SCOTUS: Appeal waiver unenforceable if it results in miscarriage of justice
Hunter v. United States, USSC No. 24-1063, 6/18/2026, reversing a decision of the 5th Circuit, Scotusblog page (with links to briefs and commentary)
SCOTUS holds that a defendant’s agreement with the government not to appeal a sentence is unenforceable if it would result in a miscarriage of justice that would bring the judicial system into disrepute.
Munson Hunter was charged in federal court with ten counts of bank and wire fraud. He entered a written plea agreement with the government in which he pled guilty to one count and the government agreed to dismiss the other charges provided Hunter waived his right to appeal his conviction and sentence, other than a claim for ineffective assistance of counsel. The district court accepted the plea and sentenced Hunter to 51 months in prison and 3 years of supervised release. Given his history of anxiety and depression, one of the conditions of Hunter’s supervised release required him to participate in mental health treatment and to take any mental health medication prescribed by a treating physician. (Slip op. at pp. 1-3).
Hunter appealed the district court’s condition of supervised release requiring him to comply with prescribed medication because it infringed on his fundamental due process liberty interest to be free from unwanted mental health medication. The government asked to dismiss the appeal based on the appeal waiver, which the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals granted because the circuit’s only exceptions to appeal waivers – ineffective assistance of counsel and a sentence that exceeds the statutory maximum – did not apply. SCOTUS, noting that other circuits do not enforce an appeal waiver if it results in a miscarriage of justice, granted certiorari to resolve the circuit split. (Slip op. at pp. 3-4).
The Court held that an appeal waiver is unenforceable when it would result in a miscarriage of justice, which it considered 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.
SCOTUS explained that, because courts are partly responsible for appeal waivers and their results, the standard for enforcing an appeal waiver implicates the interests of the judiciary. And if courts always enforced waivers, the judicial system’s integrity might be compromised. (Slip op. at p. 9).
Examples of errors that would meet the miscarriage of justice test if an appeal waiver was enforced include a sentence exceeding the statutory maximum; a sentence that is ”infected with a blatant constitutional error,” such as relying on an impermissible factor or imposing a “constitutionally infirm” condition of supervised release; and a sentence imposed without “some minimum of civilized procedure.” (Slip op. at p. 12). The Court did not intend the list to be exhaustive and acknowledge extreme cases are hard to anticipate before they happen. (Slip op. at p. 12).
As for Hunter, the Court remanded the case to the Fifth Circuit to determine whether enforcing his appeal waiver would result in a miscarriage of justice.
The opinion was written by Justice Kagan and joined by all members of the Court other than Justice Thomas.
Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Sotomayor and Justice Jackson, wrote a concurring opinion questioning why a plea agreement containing a prospective appeal waiver should ever be enforced, given that the guilty plea must be knowingly and voluntarily entered and the defendant does not know the sentence that will be imposed when he or she signs a plea agreement. (Gorsuch, J., concurring at pp. 12-14).
Justice Thomas dissented because the Court did not identify any “constitutional text, statute, or Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure that even suggests its miscarriage-of-justice exception. And, it identifies no established common-law or equitable doctrine that resembles it.” (Thomas, J., dissenting at p. 12). Justice Thomas considered the Court’s “so called” supervisory power over lower federal courts the “only conceivable source for the Court’s decision.” However, he concluded this power did not justify a miscarriage-of-justice exception because he is “doubtful that the power exists” and, if it did, would not extend to invalidating provisions of valid plea agreements. (Thomas, J., dissenting at p. 14).
Justice Barrett, responding to Justice Thomas, said in her concurrence that the Court’s decision was not based on its supervisory power, but on longstanding waiver principles developed by procedural common law. (Barrett, J., concurring at p. 1).
The Seventh Circuit’s opinion in Nulf rejecting the miscarriage-of-justice exception for appeal waivers is abrogated by Hunter. Substantively, however, the Seventh Circuit’s appeal waiver principles might not be significantly affected because the exceptions it recognized are similar to the examples of miscarriages of justice the Court provided – an involuntary plea agreement, the sentencing court relying on a constitutionally impermissible factor, ineffective assistance of counsel, or if the sentence exceeded the statutory maximum.