Dolan v. United States
The Supreme Court ruled that a sentencing judge who misses the 90-day deadline for finalizing a restitution amount does not lose the power to order restitution later, at least when the judge made clear before the deadline that restitution would be owed and only the exact amount remained undecided.
The decision means crime victims can still recover restitution even when courts are slow to finalize the amount, but it also lets sentences stay open on money questions for months after a defendant is sentenced.
“We hold that a sentencing court that misses the 90-day deadline nonetheless retains the power to order restitution”
The Court's core holding on the effect of missing the restitution deadline.
How it got here: The district court ordered restitution after the statutory 90-day deadline; the Tenth Circuit affirmed; the Supreme Court took the case due to a circuit split.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Brian Dolan pleaded guilty to assaulting someone, causing serious injury. At his sentencing, the judge said restitution was mandatory but there wasn't enough information yet to set an amount, so he left that issue open. More than 90 days later—after Dolan had already been released from prison—the court finally ordered him to pay about $105,000 in restitution.
The question before the Court
If a judge misses the law's 90-day deadline to finalize how much a defendant owes crime victims, can the judge still order restitution later?
Why it matters
Crime victims awaiting restitution won't lose their right to recovery just because a court was slow to calculate the final dollar amount. But defendants may now face restitution orders imposed well after sentencing, sometimes after they've already served their prison time, creating uncertainty about when a criminal case is truly final.
What changes now
The Tenth Circuit's judgment upholding the belated restitution order stands, so Dolan must pay the ordered restitution. The ruling does not resolve every related question — the Court expressly left open issues like when a sentencing judgment becomes final for appeal purposes and how bad-faith delay might be handled. Lower courts will continue applying this deadline as non-absolute in future restitution disputes.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether a sentencing judgment is truly final for appeal purposes until restitution is set, whether courts can indefinitely delay other sentencing terms like fines, or how bad-faith delay by a defendant or the government should be handled. It applies only where the judge made restitution's likelihood clear before the deadline passed.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Roberts
“The rule is that a trial court cannot alter a sentence after the time of sentencing. Section 3664(d)(5) is a limited exception to that rule.”The dissent's central objection that sentences are final once imposed absent a specific statutory exception.
Chief Justice Roberts argued that sentences are final once imposed, and courts have no inherent power to alter them afterward except through narrow exceptions Congress creates, like the 90-day restitution window. Because the district court missed that 90-day window entirely, it lost its limited authority to add restitution at all, just as it would lack power to add extra prison time. He would have reversed, faulting the government for never appealing or seeking timely relief, and warned the majority's approach lets courts fill in sentencing blanks indefinitely.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court identified three categories time limits can fall into: strict jurisdictional deadlines that absolutely bar later action, ordinary claim-processing rules that can be forfeited if not raised, and time-related directives that are legally binding but don't strip an official of power to act late.
- Because the restitution statute doesn't say what happens if the 90-day deadline is missed, the Court applied the presumption that courts won't invent their own automatic penalty for a missed deadline when Congress didn't specify one.
- The Court read the statute's purpose as centered on getting crime victims full compensation, not on giving defendants certainty about timing, so it treated the deadline as directory rather than an absolute cutoff on the court's power.
- The Court drew on its earlier ruling in a bail-hearing case holding that missing a mandatory hearing deadline didn't strip the judicial officer of authority to act later, reasoning that the same logic applied here since the victims, not the defendant, would bear the cost of treating the deadline as an absolute bar.
- The Court concluded that because the defendant knew restitution was coming and knew the likely amount before the deadline passed, he could have pressed for a timely hearing, so allowing the restitution order after the deadline caused him no unfair harm.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Montalvo-Murillo (495 U.S. 711)
The Court relied on this bail-hearing deadline case to support treating the restitution deadline as non-absolute.