Background
Davantae London robbed several Houston-area Walmart stores at gunpoint. Under his plea agreement, the government agreed to dismiss nine counts from the superseding indictment, and London waived his right to appeal his conviction and sentence.
When London nevertheless appealed, the Fifth Circuit granted the government’s motion to dismiss. After the Supreme Court held in Hunter v. United States that an appeal waiver is unenforceable when enforcement would cause a miscarriage of justice, the Court granted London’s certiorari petition, vacated the Fifth Circuit’s judgment, and remanded for reconsideration.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Circuit again enforced London’s appeal waiver and dismissed the appeal. London argued that the district court violated U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3 by ordering his federal sentence to run consecutively to his state sentence, and that enforcing the waiver would therefore cause a miscarriage of justice under Hunter.
The court held that London’s claim was an ordinary challenge to the district court’s application of the Sentencing Guidelines, not the kind of egregious error that threatens the justice system’s basic integrity. Even assuming a Guidelines error occurred, such a standard sentencing-law error could not invalidate the appeal waiver.
Key Takeaways
- After Hunter, an appeal waiver remains enforceable unless enforcing it would produce an egregious miscarriage of justice.
- Potential qualifying errors include a sentence exceeding statutory limits, a blatant constitutional defect, or proceedings lacking minimally civilized procedure.
- A routine claim that the district court misapplied the Sentencing Guidelines does not overcome an otherwise valid appeal waiver.
Why It Matters
The decision shows that Hunter’s miscarriage-of-justice exception is narrow. Defendants who knowingly waive appellate rights generally cannot revive routine Guidelines disputes by characterizing them as miscarriages of justice.
For plea negotiations and sentencing appeals in the Fifth Circuit, the ruling confirms that appeal waivers continue to foreclose ordinary sentencing challenges unless the alleged error implicates the judicial system’s basic integrity.