United States v. McCrone, No. 22-3178 (L) (2d Cir. July 21, 2026) (Walker, Lee, Robinson)

The Second Circuit today struck, on plain-error review, a supervised-release condition requiring the defendant to “continue to take any prescribed medications unless otherwise instructed by the health care provider.” Slip op. at 6. (The condition was a stock sentence embedded in an outpatient mental-health-treatment condition, to which no one objects). In an opinion by Judge Robinson, the panel holds that a compelled-medication requirement implicates a “substantial liberty interest” and cannot stand unless the district court makes medically grounded, on-the-record findings that mandated medication is necessary to a sentencing purpose under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(d)(1) and involves no greater deprivation of liberty than reasonably necessary under § 3583(d)(2).

The Circuit joins the Ninth and Tenth Circuits in so holding. And because nothing in McCrone’s record could support those findings, the panel remanded with instructions to strike the requirement.

Relevant Facts

McCrone pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute methamphetamine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 846, 841(b)(1)(B). At sentencing, counsel and McCrone’s own allocution described childhood abuse, unresolved trauma, and the addiction that followed. McCrone said he wanted to break the cycle and seek treatment.

A clinical psychologist, Dr. Pearson, submitted a report making mental-health diagnoses and recommending therapy, substance-abuse treatment, and further evaluation. Slip op. at 4. But no one asked that McCrone be medicated.

McCrone has no history of mental-health treatment and has never been prescribed psychiatric medication. While he takes prescription drugs for chronic physical conditions, none bear on his offense or rehabilitation.

As noted, Dr. Pearson’s report contains diagnoses but no medication recommendation. And the PSR suggests McCrone may suffer from depression but also says nothing about medication. Nothing suggests that he is incompetent to make his own medical decisions or poses a danger to himself or others when unmedicated. Slip op. at 16–17.

The court agreed treatment was warranted and imposed a below-Guidelines term of 102 months plus five years’ supervised release. Slip op. at 5. Without objection, the court imposed a mental-health treatment condition that included the “take any prescribed medications” language. Slip op. at 7, 9.

The Panel’s Ruling

On appeal, McCrone argued that the medication requirement was imposed without the individualized assessment required for every special condition, see United States v. Robinson, 134 F.4th 104, 111 (2d Cir. 2025); United States v. Jimenez, 175 F.4th 341, 349 (2d Cir. 2026), and that its rationale is not “self-evident in the record,” United States v. McAdam, 165 F.4th 688, 697 (2d Cir. 2026). The panel agreed and concluded that the medication requirement must be struck.

(NB: The panel rejected the government’s waiver argument. Although defense counsel requested mental-health treatment, he did not ask for medication. Slip op. at 13 & n.2.)

Two moves drive the opinion.

First, a defendant has a strong liberty interest against unwanted medication and “the breadth and intrusion of this condition” on that interest was “striking.” It reaches any prescribed medication “without qualification as to the type of medication, the purpose for which it is prescribed, the side effects it may cause, the availability of more effective alternatives or the financial cost.” And it forces McCrone “to choose between complying with his prescribing physician’s unfettered discretion and subjecting himself to the consequences of a violation.” Slip op. at 14.

Drawing on the forced-medication cases, Washington v. Harper, 494 U.S. 210 (1990), and Sell v. United States, 539 U.S. 166 (2003), the panel acknowledged the while no one is medicating McCrone against his will, a condition that threatens revocation if he stops taking “whatever medications he is already taking” “likewise implicates a substantial liberty interest.” Slip op. at 15. (Note: The panel resolved the case on statutory grounds, expressly leaving constitutional questions open. Slip op. at 15 n.3.)

Second, there was “no basis in the record for this imposition on McCrone’s liberty.” Slip op. at 16. A condition burdening that “substantial liberty interest” requires particularized support, and there was none — no evidence that medication played a role in the offense, none that it is pertinent to rehabilitation, and no evidence of noncompliance, incompetence, or dangerousness. “Given this record, it cannot be said that this condition is reasonably related to any of the sentencing goals or that those goals could not have been accomplished by a condition imposing a lesser deprivation of liberty.” Slip op. at 17.

The panel thus aligned the Second Circuit with the Tenth and Ninth Circuits. United States v. Malone, 937 F.3d 1325 (10th Cir. 2019), struck an identical “stock” requirement — also on plain error — as “on its face, . . . an impermissible infringement into a defendant’s significant liberty interests” absent particularized findings. Id. at 1328. The Court agreed with Malone that “a defendant on supervised release has a significant interest in avoiding the involuntary administration of psychotropic drugs.” Slip op at 17 (quoting Malone).

United States v. Williams, 356 F.3d 1045 (9th Cir. 2004), vacated a mandatory-medication condition even though the offense was tied to the defendant’s mental illness and he had a history of refusing psychiatric treatment, because the district court never made the deprivation-of-liberty finding. Id. at 1053. McCrone specifically “agree[d]” with Williams that there must be “on-the-record, medically-grounded findings that court-ordered medication is necessary to accomplish one or more of the factors listed in § 3583(d)(1),” as well as “an explicit finding on the record that the condition ‘involves no greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary.'” Id. at 1057; slip op. 19-20.  And because “we see nothing in the record that could support such findings,” the remedy was excision of the condition, not remand for supplemental findings. Slip op. at 19–20.

Practitioner’s Notes

First, McCrone is now the law of the Circuit and displaces summary orders suggesting otherwise. See Slip op. at 19 n.4. A compelled-medication condition must be supported by two individualized findings: A medically grounded, on-the-record finding that compelled medication is necessary under § 3583(d)(1),  and an explicit no-greater-deprivation-than-necessary finding under § 3583(d)(2).

Second, McCrone leaves room for the condition on different facts than those here. But given “the high magnitude of the defendant’s liberty interest in avoiding mandatory use of antipsychotic medication,” Slip Op. 18, the findings requirement is not a formality. For instance, Williams, vacated the condition even where the offense was linked to mental illness and the defendant had refused treatment.