[DO NOT PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

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No. 17-14049

Non-Argument Calendar

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D.C. Docket No. 1:95-cr-00114-FAM-3

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

 Plaintiff - Appellee,

 versus

ANTONIO ROSELLO, 

a.k.a. Antonio Rosello Herrero, 

 Defendant - Appellant.

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Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Florida

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(June 4, 2018)

Before WILLIAM PRYOR, MARTIN and JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM: 

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Antonio Rosello, a federal prisoner, appeals the denial of his motion to 

terminate restitution ordered as part of his criminal judgment. The district court 

ruled that the Victim and Witness Protection Act, as amended by “the Mandatory 

Victim Restitution Act[, 18 U.S.C. § 3613(b) (1996),] extends [Rosello’s] liability 

to pay [his] restitution judgment for 20 years after [his] release from 

imprisonment” and that his “restitution judgment has not expired because [he] 

remains incarcerated.” Rosello argues that applying amended section 3613(b) to 

crimes he committed in 1994 violates the Ex Post Facto Clause of Article I, 

Section 9, clause 3 of the United States Constitution. Because the application of 

amended section 3613(b) does not “increas[e] the measure of punishment . . . [for 

Rosello’s] crimes,” California Dep't of Corr. v. Morales, 514 U.S. 499, 509

(1995), we affirm the denial of his motion to terminate restitution.

In June 1996, a jury found that Rosello committed six crimes related to his 

robberies of armored cars between July 1992 and November 1994. In August 1996, 

the district court sentenced Rosello to 45 years of imprisonment and ordered him to 

pay $1,218,000 in restitution. We affirmed Rosello’s convictions and sentence. 

United States v. Rosello, 250 F.3d 746 (11th Cir. 2001) (unpublished table

decision).

We “review ex post facto challenges de novo.” United States v. Muench, 

153 F.3d 1298, 1300 (11th Cir. 1998).

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Effective April 24, 1996, Congress extended the period in which criminal 

defendants remain liable to pay restitution. Before the amendment, the Victim 

Protection Act provided that an order of restitution became unenforceable “twenty 

years after the entry of the judgment” or when the defendant died. 18 U.S.C. 

§ 3613(b) (1994). Before Rosello’s trial, Congress passed the Mandatory 

Restitution Act, which amended the Victim Protection Act to provide that “liability 

to pay restitution shall terminate on the date that is the later of 20 years from the 

entry of judgment or 20 years after the release from imprisonment of the person 

ordered to pay restitution.” Id. § 3613(b) (1996). Congress made the amendment 

“effective for sentencing proceedings in cases in which the defendant is convicted 

on or after [April 24, 1996].” Victim Restitution Act of 1995, Pub.L. No. 104–132, 

§ 211, 110 Stat. 1214.

Article I, Section 9, clause 3 of the United States Constitution states, “No . . . 

ex post facto law shall be passed.” The Ex Post Facto Clause prohibits Congress 

from enacting a law that “appl[ies] to events occurring before its enactment . . . 

[and] disadvantage[s] the offender affected by it[.]” Lynce v. Mathis, 519 U.S. 433, 

441 (1997) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). An “ex post facto 

inquiry . . . [focuses] not on whether a legislative change produces some 

ambiguous sort of ‘disadvantage,’ . . . but on whether any such change alters the 

definition of criminal conduct or increases the penalty by which a crime is 

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punishable.” Morales, 514 U.S. at 506 n.3. The Clause does not “forbid[] any 

legislative change that has any conceivable risk of affecting a prisoner’s 

punishment.” Id. at 508. Instead, the Clause prohibits only those retroactively 

applied laws that “produce[] a sufficient risk of increasing the measure of 

punishment attached to the covered crimes,” id. at 509, or affects “the quantum of 

punishment” imposed, Dobbert v. Fla., 432 U.S. 282, 294 (1977). That prohibition 

“operates not to protect an individual’s right to less punishment, but rather as a 

means of assuring that an individual will receive fair warning of criminal statutes 

and the punishments they carry.” Hock v. Singletary, 41 F.3d 1470, 1472 (11th Cir. 

