Hunter v. United States Revisions: 6/19/26
The Court ruled that a defendant's promise not to appeal his sentence can't be enforced if doing so would leave in place an egregious error that would embarrass the courts -- what the Court calls a 'miscarriage of justice.' It rejected the government's position that any knowing waiver must always be honored, and also rejected a lower-court rule that only let defendants appeal sentences that exceeded the legal maximum.
The case now goes back to the appeals court to decide whether a mandatory-medication condition imposed on the defendant here actually qualifies as that kind of serious error. Because plea deals with appeal waivers cover roughly two-thirds of federal criminal cases, the ruling reshapes a legal tool used constantly across the federal system.
How it got here: Hunter appealed his sentence despite the waiver; the Fifth Circuit dismissed the appeal, and the Supreme Court agreed to resolve a split among appeals courts over when such waivers can be enforced.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Munson Hunter was charged with ten counts of bank and wire fraud after a scheme that cost banks about half a million dollars. He pleaded guilty to one count in exchange for the government dropping the rest, and agreed in writing not to appeal his conviction or sentence. At sentencing, the judge ordered him to take any mental-health medication a doctor might later prescribe while on supervised release, over Hunter's objection that he did not want to be forced to medicate.
The question before the Court
If a defendant signs away his right to appeal his sentence as part of a plea deal, can prosecutors still hold him to that promise no matter how badly the sentencing went wrong?
The Court's answer
No — not always. The Court ruled that a defendant's written promise not to appeal his sentence is enforceable in the ordinary case, but becomes void if enforcing it would produce a "miscarriage of justice": an obvious, egregious sentencing error so serious that ignoring it would embarrass the courts themselves. The Court rejected the government's position that any knowingly signed waiver must always be honored, since that would force courts to let stand things like a sentence based on a defendant's race or one picked by an "orangutan." It also rejected the narrower rule some appeals courts use, which excuses a waiver only when the sentence exceeds the legal maximum.
Instead, the Court adopted the approach most appeals courts already use, setting a genuinely high bar: only egregious, obvious errors — not routine sentencing mistakes — can override a waiver. The Court did not decide whether Hunter's specific complaint, a supervised-release condition requiring him to take prescribed medication, actually meets that bar; it sent that question back to the Fifth Circuit to answer first.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Appeal waivers appear in most federal plea deals, so this decision affects how millions of past and future defendants can challenge their sentences. Defendants now have a narrow but real path to appeal despite signing a waiver, while prosecutors and judges must be more careful that sentences don't cross into egregious territory, since courts of appeals retain a backstop role.
What changes now
Because the Fifth Circuit never analyzed Hunter's mandatory-medication challenge under this new miscarriage-of-justice standard, the Supreme Court sent the case back for that court to decide in the first instance whether enforcing Hunter's waiver here would produce that kind of serious error. This is a final ruling on the legal standard, but Hunter's own case remains unresolved pending the remand.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether Hunter's own medication condition actually qualifies as a miscarriage of justice -- that question goes back to the Fifth Circuit. It also did not resolve broader questions, raised in concurrences, about whether appeal waivers might be invalid altogether as prospective waivers of a statutory right, similar to waivers courts have voided in other contexts.
Concurrences and dissents
How the Justices voted
Majority (8). Justice Kagan (author), joined by Justice Roberts, Justice Alito, Justice Sotomayor, Justice Gorsuch, Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Barrett, and Justice Jackson.
Dissent (1). Justice Thomas (author).
Concurrence — Justice Gorsuch
Justice Gorsuch traced how plea bargaining and appeal waivers grew more coercive over decades with this Court's acquiescence, and argued lower courts should read the new miscarriage-of-justice examples broadly, covering sentences based on improper factors, marred by procedural shortcuts, or unreasonable under existing abuse-of-discretion standards. He also floated a deeper due-process concern: that appeal waivers signed before a sentence is even known may be invalid prospective waivers, much like other statutory-rights waivers this Court has voided.
Concurrence — Justice Kavanaugh
Justice Kavanaugh joined the Court's opinion in full but wrote separately to stress that the miscarriage-of-justice exception sets a genuinely high bar for egregious, obvious errors. He specifically disagreed with Justice Gorsuch's concurrence, suggesting it reads the exception more loosely than the majority opinion intends.
Concurrence — Justice Barrett
Justice Barrett agreed with the result but wanted to clarify its legal basis: she does not read the majority as invoking the Court's disputed 'supervisory power' over lower courts, and instead grounds the decision in longstanding common-law waiver principles holding that some rights cannot be given up even with consent.
Dissent — Justice Thomas
“But, policy concerns are not rules of decision in courts of law.”Thomas's central objection that the majority lacks any legal basis for its new exception.
Justice Thomas argued Hunter knowingly and voluntarily waived his appeal rights in a valid, mutually beneficial plea deal and should be held to it. He contended the majority's miscarriage-of-justice exception has no basis in the Constitution, any statute, or the Federal Rules, and rests only on unmoored policy concerns and a supervisory power he believes the Court does not actually possess. He warned the new rule could flood courts with meritless appeals and undermine the value of waivers as bargaining chips. Read the full dissent →
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court first asked whether the judge's offhand statement that Hunter 'had a right to appeal,' plus the prosecutor's failure to object, had effectively changed the parties' written deal. Because the agreement required any modification to be in writing and signed by both sides, and nothing in the hearing showed the mutual back-and-forth needed to form a new agreement, the waiver stood as originally written.
- The Court also rejected the argument that the government gave up its right to enforce the waiver by staying quiet at sentencing. Giving up a right requires some affirmative signal of abandonment, not mere silence, and the proper moment for the government to invoke the waiver is after a notice of appeal is filed -- not during the sentencing hearing itself.
- Turning to the core question, the Court reasoned that because trial judges must approve any plea deal containing a waiver, and appellate judges alone decide whether to enforce one, the judiciary has its own institutional stake -- separate from the parties' bargain -- in not automatically locking in every sentence, however flawed.
- Based on that institutional interest, the Court rejected both the government's view that a knowing waiver must always be enforced and the narrower view (used by the appeals court below) that only sentences exceeding the legal maximum can still be appealed. Both rules would force courts to let stand results, like a sentence tainted by racial bias or handed down without any real hearing, that would undermine public confidence in the courts.
- The Court instead adopted the standard used by most appeals courts: a waiver is unenforceable only when enforcing it would produce a 'miscarriage of justice' -- an obvious, egregious error, not an ordinary sentencing mistake, that would bring the judicial system into disrepute. It offered examples (statutory-maximum violations, blatant constitutional errors, and sentences imposed without basic fair procedure) as illustrations, not an exhaustive list.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Class v. United States (583 U. S. 174)
The Court followed this earlier case's approach that a party's silence in court doesn't waive its later rights.
Distinguishes Mezzanatto (513 U. S. 196)
The Court used this case's reasoning about institutional harm but did not extend its narrow 'never waivable' holding here.