Background
In February two thousand twenty-four, Howard Alli Parker pled guilty to multiple firearms offenses, including being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition. During a sentencing hearing in June two thousand twenty-four, the district court sentenced Parker to sixty months in prison and revoked his supervised release, imposing an additional forty-month sentence to run consecutively. The criminal judgment was entered on June twentieth, two thousand twenty-four. Nearly a year later, on May sixteenth, two thousand twenty-five, Parker filed a pro se notice of appeal from the criminal judgment.
The court’s reasoning
In criminal cases, the defendant must file the notice of appeal within fourteen days after the entry of judgment. Although the appeal period is a claim-processing rule rather than a jurisdictional provision, the court must dismiss when the Government promptly invokes the rule in response to a late-filed appeal. Parker filed his notice of appeal nearly a year after the judgment, well beyond the fourteen-day period and the thirty-day extension for excusable neglect. Because Parker failed to file a timely notice or obtain an extension, and the Government promptly invoked the untimeliness, the court granted the motion to dismiss.
What it means going forward
The dismissal bars Parker from appealing the criminal judgment or the supervised release revocation on the merits through this appellate court.
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