Sentencing in a federal courthouse in New York, Connecticut, or Vermont does not close the case. Every defendant convicted in those districts can take the judgment to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit at Foley Square in Manhattan, where a new set of judges examines what happened below under rules built for error correction rather than retrial.
What follows is our working map of the Second Circuit: the court’s structure, the six district courts it supervises, the white-collar doctrine it has made (and the Supreme Court has unmade), and what the appeal process looks like in practice. Elizabeth Franklin-Best — a Best Lawyers in America 2026 honoree for Appellate Practice whose practice spans more than 100 federal appeals and admission to every one of the twelve circuit courts of appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court — leads that work, and Chambers USA 2026 recognizes the firm in Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations. She served as counsel in this court in United States v. Frias, 102 F.4th 98 (2d Cir. 2024), and the firm appears pro hac vice in federal courts nationwide. You will find this page in our federal courts directory; the procedural deep dive lives at our federal criminal appeals hub.
Whether the conviction came out of the Southern District of New York, a Brooklyn courtroom in the Eastern District, or a district court in Connecticut, Vermont, or upstate New York, our paid, one-hour initial consultation is where we assess the record and identify the appellate issues worth fighting over.
Table of Contents
Quick Answer: Second Circuit Appeals
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What does the Second Circuit cover? | Appeals from the six federal districts of New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, decided at the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, Manhattan. |
| How long do I have to file an appeal? | Rule 4(b) gives a criminal defendant 14 days from entry of judgment — and the Second Circuit recently confirmed this deadline is a claim-processing rule, not jurisdictional. |
| Is an appeal a new trial? | No. Review is confined to the trial-court record and the briefs; the question is legal error, not guilt or innocence retried. |
| Who decides the appeal? | Three judges from the circuit’s 13 judgeships. Full-court rehearing is rarer here than anywhere — the Second Circuit famously disfavors en banc review. |
| Is the firm admitted to the Second Circuit? | Yes. The Second Circuit is among Elizabeth Franklin-Best’s circuit admissions, and white-collar appeals — this court’s signature docket — are the core of our practice. |
Key Takeaways
- The Second Circuit decides federal appeals from New York, Connecticut, and Vermont at the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse on Foley Square, with 13 authorized judgeships under 28 U.S.C. § 44.
- Because SDNY and EDNY charge much of the nation’s securities and financial-fraud docket, Second Circuit precedent dominates white-collar criminal law.
- The Supreme Court reshaped that precedent in Ciminelli and Percoco (2023), striking down two fraud theories born in this circuit — fraud-theory challenges remain live currency on appeal.
- In United States v. Harris (Jan. 2026), the court confirmed the 14-day Rule 4(b) appeal deadline is a forfeitable claim-processing rule, not a jurisdictional bar.
- This is historically the circuit least likely to sit en banc, so the panel decision is almost always the final word from the court.
- United States v. Brooker, 976 F.3d 228 (2d Cir. 2020), made this the first circuit to free district judges from the old compassionate-release policy statement; FY2025 grant rate here: 27.1%, roughly double the 14.1% national figure.
- Six district courts operate within the circuit, each covered by its own guide below.
- We brief and argue Second Circuit appeals through Elizabeth Franklin-Best’s admission to this court, alongside trial and post-conviction work in its districts.
The Second Circuit at a Glance
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reviews the judgments of the federal district courts of New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. Congress has authorized 13 judgeships for the court under 28 U.S.C. § 44, and it hears cases at the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse at 40 Foley Square in lower Manhattan.
No other circuit occupies quite the same position in federal criminal law. Wall Street sits inside its borders, so prosecutions for securities fraud, insider trading, market manipulation, and other complex white-collar offenses flow disproportionately through its district courts and up to Foley Square — alongside the drug, firearms, corruption, and immigration appeals every circuit sees. When the Second Circuit speaks on fraud doctrine or loss calculation, prosecutors and defense lawyers nationwide pay attention.
If your conviction came from any district court in New York, Connecticut, or Vermont, this is the court that will hear the direct appeal — a three-judge panel whose ruling binds every district judge in the circuit. And because the Second Circuit revisits panel decisions en banc less often than any other federal appellate court, the panel’s word is, as a practical matter, usually final short of the Supreme Court.
How a Federal Criminal Appeal Proceeds
Procedure at Foley Square blends the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure with the Second Circuit’s local rules — including a few wrinkles unique to this court, like the Oral Argument Statement each party must file under Local Rule 34.1 within 14 days after the last appellee’s brief.
The notice of appeal comes first: fourteen days from entry of judgment under Rule 4(b). In United States v. Harris (2d Cir. Jan. 14, 2026), the court reaffirmed that this deadline is a claim-processing rule the government can forfeit by sitting on it — a lifeline in rare cases, but never a plan. File on time, every time.
Briefing follows on the assembled record — opening brief, government response, reply. In a circuit whose docket runs heavy with multi-thousand-page financial-crime records, command of the record is the whole game: the loss table, the jury charge, the limiting instructions, the objections that were (or were not) made. We build Second Circuit briefs around those record citations because that is what its judges test arguments against.
