Supreme Court Limits Enforcement of Appellate Waivers in Cases Involving Miscarriages of Justice
On June 18, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Hunter v. United States, No. 24-1063, that a criminal defendant’s waiver of appellate rights in a plea agreement does not foreclose appellate review when enforcement of the waiver would result in a miscarriage of justice. In an 8-1 decision, the Court emphasized the judiciary’s responsibility to preserve public confidence in the courts, recognizing a narrow but important path for defendants to challenge unlawful sentences notwithstanding an agreement to waive appellate rights.
Background
In the trial court, defendant Munson Hunter entered into a written plea agreement with the government in which he knowingly and voluntarily waived his right to appeal his conviction and sentence. At sentencing, however, the district court imposed a condition of supervised release requiring Hunter to take all mental health medications prescribed by his treating physician, despite Hunter’s specific objection to that condition.
Hunter promptly appealed, arguing the mandatory-medication condition infringed on his fundamental due process liberty interest to be free from unwanted administration of mental health medication. The government sought dismissal of the appeal based on the appellate waiver provision in the plea agreement, and the Fifth Circuit agreed, finding that the waiver prevented appeal—even if the District Court imposed an unconstitutional sentence—so long as the sentence did not exceed the statutory maximum sentence for the offense of conviction and was not the result of ineffective assistance of counsel.
The Supreme Court’s Decision
The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a circuit split concerning the circumstances under which appellate waivers may be enforced in the sentencing context. Most federal appellate courts had recognized an exception where enforcement would result in a miscarriage of justice, while others recognized only narrower grounds for unenforceability.
Before the Supreme Court, the government contended that knowing and voluntary appeal waivers are always enforceable—even in cases where the imposed sentence exceeded statutory maximums or was the result of ineffective assistance of counsel.
The Court rejected that position, as well as the Fifth Circuit’s holding. Instead, it adopted the rule recognized by a majority of appellate courts—that courts may refuse to enforce an appellate waiver where doing so would constitute a “miscarriage of justice,” which it defined as a circumstance where “the sentence is marred by the kind of egregious error that would bring the judicial system into disrepute,” the error is “obvious” and “of the type that would undermine public confidence in the judiciary.” In reaching this holding, the Court emphasized that because appellate waivers are not self-executing, and only given force by an appellate court’s decision to enforce them, courts are partly responsible for appeal waivers and their results, thus implicating the interests of the judiciary. If appellate courts are required to enforce appellate waivers, no matter the kind or degree of error tainting a sentence, the Court observed that the judicial system’s integrity may come into disrepute. Thus, the Court’s decision to recognize the “miscarriage of justice” exception stems from concerns about the judicial system’s interests, not the defendant’s.
In a concurrence, Justice Gorsuch (joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson) observed that “[i]n our times, the jury trial has given way to a conveyor belt of plea bargains” in part because “[w]hen confronted with coercive prosecutorial tactics designed to induce defendant to take plea deals, the Court has often condoned those practices or let them pass in silence.” The concurrence celebrated the fact that, in this case, “the Court begins to correct course” by ruling that “prosecutors may not always leverage their plea-bargaining power to induce a settlement to forego the right to contest his sentence on appeal.”
Justice Gorsuch then described a long history, starting in the Founding era and continuing well into the 20th Century, of criticism of plea bargaining as undermining the fundamental constitutional right to trial by jury, before the Supreme Court’s 1971 decision in Santobello v. New York, 454 U.S. 257, in which the Court proclaimed that plea bargaining was “highly desirable,” “to be encouraged,” and “an essential component of the administration of justice.” The concurrence observed that that opinion, and subsequent developments “have made it easier than ever for prosecutors to cajole defendants into pleading guilty” such that “plea bargaining is not just some adjunct to the criminal justice system, it is the criminal justice system.”
Whether the concurrence is correct that Hunter marks a turning point towards skepticism of plea bargaining remains to be seen.
Looking Ahead
The Hunter decision does not abrogate the use of appellate waivers in plea agreements, but it recognizes a narrow exception. It will now fall to lower courts to define the boundary between routine sentencing errors barred by waiver and the kind of judicial breakdown that warrants appellate review notwithstanding the terms of the plea agreement.
This post is as of the posting date stated above. Sidley Austin LLP assumes no duty to update this post or post about any subsequent developments having a bearing on this post.
