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By Andrew Stanton and Gabe Whisnant
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Justice Samuel Alito broke with the Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Wednesday, filing the lone dissent in a case over whether a federal supervised‑release term can be automatically extended when a defendant absconds.
The court ruled that the law does not allow supervised release to be tolled simply because a person evades authorities, rejecting a Ninth Circuit decision that had allowed prosecutors to treat later crimes as violations after a release term expired. Alito warned that the majority’s interpretation strips courts of a practical enforcement tool and undermines accountability for defendants who flee supervision.
His dissent marked a rare split among conservative justices in a criminal‑law ruling with nationwide implications for federal sentencing and supervision.
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Why It Matters
The court's ruling has significant implications for how lower courts handle defendants who have absconded during supervised release**.**
Rico v. US: What to Know About Supreme Court Case
The case was brought by Isabel Rico, who in 2010 was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to federal drug trafficking charges. She violated her terms of release in January 2017 and was sent back to prison for two months and ordered to serve a 42-month term of supervised release. That term would have expired in June 2021.
Shortly after leaving prison in December 2017, she changed her residence without informing her probation officer, another violation of those terms. A judge issued a warrant for her arrest in May 2018, but federal authorities did not find her until January 2023. During that time, she was arrested on state charges of evading police and driving without a license in January 2021 and charges of possessing illicit drugs for sale in January 2022.
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Both sets of crimes resulted in convictions. The court also held that they constituted violations of her supervised release. Rico appealed the decision, arguing that the court lacked authority to treat the January 2022 offense as a supervised release violation because it occurred after the term expired in January 2021.
The Ninth Circuit Court disagreed with her, ruling that her absconding tolled the clock, so the term would continue until federal authorities caught up with her in June 2023.
In a majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the court agreed to review the case to resolve a circuit split: some circuits hold that a defendant's failure to report automatically extends their supervised release terms, while others disagree. A majority of the court's justices sided with Rico in the Wednesday ruling.
"The Ninth Circuit held that a defendant who absconds during supervised release 'tolls' his existing, judicially ordered term of supervised release until federal authorities find him. This is a misnomer. In legal settings, the word 'toll' often denotes some stop or pause. See Artis v. District of Columbia, 583 U. S. 71, 80–82 (2018)," he wrote.
He continued, "But under the Ninth Circuit’s approach, a defendant who absconds stops or pauses nothing. Rather, he remains subject to the conditions of his supervised release and can be held accountable for any violations he commits during his
abscondment. What the Ninth Circuit’s rule really does is extend the period of supervised release beyond what a judge has ordered."
Why Samuel Alito Dissented From Majority
Alito, a conservative justice, took the opposing view, writing that the case is "much simpler" than the opinion suggests, adding that the court does not need to consider whether her term was tolled when she absconded.
The Sentencing Reform Act "plainly authorized the sentencing judge to consider the January 2022 drug offense," he wrote. Rico's argument should be rejected for two reasons, he wrote.
"First, the Sentencing Commission cannot take away important authority that the Sentencing Reform Act unequivocally gives to district courts. Second, the Sentencing Guidelines, properly read, do not prevent a judge from considering all crimes that a prisoner commits after absconding from supervised release," he wrote.
Alito wrote that he is "bemused by the notion that petitioner was on supervised release when she was evading all supervision" and that it "seems strange to regard a crime committed after the expiration of 'unsupervised supervised release' as a non-event."
"By that logic, if petitioner had gone on a murder spree after the expiration of the period of unsupervised supervised release, the sentencing judge would have been required to put that out of his mind," he wrote.
He said the guidelines are "merely advisory" and the Supreme Court has previously "made it clear that a judge is allowed to impose a sentence outside the recommended Guidelines range when that range 'fails properly to reflect §3553(a) consideration.'"
What People Are Saying
The majority opinion of the Supreme Court concludes: "Because the Sentencing Reform Act does not authorize the rule the Court of Appeals adopted and the government advances, the judgment of the Ninth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion."
Isabel Rico's lawyers wrote in their petition to the Supreme Court: "The Ninth Circuit’s view—shared by the majority of circuits to have addressed the question presented—is wrong. Neither text, history, nor logic supports application of the fugitive-tolling doctrine in the supervised-release context. The Sentencing Reform Act specifically permits tolling of supervision periods under certain circumstances, but is silent on fugitive tolling. And it makes little sense to treat abscondment from supervised release as the equivalent of a prison escape. When a prisoner escapes, there is no sense in which she is still in prison. Yet a supervisee who goes missing is still on supervised release and can be sent back to prison for violations occurring during that period. Indeed, that is exactly what happened to Ms. Rico here—she was sentenced on the premise that she was, simultaneously, both on and off supervised release."
Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a response: "Petitioner contends (Pet. 14-19) that one of three independent bases for revoking her supervised release is invalid because, in her view, courts lack authority to toll a term of supervision when a defendant is a fugitive and, absent tolling, her supervision ended before her third violation. The court of appeals correctly rejected that contention and further review is unwarranted. Although a lopsided disagreement exists among the courts of appeals on the question presented, that disagreement lacks practical significance, as this case illustrates. This Court has repeatedly denied review of this issue despite the existence of a conflict since 2010.1 The same result is warranted here."
Update 3/25/26 11:55 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
Update 3/25/26, 5:25 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
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