Oral argument time is allotted case by case by the clerk under Local Rule 34.1, and counseled criminal appeals are regularly argued before the panel. The decision that follows may affirm, reverse, vacate, or remand. Petitions for rehearing en banc exist here too, but history counsels realism about them — the more productive path after an adverse panel ruling is often a petition for a writ of certiorari, particularly where the panel deepened a circuit split.
Keep the frame in mind: nothing new is tried at Foley Square. Legal rulings are reviewed de novo, fact findings for clear error, evidentiary and sentencing judgments for abuse of discretion, and unpreserved claims only for plain error. Winning means selecting the handful of issues that can clear the standard of review actually assigned to them — the discipline at the heart of our appellate process and grounds-for-appeal guides.
Applied Insight: Twice in one term the Supreme Court reversed fraud convictions built on Second Circuit doctrine — Ciminelli (right-to-control) and Percoco (private-citizen honest services). When this circuit’s expansive fraud theories get tested in Washington, they have a track record of losing. In our experience, that makes a preserved challenge to the government’s legal theory of fraud one of the highest-value issues a Second Circuit appellant can carry — both for the panel and for a later certiorari petition.
The Nation’s White-Collar Appellate Proving Ground
For more than a century, the law of financial crime has been written largely in this circuit. The Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of New York charge an outsized share of the country’s securities-fraud, insider-trading, and market-manipulation cases, and those prosecutions generate the appellate decisions the rest of the country follows. For a defendant, that history cuts both ways: the government’s theories are most developed here, but so is the body of defense-favorable precedent.
The last few years proved the point at the highest level. In Ciminelli v. United States, 598 U.S. 306 (2023), the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the Second Circuit’s long-standing “right to control” theory of wire fraud, holding that depriving a victim of valuable economic information is not, by itself, taking “property.” The same day, Percoco v. United States, 598 U.S. 319 (2023), threw out a jury instruction — also rooted in old Second Circuit case law — that let a private citizen be convicted of honest-services fraud merely for wielding informal influence over government decisions. Two signature doctrines of this circuit, gone in a single morning.
What does that mean for someone appealing a fraud conviction out of SDNY, EDNY, or anywhere else in the circuit? It means the legal theory underlying the conviction deserves as much scrutiny as the trial record. Convictions resting on instructions or indictment language drafted before Ciminelli, Percoco, and Kousisis (2025, on fraudulent-inducement and materiality) may carry challenges worth preserving and pressing — on direct appeal and, where the case is final, through post-conviction channels. Our securities-fraud defense work sits squarely in this territory.
Where the Second Circuit Stands Now
Appeal deadlines. In United States v. Harris (2d Cir. Jan. 14, 2026), the court held the government to its own clock: because Rule 4(b)’s 14-day criminal appeal deadline is a claim-processing rule rather than a jurisdictional bar, the government forfeited its untimeliness objection by failing to raise it when the defect was obvious. Harris also vacated supervised-release conditions that were never pronounced at sentencing — a reminder that in this circuit, discretionary conditions must be adopted on the record, and a judge may not hand the core of that decision to the probation office.
Compassionate release. The Second Circuit moved first. United States v. Brooker, 976 F.3d 228 (2d Cir. 2020), was the first court of appeals decision holding that the old policy statement did not bind district judges deciding prisoner-filed motions under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A) — the ruling that opened the modern era of compassionate release. The landscape has since narrowed: the Sentencing Commission’s amended § 1B1.13 took effect in November 2023, and the Supreme Court’s May 2026 decision in Rutherford bars treating nonretroactive changes in sentencing law as extraordinary and compelling. Even so, the circuit’s district courts granted 27.1% of compassionate-release motions in FY2025 — about the second-highest rate in the nation.
Firearms and the Second Amendment. While the circuits fight over felon-in-possession law after Bruen, the Second Circuit has planted its flag on the government’s side. In Zherka v. Bondi, 140 F.4th 68 (2d Cir. 2025), it held that § 922(g)(1) is constitutional even as applied to a nonviolent felon — reasoning that founding-era legislatures disarmed whole classes of people, so no individualized dangerousness finding is required — even while agreeing that felons remain among “the people” the Second Amendment protects. That squarely rejects the en banc Third Circuit’s contrary as-applied holding in Range. The Supreme Court has not yet resolved that split: in United States v. Hemani, No. 24-1234 (U.S. June 18, 2026), it struck § 922(g)(3)’s ban on possession by an unlawful drug user as applied, while expressly declining to decide the felon-in-possession question that § 922(g)(1) presents — so Zherka still governs in this circuit. Second Amendment challenges in federal firearms cases here must be built for preservation and Supreme Court review, not for the panel.
En banc practice. The Second Circuit’s aversion to full-court rehearing is the stuff of legend — its own judges have written that the court “hears the fewest cases en banc of any circuit by a substantial margin,” a tradition often traced to Judge Learned Hand. United States v. Taylor, 752 F.3d 254 (2d Cir. 2014) (Cabranes, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc). Instead, panels that shift circuit law typically circulate the opinion to all active judges before filing. Strategically, that means the panel stage is everything here, and rehearing petitions are usually a bridge to certiorari rather than a realistic second chance.
