Opinion ID: 765684
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The Appeals from Preliminary Forfeiture Orders

Text: 38 Two days after the jury's verdict in the primary criminal trial, the district court tried the government's criminal RICO forfeiture charges to the jury, which returned a verdict forfeiting defendants' interests in the RICO enterprise companies and their proceeds from racketeering activities. Nine to twelve months later, the court issued a series of Preliminary Forfeiture Orders based on the jury's forfeiture verdict. Riley and Coon appeal the sufficiency of the evidence underlying those orders, referring to them as forfeiture judgments. Rule 32(d)(2) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, adopted in 1996, provides that the district court may enter a preliminary order of forfeiture following a verdict that property is subject to forfeiture. In such cases, [a]t sentencing, a final order of forfeiture shall be made part of the sentence and included in the judgment. When that is done, and defendant appeals from the judgment, prior case law would suggest that the preliminary order of forfeiture is an appealable part of the judgment. See, e. g., United States v. Pelullo, 1999 WL 330422, at  (3d Cir. May 25, 1999); United States v. Christunas, 126 F.3d 765, 768-69 & n. 1 (6th Cir. 1997). In this case, however, the judgments in defendants' criminal cases do not refer either to the jury's forfeiture verdict or to any preliminary forfeiture order. The preliminary forfeiture orders themselves are not judgments, and they do not purport to be final orders. As defendants and the government have neither provided us with final orders in the bifurcated forfeiture proceedings, nor explained why the preliminary forfeiture orders are appealable, we dismiss this portion of the appeals for lack of jurisdiction. See United States v. Casas, 999 F.2d 1225, 1231-32 (8th Cir. 1993), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 1078 (1994).