The US Supreme Court held [opinion] on Wednesday that a defendant wishing to appeal a restitution order must file a separate motion from the notice of appeal for the judgment. The ruling came from Manrique v. United States [SCOTUSBlog materials]. In June 2014 Manrique was sentenced to 72 months imprisonment and a life term of supervised release. Although the trial court acknowledge that restitution was necessary, they deferred determining the victim’s damages until they could be properly ascertained. In the interim, the defendant appealed the conviction [transcript, PDF]. The majority found that under Rule 4 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure [LII, text], Manrique’s appeal was not filed in a timely manner. Additionally, the court asserted that according to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 3(a)(1) [LII, text] “will file the notice of appeal after the district court has decided the issue sought to be appealed.” Because the amount had not been decided, Manrique’s appeal of the verdict did not cover the later decided amount of restitution.

Justice Ginsburg dissented on the grounds that “the District Court appears to have assumed that no second notice was required to place the restitution amount before the Court of Appeals.” She contends that under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32(j)(1)(B) [LII, text] that the District Court was required to advise Manrique on his right to appeal the restitution order. She went on to point out that “without awaiting another appeal notice, the District Court clerk transmitted the amended judgment, five days after its entry, to the Court of Appeals, which filed that judgment on the docket of the appeal from the conviction and sentence already pending in that court.” The court’s transmission was “tantamount to” a second appeal notice, she said, and it should allow for Manrique to “include the restitution order in his appeal.”