Greenlaw v. United States
The Supreme Court ruled that a federal appeals court could not add 15 years to a man's sentence on its own initiative after he appealed, because the government never filed its own appeal or cross-appeal seeking that increase.
The decision reinforces a long-standing rule that appellate courts generally cannot give a party more than that party asked for, protecting the basic idea that courts decide the issues the parties actually bring to them rather than searching out errors on their own.
“In our adversary system, in both civil and criminal cases, in the first instance and on appeal, we follow the principle of party presentation.”
The Court's foundational explanation for why courts generally rely on the parties, not their own initiative, to raise issues.
How it got here: The Eighth Circuit rejected Greenlaw's appeal but on its own raised the sentencing error and ordered a longer sentence; Greenlaw asked the Supreme Court to review that move.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Michael Greenlaw was convicted of drug and gun crimes tied to a Minneapolis gang and sentenced to 442 months in prison. The sentencing judge made a mistake, imposing only a 10-year term on one gun conviction when the law required 25 years, despite the government's objection at the time. Greenlaw appealed, arguing his overall sentence was too long, while the government chose not to appeal or cross-appeal the judge's error.
The question before the Court
Could a federal appeals court, on its own initiative, order a defendant's prison sentence increased when only the defendant had appealed and the government never cross-appealed?
The Court's answer
No — the Supreme Court ruled that the Eighth Circuit had no authority to increase Greenlaw's sentence on its own, because the government never filed its own appeal or cross-appeal seeking that result. The Court relied on the long-standing 'cross-appeal rule,' which prevents an appellate court from giving a party more relief than that party formally asked for, and found nothing in the plain-error rule or the sentencing-appeals statute that overrode it.
The Court also stressed that Congress gave top Justice Department officials, not individual appellate judges, the power to decide whether to pursue a higher sentence on appeal. Because the government's own lawyers chose not to seek that increase, the appeals court could not step in and order it, even though the sentencing error was clear.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Criminal defendants who appeal a sentence they think is too harsh can do so without fear that an appeals court will turn around and make their sentence longer, unless the government itself asks for that outcome through a timely cross-appeal. The ruling also confirms that only top Justice Department officials, not individual prosecutors or judges, decide whether to pursue a higher sentence on appeal.
What changes now
The case returns to the Eighth Circuit for further proceedings consistent with the ruling, meaning Greenlaw's sentence increase cannot stand and his original 442-month term is restored unless some other basis for revisiting it exists. This is a final merits decision, not a temporary order, though it leaves open questions about whether other rare circumstances might ever justify a court raising a sentence without a cross-appeal.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether the cross-appeal rule is a strict jurisdictional limit or merely a rule of practice, nor whether any exception might ever apply outside the sentencing context. It also left open whether correcting errors that hurt a nonappealing defendant, to avoid a later habeas challenge, could be treated differently.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Breyer
Justice Breyer agreed with Justice Alito that the cross-appeal rule is merely a rule of practice, not a firm jurisdictional limit, and would generally leave its application to the discretion of the courts of appeals. But he concluded that the Eighth Circuit abused its discretion here, largely because he saw little justice interest served by keeping Greenlaw in prison an extra 15 years for an error the government chose not to pursue.
Dissent — Justice Alito
“I respectfully dissent because I view the cross-appeal requirement as a rule of appellate practice.”Alito's central disagreement, framing the rule as flexible rather than an absolute limit on judicial power.
Justice Alito argued the cross-appeal rule is a flexible rule of practice, not a jurisdictional bar, and that appellate courts should have discretion to correct even unappealed sentencing errors that seriously prejudice the government, just as they can raise arguments sua sponte. He would have let the courts of appeals decide case-by-case whether correcting such errors is appropriate, and disagreed that the statute governing Justice Department approval of appeals limits judicial authority.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the 'party presentation principle,' the general rule that courts decide only the issues the parties themselves raise rather than searching out other problems on their own, in both civil and criminal cases.
- Central to that principle is the 'cross-appeal rule,' a long-recognized practice that an appellate court cannot grant a win to a party who did not file its own appeal or cross-appeal challenging the outcome below.
- The Court found nothing in the plain-error rule (Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(b), which lets courts fix obvious legal mistakes even if no one objected) suggesting it was meant to override the cross-appeal rule; every prior case correcting a plain error benefited only a party that had itself sought review.
- The Court also rejected the argument that a general statute allowing appellate courts to 'modify' judgments, and the sentencing-appeals statute itself, silently stripped away the cross-appeal requirement, since Congress had written explicit cross-appeal exceptions into earlier sentencing laws but included none in the current one.
- Congress's decision to require top Justice Department officials to personally approve government sentencing appeals showed it wanted those officials, not appellate judges, deciding when to pursue a higher sentence, reinforcing that courts should not act on their own to raise a defendant's sentence.
- Because Greenlaw lost on every argument he raised and the government never appealed, the Court concluded the appeals court had no proper basis to order his sentence increased.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Deal v. United States (508 U. S. 129)
Reaffirmed as controlling law on when a second gun conviction counts as 'second or subsequent' under the statute.
Reaffirms Morley Constr. Co. v. Maryland Casualty Co. (300 U. S. 185)
Reaffirmed the description of the cross-appeal rule as 'inveterate and certain.'
Reaffirms El Paso Natural Gas Co. v. Neztsosie (526 U. S. 473)
Reaffirmed that the cross-appeal rule is firmly entrenched and no exception had ever been recognized.