Second Circuit Data Worth Knowing
Three numbers tell you a lot about this court. Thirteen: the judgeships Congress has authorized for the circuit under 28 U.S.C. § 44, from which every panel of three is drawn. 27.1%: the share of compassionate-release motions granted by district courts in the circuit during fiscal year 2025 — 32 of 118 decided — against a national figure of 14.1%, per the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s FY2025 data report. Only the Ninth Circuit ran higher. 98%: the share of sentenced federal defendants nationwide who pleaded guilty in fiscal year 2025, which is why so much Second Circuit appellate work concentrates on sentencing — Guidelines loss tables, enhancements, and the reasonableness of the sentence itself.
For defendants weighing their options, the takeaway is practical: in this circuit, sentencing issues and fraud-theory challenges are where appeals are most often won, and a compassionate-release motion on strong medical or family grounds gets a comparatively receptive audience in the district courts. Our guide to the federal direct appeal explains how we evaluate which issues to raise.
District Courts in the Second Circuit
Six federal trial courts feed appeals to Foley Square — two of them, SDNY and EDNY, among the busiest white-collar venues in the country. Our individually researched guide to each:
- District of Connecticut
- Eastern District of New York
- Northern District of New York
- Southern District of New York
- Western District of New York
- District of Vermont
Whatever the district of conviction, the appeal lands in the same Manhattan courthouse. We take federal cases in these six districts from trial through Second Circuit briefing and argument, and we pursue post-conviction relief in the original district when the direct appeal is exhausted.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which states does the Second Circuit cover?
New York, Connecticut, and Vermont — six federal districts in all, including the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. The court decides its cases at the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse at 40 Foley Square in lower Manhattan.
How long do I have to appeal a federal conviction in the Second Circuit?
The Rule 4(b) window is 14 days from entry of judgment. The Second Circuit held in United States v. Harris (January 2026) that the deadline is a claim-processing rule the government can forfeit rather than a jurisdictional bar — but no one should bank on a forfeiture. Treat day 14 as absolute.
Is a federal appeal a second trial?
No. The panel works from the trial record and the briefs alone. Its job is to test the rulings below for legal error under the applicable standard of review — not to second-guess a jury’s view of the witnesses or hear the case over again.
Who decides a Second Circuit appeal?
A panel of three judges drawn from the court’s 13 authorized judgeships. Because this circuit grants rehearing en banc less often than any other, the panel’s decision is effectively the court’s final answer; the next realistic step is a certiorari petition to the Supreme Court.
What can the Second Circuit do with my case?
Affirm, reverse, vacate, or remand — in whole or in part. In financial-crime appeals the court frequently vacates sentences for Guidelines errors even while affirming the conviction, which can mean a substantially different outcome at resentencing.
Why does the Second Circuit matter so much in white-collar cases?
Because SDNY and EDNY charge a huge share of the nation’s securities and financial-fraud prosecutions, this circuit writes much of the country’s fraud law. The Supreme Court reshaped that law in 2023, rejecting the circuit’s right-to-control theory in Ciminelli and its private-citizen honest-services instruction in Percoco — openings that careful appellants can still use.
Is the firm admitted to practice in the Second Circuit?
Yes — Elizabeth Franklin-Best is admitted to this court, as she is to the U.S. Supreme Court and the rest of the federal circuits, and the white-collar appeals that dominate the Second Circuit’s docket are the center of our practice.
Does the firm also handle district court cases in the Second Circuit?
We do — trial-level federal defense in all six districts, including SDNY and EDNY, plus the appeal to Foley Square and any post-conviction litigation that follows in the district of conviction. Each district has its own guide on this site.
How many judges does the Second Circuit Court of Appeals have?
Congress has authorized 13 judgeships for the Second Circuit under 28 U.S.C. § 44. Panels of three decide appeals, and the full court convenes en banc only in genuinely exceptional cases — historically the fewest of any circuit.
How often does the Second Circuit sit en banc?
Almost never. The court’s own judges have described it as hearing the fewest en banc cases of any circuit by a substantial margin, a tradition that reaches back to Judge Learned Hand. Panels that change circuit law usually circulate the opinion to all active judges before filing instead.
How often is compassionate release granted in the Second Circuit?
District courts in the circuit granted 32 of 118 compassionate-release motions decided in fiscal year 2025 — 27.1 percent, roughly double the national rate of 14.1 percent and second only to the Ninth Circuit, per U.S. Sentencing Commission data. Strong medical, age, or family grounds remain essential after Rutherford.
Talk With a Second Circuit Appeals Lawyer
In a circuit where the panel decision is usually the last word and the strongest issues are often buried in a loss calculation or a fraud instruction, early case assessment matters more than anywhere else. Bring us the judgment, the docket, and the sentencing transcript from your New York, Connecticut, or Vermont federal case, and a paid, one-hour initial consultation will tell you honestly what a Second Circuit appeal can and cannot accomplish — while the fourteen-day window is still open.