Court docket grants legal case on proper to enchantment

The Supreme Court docket on Friday afternoon added another case to its oral argument docket for the 2025-26 time period. The justices agreed to take up the case of Munson Hunter, a Texas man who pleaded responsible in 2024 to aiding and abetting wire fraud. The court docket will weigh in on points referring to Hunter’s waiver, as a part of his plea settlement, of his proper to enchantment.

At Hunter’s sentencing in 2024, a federal trial choose imposed, regardless of Hunter’s earlier objection, a situation that required him to take any psychological well being drugs prescribed by his docs. The choose additionally informed Hunter that “You will have a proper to enchantment.”

Hunter was sentenced to 51 months in jail, together with three years of supervised launch; he was additionally required to pay greater than $235,000 in restitution.

Hunter appealed the mandatory-medication situation to the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the fifth Circuit, which – pointing to his enchantment waiver – dismissed his enchantment.

Hunter then got here to the Supreme Court docket in April of this yr, asking the justices to review his case. He argued that the fifth Circuit’s dismissal of his case was at odds with rulings by different federal courts of appeals, which permit “defendants to lift a broad vary of constitutional challenges to their sentences.” Furthermore, he added, if his case had been within the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the ninth Circuit as an alternative of the fifth Circuit, he would have been allowed to enchantment as a result of the trial choose informed him that he had a proper to enchantment and the federal government didn’t object.

After contemplating the case at their Sept. 29 convention and once more on Friday, the justices agreed to evaluation Hunter’s case. They are going to doubtless hear arguments someday early subsequent yr, with a choice to comply with by summer time.

Extra orders from the justices’ Oct. 10 convention are anticipated on Tuesday, Oct. 14, at 9:30 a.m. EDT.