United States v. Carter, No. 12-10549 (9th Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CaseDefendant was convicted of charges related to his participation in a scheme involving the fraudulent issuance of airline passenger tickets. On appeal, defendant challenged the district court's partial denial of his Motion to Clarify Conditions of Supervised Release and the Amount and Current Status of Restitution. Determining that the district court retained jurisdiction to calculate the amount of restitution owing, the court concluded that, in general, restitution and forfeiture are two separate and distinct parts of a criminal sentence, and a defendant did not have a right to have forfeited funds applied to a restitution obligation or to have the value of the forfeited assets "frozen" at the moment they were turned over to the government. The court also concluded that, because the restitution amount was fulfilled through the forfeited assets, defendant did not have any remaining restitution obligation. Accordingly, defendant's restitution balance has been satisfied and the court reversed the district court's order.
Court Description: Criminal Law. The panel reversed the district court’s order partially denying a criminal defendant’s “Motion to Clarify Conditions of Supervised Release and the Amount and Current Status of Restitution” in a case in which the defendant argued that he is not liable for the remaining restitution balance after the credit of forfeited assets. The panel held that because the district court did not make restitution a component of the defendant’s term of supervised release, 18 U.S.C. § 3583 gave the district court no power to alter the amount of restitution, but that the district court retains jurisdiction to enforce the order of restitution and to calculate the amount of restitution owing. The panel held that in general, restitution and forfeiture are two separate and distinct parts of a criminal sentence, and a defendant does not have a right to have forfeited funds applied to a restitution obligation or have the value of the forfeited assets “frozen” at the moment they were turned over to the government. The panel held, however, that in this case, the district court did not sentence the defendant to pay $505,781.01 as a sum certain for restitution; instead, it sentenced the defendant to pay this amount on the understanding that the amount ordered paid had already been satisfied by the forfeited assets. The panel therefore concluded that because the restitution amount was fulfilled through the forfeited assets, the defendant does not have any remaining restitution obligation. Dissenting, District Judge Zouhary agreed with the majority in every way except that he disagreed with the conclusion that the record clearly demonstrates the district court ordered restitution in whatever amount was recovered from forfeited assets.
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