Rico v. United States

Overview

A case in which the Court held that the Sentencing Reform Act does not permit a defendant's term of supervised release to automatically extend when the defendant absconds.

Facts

Isabel Rico pleaded guilty to federal drug trafficking in 2010 and was sentenced to seven years in prison followed by supervised release. After an early violation, she was sent back to prison and given a new 42-month supervised release term set to expire in June 2021. But shortly after her second release, she disappeared. She changed her address without telling her probation officer and was not found for nearly five years. During that time, she committed new state crimes, including a drug offense in January 2022, seven months after her supervised release was supposed to have ended. The federal court treated that drug offense as a Grade A supervised release violation and sentenced her to 16 more months in prison. She appealed, arguing her supervised release had already expired.

Issue

Whether a court may impose additional prison time upon revocation of supervised release when doing so causes the defendant's total period of incarceration to exceed the maximum imprisonment authorized by statute for the underlying offense.

Rule

Under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3), upon revocation of supervised release a court may require the defendant to serve all or part of the original supervised release term in prison, subject to certain caps. Johnson v. United States, 529 U.S. 694 (2000), held that supervised release is part of the sentence for the underlying offense. Courts have divided on whether the cumulative incarceration, original imprisonment plus revocation imprisonment, may exceed the statutory maximum for the underlying crime.

Analysis

The first thing Gorsuch does is fix the vocabulary. The Ninth Circuit called its rule "tolling," but tolling means stopping the clock. That is not what was happening. Under the Ninth Circuit's approach, a defendant who absconds does not get the clock paused. She remains bound by all conditions of supervised release and can be punished for any violation committed during the absconding period. The term does not freeze. Instead, the Ninth Circuit's rule extends the period of supervised release beyond whatever a judge ordered, for as long as the defendant remains missing. That is not tolling. That is an automatic extension. And it is nowhere in the statute.

The Sentencing Reform Act gives courts detailed, specific tools for dealing with defendants who fail to report. Courts can revoke supervised release. They can send the defendant back to prison. They can impose a new term of supervised release after reimprisonment. They can even revoke after the term expires, as long as a warrant or summons issued beforehand. Congress thought carefully about these mechanisms, set limits on each one, and said nothing about automatic extension for absconding.

Conclusion

The Sentencing Reform Act does not authorize automatically extending a defendant's term of supervised release when she absconds. The Ninth Circuit's rule is an adornment Congress never enacted. Reversed and remanded.

Gorsuch's opinion is a clean textualist exercise. Congress gave courts many tools to address absconders but chose not to include automatic extension. The Court will not add it for them.