Reported / Citable
Background
In January 2023, James Kirkwood robbed a Dollar Tree store in San Antonio, Texas, demanding cash from a 71-year-old cashier (A.C.) while displaying what she believed to be a firearm. The cashier’s manager gave Kirkwood $260. Kirkwood pleaded guilty to robbery under 18 U.S.C. § 1951(a) after being apprehended three days later during a second robbery attempt.
A.C. suffered no physical injury but reported severe psychological effects, including insomnia, nightmares, and fear of people (anthropophobia). She abandoned her cashier position and took a lower-paying job as a dishwasher, claiming $8,400 in lost wages. At sentencing, the district court ordered restitution of $8,000 for “lost wages” and alternatively for “mental anguish,” citing the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (MVRA).
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Circuit vacated the restitution award, holding that the MVRA does not authorize restitution for purely psychological harm. The court rejected both bases for the award. First, the MVRA contains no provision authorizing restitution for mental anguish standing alone. Second, the statutory language limiting lost-income restitution to victims who suffered “bodily injury” requires actual physical injury to qualify.
The court interpreted “bodily injury” using its ordinary meaning at the time Congress enacted the MVRA. Every dictionary consulted defined “bodily” as relating to the physical body, not the mind. The court rejected the government’s argument that mental trauma constitutes bodily injury because “the brain is part of the body,” finding this conflates centuries-old philosophical questions about mind-body dualism with statutory interpretation. The law consistently distinguishes physical and mental injuries across various statutes, including the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act.
While the MVRA authorizes restitution for “psychiatric and psychological care” resulting from bodily injury, this language does not create an independent basis for compensating psychological harm. Instead, it applies only when such care is necessitated by an underlying physical injury. Since A.C. suffered no bodily injury, she was ineligible for lost-income restitution under § 3663A(b)(2)(C), regardless of her psychological suffering.
Key Takeaways
- The MVRA’s restitution provisions are limited by statute and require either property loss, bodily injury, death, or investigation/prosecution costs—purely psychological harm falls outside these categories.
- “Bodily injury” has a plain, ordinary meaning referring to physical injury to the body, not mental or emotional injury, despite the brain’s biological nature.
- Lost-income restitution for crime victims is available only when the victim suffered bodily injury; psychological effects alone do not create entitlement to lost-wage compensation under federal law.
- The Fifth Circuit rejected Seventh Circuit precedent (United States v. Breshers) that had found ambiguity in the statutory language, emphasizing unambiguous text requires no reliance on arguably conflicting dictionary definitions or alternative interpretations.
Why It Matters
This decision clarifies an important limitation in federal victim-restitution law. While courts recognize the real harms robbery inflicts on victims—trauma, anxiety, lost employment—the MVRA as currently written does not permit judges to compensate purely psychological injuries. Congress created a statutory regime requiring specific categories of harm (bodily injury, property loss, death) before ordering restitution, and courts lack authority to expand beyond those categories regardless of sympathetic facts.
The decision leaves a gap: victims who suffer genuine, documented psychological harm without accompanying physical injury have no federal restitution remedy under the MVRA. Addressing this gap would require congressional amendment, not judicial expansion of existing statutory language. The holding also resolves uncertainty created by conflicting circuit precedent, with the Fifth Circuit joining a majority of circuits in holding that mental injury alone does not trigger lost-income restitution obligations.