District Court Can Come For You Well After You Think It’s Over – Update for July 29, 2025

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

PAY THE MAN, SHIRLEY

In 2014, Mikel Mims was convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.  The district court sentenced her to probation and ordered her to pay $255,620 in restitution.  After Mikey completed probation in 2017, she stopped paying restitution despite her still owing about $200,000.

After all, she was beyond her criminal sentence. The court had nothing to hold over her. Right?

Wrong. Five years later, the district court – acting within Mikey’s original criminal case – ordered her to bring her payments current. Citing the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act and the Federal Debt Collection Procedures Act of 1990, the district court concluded that it still had jurisdiction to enforce restitution in the underlying criminal case. The district court ordered Mike to pay up.

Mikel appealed, arguing that she had completed her probation and that the district court no longer had jurisdiction in her original criminal case to order compliance. She contended that she was off scot-free! Two weeks ago, the 11^th Circuit disagreed.

No one contested that the district court had jurisdiction over Mike’s underlying criminal offense and could order her to pay restitution as part of her criminal judgment. Starting there, the 11^th Circuit applied the ancillary jurisdiction doctrine, which “recognizes federal courts’ jurisdiction over some matters (otherwise beyond their competence) that are incidental to other matters properly before them,” to hold that the district court’s hold on Mikel extended far beyond the end of Mikel’s criminal sentence. 

The ancillary jurisdiction doctrine “enable[s] a court to function successfully, that is, to manage its proceedings, vindicate its authority, and effectuate its decrees,” the Circuit ruled.  “We have historically recognized that district courts have “inherent power to enforce compliance with their lawful orders through civil contempt… Here, the district court lawfully entered the restitution order as part of Mims’s criminal judgment… Accordingly, we conclude that the district court had ancillary jurisdiction to enforce the restitution order it had included in Mims’s criminal sentence via the compliance order.”

The district court can’t impose prison time or extend probation in the criminal case. Rather, its enforcement power is limited to the civil contempt power, but the Circuit nonetheless held that the district court can continue to hold sway over a defendant far beyond the end of supervised release or probation.

United States v. Mims, Case No. 22-13215 (11^th Cir., July 15, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root