Hunter to prison time. It also sentenced him to participate in a mental-health treatment program that included mental-health medications prescribed by Hunter’s treating physician.
Hunter appealed, arguing that the mandatory-medication condition violated due process. The Fifth Circuit dismissed the appeal, however, pointing to Hunter’s appeal waiver in his plea agreement.
The Supreme Court vacated and remanded. The Court said that the proper test is that “an appeal waiver is unenforceable when it would result in a miscarriage of justice.” The Court explained:
That rule, properly understood and applied, sets a high bar: The waiver may be set aside only if the sentence is marred by the kind of egregious error that would bring the judicial system into disrepute. The error must be obvious–not one a judge could reasonably make. And it must be of the type that would undermine public confidence in the judiciary. . . . [S]tandard-fare errors in misapplying sentencing law cannot cancel an appeal waiver. . . . But some faults in sentencing can. So a high bar is not an insurmountable one. The point of the miscarriage-of-justice limit, as many appellate courts have properly applied it, is to offer a safety valve for extreme cases–a way out of a waiver when the justice system’s basic integrity is at stake.
The Court went on to provide some examples. It then remanded the case to apply the standard to Hunter.
Justice Gorsuch concurred, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson. He pointed out that plea bargains and appeal waivers are increasingly common, and that appeal waivers are problematic. He wrote that the Court’s ruling is a step in the right direction “toward reining in appeal waivers.”
Justice Kavanaugh concurred, joined by Justices Alito and Barrett. He argued that Justice Gorsuch’s concurrence “would set a lower bar for the miscarriage-of-justice exception” and that “the concurrence may not be entirely consistent with the Court’s opinion.”
Justice Barrett concurred, expressing skepticism “that the Supreme Court possesses an inherent, supervisory authority over inferior federal courts.” But she argued that the Court’s ruling “rests on longstanding waiver principles and thus falls within” the category of cases dealing with “the development of procedural common law” (and not the category dealing with the Court’s “inherent, supervisory authority over inferior federal courts”).
Justice Thomas dissented, arguing that a fully enforceable appeal waiver, even when it results in a miscarriage of justice, is consistent with historical practice and the rule that a defendant can voluntarily waive a right. He said that the Court’s standard lacks any grounding in law.
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