Today, in Rico v. United States, 607 U.S. ---, No. 24-1056 (2026), the Supreme Court overruled the Ninth Circuit's rule that a supervisee's abscondment automatically extends a term of supervised release.
Today, most criminal defendants sentenced to federal prison must also serve a term of supervised release. If a defendant on supervised release fails to report to his probation officer, serious consequences can follow. This case poses a question about one of them.Without question, Ms. Rico’s supervised release term was set to expire in June 2021 by court order. But, the Ninth Circuit reasoned, Ms. Rico’s abscondment “tolled” the clock so that her term continued to run until federal authorities caught up with her in 2023. Id., at 3a. As a result, her January 2022 drug offense occurred while she was on supervised release. And because of that, the district court could treat that offense as a violation and revoke her supervised release based upon it.We agreed to review this case to resolve a circuit split. 606 U. S. 930 (2025). Some circuits, like the Ninth, hold that a defendant’s failure to report doesn’t just amount to a punishable supervised release violation but also automatically extends his term of supervised release. Others disagree, taking Ms. Rico’s view that abscondment does not automatically extend a term of supervised release.In approaching this dispute, a preliminary note on terminology is warranted. 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). 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. On its view, an absconding defendant’s term of supervised release does not expire when a court has directed but continues to run so long as the defendant remains out of contact with his probation officer.Whatever the wisdom of a policy like that, we see nothing in the law authorizing it. The Sentencing Reform Act provides courts with many tools to address defendants who fail to report or otherwise violate their supervised release conditions. But automatically extending a term of supervised release is not among them. An array of textual clues proves the point.Look at it this way. When a prisoner escapes, he is in no sense serving his prison sentence. In contrast, when a defendant on supervised release fails to report, everyone agrees he remains bound by the terms of his release. That is why, for failing to report and any other violation he may commit during his judicially ordered term of supervised release, a court may send a defendant to prison and authorize more supervised release yet. §3583(e)(3). The court can do all that, too, even after the defendant’s prescribed term of supervised release expires, so long as a warrant or summons issues beforehand. §3583(i). The Act thus already provides courts with many ways to ensure a defendant does not profit from a supervised release violation. But what the Act does not do is automatically extend the defendant’s period of supervised release beyond what a judge has ordered. And that additional rule is hardly necessary to ensure that a defendant should take “no manner of advantage” from his abscondment.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.
