Court Opinion

ID: 9490023
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:30:46.009887+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:51.512679
License: Public Domain

COHILL, Senior District Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I respectfully dissent from that portion of the opinion in which a majority of the panel holds that Mr. Kuczek’s death by suicide, before his appeal was decided, necessitates the abatement of the restitution order. While United States v. Moehlenkamp, 557 F.2d 126, 128 (7th Cir.1977), states that a conviction can not stand where “death has deprived the accused of his right to appeal our decision,” in this case the accused deprived himself of that right by his own hand. This situation is more analogous to the sce*1553nario in which the appellant in a criminal case becomes a fugitive; in such a case, his appeal is lost. Molinaro v. New Jersey, 396 U.S. 365, 365-366, 90 S.Ct. 498, 498-499, 24 L.Ed.2d 586 (1970). I believe that a narrow exception should be carved out of the general abatement rule where an appellant takes his own life.
I join in the opinion in all other respects.