Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Omar Munoz-Cornelio pleaded guilty in the Northern District of Texas (No. 3:23-CR-159-1) and received a sentence of imprisonment followed by a period of supervised release. As part of his guilty plea, he signed an appeal waiver relinquishing his right “to appeal [his] sentence.”
On appeal to the Fifth Circuit, Munoz-Cornelio challenged certain conditions of his supervised release, arguing that they were never orally pronounced at the sentencing hearing. He did not address the appeal waiver in his opening brief.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Circuit dismissed the appeal without reaching the merits. The per curiam panel held that Munoz-Cornelio’s plea-agreement appeal waiver barred his challenge to the unpronounced supervised-release conditions. Citing United States v. Higgins, 739 F.3d 733, 738–39 (5th Cir. 2014), the court confirmed that an appeal waiver encompasses arguments that the district court’s oral pronouncement omitted certain supervised-release conditions.
The only recognized exception — for a punishment that exceeds the statutory maximum — was neither argued nor applicable here. Because Munoz-Cornelio also failed to address the waiver in his brief, the court declined to consider whether United States v. Diggles, 957 F.3d 551 (5th Cir. 2020) (en banc), had modified Higgins on this point.
Key Takeaways
- A guilty-plea appeal waiver of “the right to appeal [the] sentence” covers claims that supervised-release conditions were not orally pronounced at sentencing.
- The statutory-maximum exception to appeal waivers is narrow; routine omissions from oral pronouncement do not trigger it.
- Failure to address an appeal waiver in the opening brief forfeits any argument that an en banc precedent (Diggles) may have narrowed the waiver’s scope.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces that broadly worded appeal waivers in plea agreements are highly effective barriers to post-sentencing challenges, even when a defendant raises a potentially meritorious procedural objection — such as conditions of supervised release that were never spoken aloud at the sentencing hearing. Defense counsel should scrutinize appeal-waiver language at the plea stage, as courts will enforce these waivers without reaching underlying sentencing errors.
The court’s reservation of the Diggles question also signals that the interaction between that en banc ruling and Higgins on appeal waivers remains unsettled in the Fifth Circuit, leaving room for future litigation where a defendant properly preserves the issue.