RJO Attorneys Publish Law360 Article on Supreme Court Plea Waiver Ruling
Rogers Joseph O’Donnell, PC shareholders Gregory P. Rosen and Lauren Kramer Sujeeth, along with of counsel William G. Hart, published a Law360 article examining the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Hunter v. United States and its implications for plea and appeal waivers. The Court held that an agreement not to appeal a sentence is unenforceable if doing so would result in a “miscarriage of justice,” adopting a standard already used by a majority of federal circuits.
The authors write that while the 8-1 ruling itself changes little day-to-day, competing concurrences from Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh expose a deeper divide over how far the miscarriage-of-justice exception should extend. They note that Gorsuch’s concurrence, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, reads the majority’s examples as an invitation to challenge a broader range of sentencing errors, while Kavanaugh’s concurrence, joined by Justices Alito and Barrett, works to keep the exception narrow.
Looking ahead, the authors point to collateral-review waivers under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 as the next likely battleground, along with a possible future cert petition testing whether prospective appeal waivers are per se invalid. They also flag the Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules as a body to watch for a possible amended Rule 11 colloquy.
Rosen is a shareholder in RJO’s White-Collar Criminal Defense Practice Group and a former federal prosecutor who handles False Claims Act matters, government contracts fraud and complex financial and regulatory investigations.
Sujeeth chairs the White-Collar Criminal Defense Practice Group and represents individuals and companies in criminal and regulatory matters involving public corruption, fraud and cryptocurrency claims.
Hart is of counsel in the practice group and previously served in the Fraud, Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.