Justice Notes: Restitution
A White-Collar Journal forum for criminal justice, lived experience, and the personal search for redemption
Editor’s Introduction
Restitution orders often follow defendants long after a prison sentence ends. Sometimes for life. In this essay, Jeff Grant examines Ellingburg v. United States and explains why the Supreme Court’s reasoning may mark a turning point in how courts treat restitution obligations.
Ellingburg v. U.S.: The End of Restitution as a Life Sentence
By Jeff Grant
Founder, White Collar Support Group
Restitution as a Permanent Punishment
For many people convicted of federal crimes, prison is not the most enduring penalty. Long after incarceration ends, restitution obligations can remain—unpaid, unpayable, and unforgiving.
Unlike prison sentences, restitution orders often lack a meaningful endpoint. Interest accrues. Payment schedules extend indefinitely. For some defendants, restitution becomes a de facto life sentence, untethered from rehabilitation, proportionality, or the realities of post-incarceration life.
The question is whether the law truly intended restitution to function this way.
The Case: Ellingburg v. United States
In Ellingburg v. United States, the Supreme Court confronted a seemingly narrow issue with broad implications: whether a restitution order can survive when the underlying conviction or sentence is no longer legally valid.
At its core, the case asked whether restitution is a punishment that must stand or fall with a criminal judgment—or whether it exists independently, immune from later legal correction.
Restitution Is Part of the Sentence
The Court’s reasoning was direct and consequential: restitution is not a civil afterthought. It is part of the criminal sentence itself.
That distinction matters.
If restitution is inseparable from the sentence, then it cannot outlive a sentence that has been vacated, invalidated, or materially altered. In other words, courts cannot preserve restitution orders as standalone obligations when the legal foundation beneath them has collapsed.
This framing challenges years of practice in which restitution was treated as something closer to a permanent debt than a penal sanction.
Why This Matters for Defendants
For white-collar defendants in particular, restitution often dwarfs every other consequence of conviction. Prison terms end. Supervised release expires. But restitution remains—sometimes in amounts that no realistic future earnings could ever satisfy.
The Court’s reasoning in Ellingburg opens the door to a more rational approach:
Restitution must be legally grounded
Restitution must be tied to a valid sentence
Restitution cannot be immune from judicial review
This does not eliminate restitution. But it restores limits.
Finality, Fairness, and the Purpose of Sentencing
The criminal justice system recognizes finality as a core principle. Once a sentence is complete, punishment should not continue indefinitely in a different form.
By reaffirming that restitution is punishment—not merely compensation—the Court implicitly reasserted that restitution must comply with the same constitutional and statutory constraints as incarceration or supervised release.
Punishment without an endpoint is not justice. It is erosion.
What Comes Next
Ellingburg does not automatically erase existing restitution orders. But it provides defendants and courts with a critical analytical tool—one that challenges the assumption that restitution is forever.
For practitioners, advocates, and defendants alike, the decision signals a potential shift away from restitution as a lifetime financial shackle and toward restitution as a component of a lawful, proportionate sentence.
That shift is long overdue.
About the Author
Jeffrey D. Grant, Esq. is the co-founder of the White Collar Support Group™, the world’s first support group devoted to people navigating the white collar criminal justice system and their families. The group held its 500th weekly online meeting in January 2026. He is also the founder of the law firm GrantLaw, PLLC. He is a NYC-based private General Counsel to people with white-collar and other complex situations and transactions throughout the country.
This is an edited and reformatted version of an essay by Jeff Grant, originally published by the White Collar Support Group. The full, unedited article is available here: RESTITUTION AND THE SUPREME COURT
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Sharp analysis of how Ellingburg reframes restitution from permanent debt to sentencing component. The observation that restitution often becomes a de facto life sentence really captures what many defendants experiance, especially in cases where the amounts are functionally unpayable. I've seen this issue come up in bankruptcy contexts where restitution survives discharge but the person has no realistic path to payment. The distinction between punishment and compensation matters alot for how courts should handle modification.