Defendant Can Seek Enforcement of Oral Sentence Despite Waiver

A criminal defendant who waived his right to challenge his sentence in a plea agreement can nevertheless request that the sentence orally pronounced at his hearing be enforced, rather than an allegedly conflicting sentence in his written judgment, the Seventh Circuit said Friday.

There’s a circuit split on the issue, with the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit joining the Fourth Circuit, saying that Yahtzee Harris’ request wasn’t a challenge to the original sentence, it was “a request for the actual sentence the judge intended.”

But the Fifth Circuit holds that an oral pronouncement and a written judgment ...