Rico v. United States

The first thing Gorsuch does is fix the vocabulary. The Ninth Circuit called its rule "tolling," but tolling means stopping the clock. That is not what was happening. Under the Ninth Circuit's approach, a defendant who absconds does not get the clock paused. She remains bound by all conditions of supervised release and can be punished for any violation committed during the absconding period. The term does not freeze. Instead, the Ninth Circuit's rule extends the period of supervised release beyond whatever a judge ordered, for as long as the defendant remains missing. That is not tolling. That is an automatic extension. And it is nowhere in the statute.

The Sentencing Reform Act gives courts detailed, specific tools for dealing with defendants who fail to report. Courts can revoke supervised release. They can send the defendant back to prison. They can impose a new term of supervised release after reimprisonment. They can even revoke after the term expires, as long as a warrant or summons issued beforehand. Congress thought carefully about these mechanisms, set limits on each one, and said nothing about automatic extension for absconding.

The Act already has a real tolling provision, and it looks nothing like the Ninth Circuit's rule. Section 3624(e) says supervised release pauses when the defendant is imprisoned for 30 or more consecutive days. That is narrow, specific, and judge-independent. The Ninth Circuit's rule, by contrast, is automatic, indefinite, and bypasses every limit Congress placed on extensions: no hearing required, no statutory maximum cap, and no expiration date means anything anymore.

Congress also built in a specific extension mechanism. Section 3583(e)(2) lets a court extend a term of supervised release, but only after holding a hearing, only within statutory maximums, and only before the term has already expired. The Ninth Circuit's automatic extension rule ignores all three constraints. Under its approach, no hearing is needed, the term can extend beyond the statutory maximum, and a court-ordered expiration date becomes meaningless. If Congress wanted absconding to automatically extend supervised release, it would have said so, the way it said so for imprisonment.

The government tried three backup arguments. First, it pointed to statutory provisions requiring "observation and direction" by a probation officer, arguing Rico should get no credit for time she was not actually supervised. But those provisions describe the probation officer's duties, not the length of the term. They actually hurt the government's case, since they say supervision occurs only "during the term imposed" by the court.

Second, the government invoked common-law precedent. For centuries, courts have held that an escaped prisoner's time on the run does not count toward discharge of his sentence. But the Court drew a sharp distinction: stopping the clock on a prison escape is not the same as extending a supervised release term. An escaped prisoner is not serving his sentence. A defendant who fails to report is still bound by release conditions and can still be punished for every violation. The Act already provides courts with plenty of tools to ensure defendants do not profit from absconding.

Finally, the government made a policy plea: without automatic extension, probation officers who do not catch an absconder before the term expires may be left without recourse. Gorsuch's answer was blunt. If the government thinks the warrant-or-summons requirement in Section 3583(i) is too demanding, "the proper place to register that complaint is with those who drafted it." The Court is not free to rewrite the statute.