Supreme Court says time on the lam counts toward supervised release 

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a criminal defendant’s supervised release can run out even if they spent portions of the term as a fugitive.

In an 8-1 ruling, Justice Neil Gorsuch explained the supervised release period does not pause if a defendant absconds. Instead, the defendant remains subject to the conditions of their supervised release and can be held accountable for any additional violations.

“What the Ninth Circuit’s rule really does is extend the period of supervised release beyond what a judge has ordered,” Gorsuch wrote for the majority. “On its view, an absconding defendant’s term of supervised release does not expire when a court has directed but continues to run so long as the defendant remains out of contact with his probation officer.”

Any logic behind that policy was irrelevant, the Donald Trump appointee said, because the law did not authorize it.

“The Sentencing Reform Act provides courts with many tools to address defendants who fail to report or otherwise violate their supervised release conditions,” Gorsuch wrote. “But automatically extending a term of supervised release is not among them.”

Isabel Rico’s supervised release term for drug offenses ended in June 2021. After she was convicted on additional state drug crimes, however, a court found that her time as a fugitive in 2018 stopped the clock on her supervised release term. Rico was sentenced to over a year in prison under the fugitive tolling doctrine.

Under the legal principle, a defendant’s sentence pauses when they flee or abscond from their probation officers’ supervision.

The government argued Rico and others can’t skirt their sentences by absconding, claiming fugitives shouldn’t be able to ignore the rehabilitative and deterrent goals of supervised release.

Rico countered that such punishments are nowhere in the text of the supervised release statute, arguing that applying tolling allows courts to rewrite the law.

The Supreme Court agreed, finding that the Ninth Circuit’s rule allowed courts to flout the maximum supervised release terms set by Congress.

Under the government’s alternative theory, Gorsuch said Rico shouldn’t get supervised release credit for her abscondment from 2018 until 2023 while also arguing that her offenses committed during that period should be converted from state to federal because of her supervised release term.

“In a very real sense, then, the government asks us to imagine that Ms. Rico was both off and on supervised release at the same time,” Gorsuch said. “Really, it is quite the puzzle.”

Gorsuch said the government wasn’t just ensuring that a defendant didn’t take advantage of abscondment — it was imposing a new punishment by automatically extending their supervised release terms.

“When a prisoner escapes, he is in no sense serving his prison sentence,” Gorsuch wrote. “In contrast, when a defendant on supervised release fails to report, everyone agrees he remains bound by the terms of his release. That is why, for failing to report and any other violation he may commit during his judicially ordered term of supervised release, a court may send a defendant to prison and authorize more supervised release yet.”

Justice Samuel Alito, a George W. Bush appointee, penned a solo dissent, stating that whether the supervised release continued to run while Rico was “on the lam” was pointless. Alito said the Sentencing Reform Act guidelines were advisory, giving the judge leeway to impose a sentence.

“It makes no difference that he started with the 33-to-36-month range and then varied downward to 16 months instead of starting with the lower range of 8 to 14 months and varying upward by 2 months based on the drug crime,” Alito said.

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