Appealing § 3605 Transfers

In United States v. Sastrom, the First Circuit held that it could review a supervised-release order despite the transfer of a criminal defendant’s case to another, out-of-circuit district. The transfer in Sastrom was under 18 U.S.C. § 3605. And the First Circuit treated this transfer the same as those under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a): so long as the appeal comes before the transfer is docketed, appellate jurisdiction exists.

The Underlying Decision in Sastrom

Simplifying only a little bit, Sastrom stemmed from a criminal conviction in the District of Massachusetts. Before the defendant was convicted, he was subject to a civil-commitment order in Connecticut. So shortly before the defendant’s release from custody, the district court imposed a supervised-release condition that required the defendant to report to a hospital in Connecticut.

The defendant was subsequently released, and he reported to the Connecticut hospital. He also sought to appeal the district court’s supervised-release order to the First Circuit.

The § 3605 Transfer & Statutory Jurisdiction

But there was a problem. After he filed his notice of appeal, the District of Massachusetts transferred his case to the District of Connecticut under 18 U.S.C. § 3605. That provision authorizes a district court to “transfer jurisdiction over a probationer or person on supervised release to the district court for any other district to which the person is required to proceed as a condition of his probation or release.” The receiving court is then “authorized to exercise all powers over the probationer or releasee.”

This transfer created a potential jurisdictional hiccup. 28 U.S.C. § 1294(1) provides that appeals from a district court must be taken “to the court of appeals for the circuit embracing the district.” Under § 1294(1), only the First Circuit has jurisdiction to review decisions from the District of Massachusetts. But after the transfer to the District of Connecticut, any appeal would go to the Second Circuit. And that court would not be able to review the Massachusetts district court’s decisions.

Treating Transfers Similarly

The First Circuit held that it could review the supervised-release order despite the transfer.

The court had reached the same conclusion in the context of transfers under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a). In the § 1404(a) context, the First Circuit had noted that (because of § 1294(1)) “the appellant’s right to appeal a pre-transfer interlocutory order could only be realized in the First Circuit.” (Quotation marks omitted.) And so long as “the relevant appeal was filed before the case was docketed by the transferee court, [the First Circuit] had already acquired appellate jurisdiction before the transfer was effective, and jurisdiction was not terminated by the subsequent transfer.” (Quotation marks omitted.)

The First Circuit saw no reason to treat transfers under § 3605 differently. The defendant’s “right to appeal the challenged order [could] be realized only by [the First Circuit’s] review, because the language of 28 U.S.C. § 1294(1) does not permit a Massachusetts district court order to be reviewed by a circuit not embracing the district.” And the First Circuit had acquired jurisdiction before the transfer was docketed in Connecticut.

United States v. Sastrom, 2024 WL 1130284 (1st Cir. Mar. 15, 2024), available at the First Circuit and Westlaw