1995) (citing Dobbert, 432 U.S. at 298, and Weaver v. Graham, 450 U.S. 24, 28–

30 (1981)).

The continued enforcement of Rosello’s judgment of restitution under 

amended section 3613(b) does not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. Amended 

section 3613(b) does not retroactively increase Rosello’s sentence. The amended 

statute merely extends the span of time in which Rosello’s victims can collect 

restitution from him. And the application of amended section 3613(b) did not 

“compromise . . . [Rosello’s] right to receive fair notice of the punishment his 

offense carries.” Id. at 1473. The extension of the collection period has no effect on 

the amount of restitution that Rosello owes. “His punishment remains what it was 

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when he committed the offense, at which time he had received fair notice of the 

crime and the punishment it carries.” Id.

The prolongment of the period to collect restitution is like the extension of 

the statute of limitation to prosecute a criminal charge, which we long have held 

does not infringe the Ex Post Facto Clause, see United States v. De La Mata, 266 

F.3d 1275, 1286 (11th Cir. 2001); United States v. Grimes, 142 F.3d 1342, 1351 

(11th Cir. 1998). Even if a “change in the law obviously ha[s] a detrimental impact 

upon the defendant, . . . the law [is] not ex post facto . . . [unless the law] ma[kes]

criminal a theretofore innocent act, . . . aggravate[s] a crime previously committed, 

. . . provide[s] greater punishment, []or change[s] the proof necessary to convict.” 

Dobbert, 432 U.S. at 293. None of these concerns are implicated in an extension of 

the statute of limitation. De La Mata, 266 F.3d at 1286. Extending the period in 

which a defendant remains obligated to pay restitution likewise does not alter the 

definition of his criminal conduct or increase his punishment. 

Rosello argues that United States v. Seigel, 153 F.3d 1256 (11th Cir. 1996), 

bars the district court from applying amended section 3613(b) to him, but Rosello 

interprets Seigel too broadly. No doubt, Seigel “h[e]ld that the M[andatory] 

V[ictims] R[estitution] A[ct] cannot be applied to a person whose criminal conduct 

occurred prior to April 24, 1996.” Id. at 1260. But “judicial decisions cannot make 

law beyond the facts of the cases in which those decisions are announced.” Pretka 

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v. Kolter City Plaza II, Inc., 608 F.3d 744, 762 (11th Cir. 2010). Seigel addressed 

whether the Ex Post Facto Clause prohibited the retroactive application of 

amendments to the Victim Protection Act that made restitution in the full amount 

of each victim’s losses mandatory, 18 U.S.C. § 3664(f)(1)(A) (1996), and 

eliminated the discretion previously given to the district court to determine whether 

and how much restitution to award, see id. § 3664(a) (1985). 153 F.3d at 1258–60.

The Court in Seigel concluded that the amended provision constituted an ex post 

facto law because amended section 3664 had the potential to increase the amount 

of restitution owed. Id. at 1260 (discussing United States v. Baggett, 153 F.3d 

1319, 1322 (9th Cir. 1997)). Unlike amended section 3664, amended section 

3613(b) creates no “risk of increasing the measure of punishment,” Morales, 514 

U.S. at 509, that would violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. See United States v. 

Blackwell, 852 F.3d 1164, 1166 (9th Cir. 2017) (rejecting an Ex Post Facto 

challenge to amended section 3613(b)).

The district court did not err by denying Rosello’s motion to terminate.

“[T]he ex post facto clause does not extend to every change which may work to a 

defendant’s disadvantage . . . .” Dufresne v. Baer, 744 F.2d 1543, 1549 (11th Cir. 

1984). Because an extension of the period to collect restitution does not “increase[]

the penalty by which a crime is punishable,” Morales, 514 U.S. at 506, the 

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retroactive application of amended section 3613(b) to Rosello does not violate the 

constitutional prohibition against ex post facto laws.

We AFFIRM the denial of Rosello’s motion to terminate restitution.

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