Matthew Cavedon
In 1995, when petitioner Holsey Ellingburg, Jr., robbed a bank, federal criminal restitution was governed by the Victim and Witness Protection Act (VWPA). The VWPA provided that a defendant’s liability to pay restitution ended twenty years after the entry of judgment. Then, in 1996, Congress enacted the Mandatory Victim Restitution Act (MVRA), which extended the liability period to twenty years after a defendant’s release from imprisonment and required that restitution include interest. The MVRA’s drafters apparently anticipated the possibility that its retroactive application might violate the Constitution’s Ex Post Facto Clause: Congress explicitly made the Act retroactive only “to the extent constitutionally permissible.”