Heidi Cid v. United States

In Honeycutt v. United States, 581 U.S. 443 (2017), this Court held that the word “obtained” in the criminal-forfeiture statute, 21 U.S.C. § 853(a), limits forfeiture to property the defendant actually acquired and forecloses joint-and-several liability for proceeds that his co-conspirators obtained. The operative language of 18 U.S.C. § 982(a)(2)(A)—the statute under which petitioner was ordered to forfeit “proceeds the person obtained directly or indirectly”—is identical. The district court ordered petitioner to forfeit $6,554,250 on the express ground that the sum represented “approximately forty-five percent of the total proceeds the Defendant jointly obtained with her co-conspirators.” Pet. App. 4a & n.1. The Eleventh Circuit dismissed petitioner’s appeal without reaching that question, enforcing the appeal waiver in her plea agreement under a categorical rule this Court recently abrogated in Hunter v. United States, 608 U.S. ___, 146 S. Ct. 1702 (2026). The question presented is: Whether, in light of Hunter, an appeal waiver may be enforced to bar review of a criminal forfeiture order imposing joint-and-several liability for proceeds the defendant did not obtain—a form of forfeiture that 18 U.S.C. § 982(a)(2)(A), as construed in Honeycutt v. United States, does not authorize.