Rule 35 Motions

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

---

What is a Rule 35 motion?

Rule 35 has two parts. Rule 35(a) lets the district court correct a sentence “resulting from arithmetical, technical, or other clear error” within 14 days after sentencing — which Rule 35(c) defines as “the oral announcement of the sentence.” Rule 35(b) lets the court reduce a sentence for substantial assistance provided after sentencing, but only “[u]pon the government’s motion,” ordinarily within one year.

Key takeaways on Rule 35 motions

• 14 days, from the judge’s spoken words. Rule 35(a) and Rule 35(c). Not from entry of the written judgment.
• The clock runs against the court’s action, not your filing. The Third Circuit: “the time-limit applies to the district court’s action rather than to the party’s motion” — United States v. Higgs, 504 F.3d 456, 458 (3d Cir. 2007).
• It cannot be extended. Fed. R. Crim. P. 45(b)(2): “The court may not extend the time to take any action under Rule 35, except as stated in that rule.”
• Rule 35(a) is for errors, not for second thoughts. It does not authorize a court “to reconsider the application or interpretation of the sentencing guidelines or … simply to change its mind about the appropriateness of the sentence” — United States v. Melvin, 105 F.4th 620 (4th Cir. 2024).
• Rule 35(b) belongs to the government. A defendant cannot file one.
• Rule 35(b)(4) reaches a statutory minimum. “When acting under Rule 35(b), the court may reduce the sentence to a level below the minimum sentence established by statute.” That is authority § 5K1.1 does not have.
• One year is the default, with three exceptions in Rule 35(b)(2).
• If the 14 days have gone, other doors remain — direct appeal, § 3582(c), and § 2255.

The rule, in full

Fed. R. Crim. P. 35:

“(a) Correcting Clear Error. Within 14 days after sentencing, the court may correct a sentence that resulted from arithmetical, technical, or other clear error.

(b) Reducing a Sentence for Substantial Assistance. (1) In General. Upon the government’s motion made within one year of sentencing, the court may reduce a sentence if the defendant, after sentencing, provided substantial assistance in investigating or prosecuting another person. (2) Later Motion. Upon the government’s motion made more than one year after sentencing, the court may reduce a sentence if the defendant’s substantial assistance involved: (A) information not known to the defendant until one year or more after sentencing; (B) information provided by the defendant to the government within one year of sentencing, but which did not become useful to the government until more than one year after sentencing; or (C) information the usefulness of which could not reasonably have been anticipated by the defendant until more than one year after sentencing and which was promptly provided to the government after its usefulness was reasonably apparent to the defendant. (3) Evaluating Substantial Assistance. In evaluating whether the defendant has provided substantial assistance, the court may consider the defendant’s presentence assistance. (4) Below Statutory Minimum. When acting under Rule 35(b), the court may reduce the sentence to a level below the minimum sentence established by statute.

(c) ‘Sentencing’ Defined. As used in this rule, ‘sentencing’ means the oral announcement of the sentence.”

Rule 35(a): the fourteen days

When the clock starts

Rule 35(c) is one sentence and it decides everything: “As used in this rule, ‘sentencing’ means the oral announcement of the sentence.”

The Fourth Circuit put it plainly in United States v. Melvin, 105 F.4th 620 (4th Cir. 2024): “By defining the term ‘sentencing,’ Rule 35(c) merely clarifies that the time period to correct a sentence begins on the date the sentence is orally announced in court, rather than the date it is memorialized in a written judgment.”

Why this matters so much in practice. In most districts the written judgment is entered days after the sentencing hearing — sometimes because of a court reporter’s schedule, sometimes because of the clerk’s queue, sometimes because the judgment form is being reconciled with the statement of reasons. A defendant taken into custody at the hearing may not see the judgment for a week or more. If the fourteen days are counted from that document, several of them are already gone.

Write down the date of the hearing. Not the date on the judgment. The date the judge said the number out loud.

How the fourteen days are counted

Fed. R. Crim. P. 45(a)(1) supplies the arithmetic:

“(A) exclude the day of the event that triggers the period; (B) count every day, including intermediate Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays; and (C) include the last day of the period, but if the last day is a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday, the period continues to run until the end of the next day that is not a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday.”

So: the day of the hearing is day zero. Weekends and holidays count. If day fourteen lands on a weekend or a legal holiday, it rolls to the next business day. Rule 45(a)(5) defines the legal holidays, and Rule 45(a)(4) sets the end of the last day — “for electronic filing, at midnight in the court’s time zone; and for filing by other means, when the clerk’s office is scheduled to close.”

The fourteen days cannot be extended

Rule 45(b)(2): “The court may not extend the time to take any action under Rule 35, except as stated in that rule.”

There is no good-cause extension, no excusable-neglect relief, and no stipulation between the parties that will do it. The Rules Committee wrote the prohibition into the extension rule itself.

The trap inside the trap: the clock runs against the court

This is the part that catches lawyers, not just defendants.

Rule 35(a) says “the court may correct a sentence” within 14 days. It does not say a party may move within 14 days. Several circuits have read that literally.

The Third Circuit, in United States v. Higgs, 504 F.3d 456, 458 (3d Cir. 2007), held that “the time-limit applies to the district court’s action rather than to the party’s motion” — and consequently that a district court lacks jurisdiction to amend a sentence after the fourteenth day even where a motion was filed inside it. That reading has been applied in the district courts within the circuit, including in United States v. Scott, No. 1:99-cr-00033 (D. Del. Nov. 6, 2019).

The practical instruction that follows. A Rule 35(a) motion filed on day twelve or thirteen is not a filing that preserves anything. It is a request that the court is being asked to grant within a day or two. If a clear error needs correcting, it should be raised immediately — ideally at the hearing itself, or in a filing within the first few days, with a request that the court act promptly and an express reference to the Rule 35(a) deadline.

Is the deadline jurisdictional?

In several circuits, yes. The Second Circuit (United States v. Abreu-Cabrera, applied in United States v. Sarvestani, 297 F.R.D. 228, 229 (S.D.N.Y. 2014)), the Third Circuit (Higgs), and the Sixth Circuit (United States v. Hall, 661 F.3d 320, 322 (6th Cir. 2011)) have all described the fourteen-day limit as jurisdictional, meaning the district court simply loses the power to act.

There is a contrary argument. At least one district court has held that Rule 35(a)’s limit is a non-jurisdictional claims-processing rule, reasoning from Boechler, P.C. v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 142 S. Ct. 1493 (2022), that “procedural requirements like Rule 35(a) should only be treated as jurisdictional if there is clear statutory intent that it should be treated as such.” See United States v. Johnson, No. 19-cr-0052 (D.D.C. July 14, 2022).

How to treat that in practice. As jurisdictional. The circuits that have addressed it directly say so, and no defendant should plan on a district judge in their circuit adopting the minority view.

What counts as “arithmetical, technical, or other clear error”

The rule is narrow by design. The First Circuit quoted the Advisory Committee’s own description in United States v. Gonzalez-Rodriguez, 777 F.3d 37 (1st Cir. 2015):

“The authority to correct a sentence under [Rule 35(a)] is intended to be very narrow and to extend only to those cases in which an obvious error or mistake has occurred in the sentence . . . . The subdivision is not intended to afford the court the opportunity . . . simply to change its mind about the appropriateness of the sentence.”

And Melvin, 105 F.4th 620 (4th Cir. 2024): Rule 35(a) “does not authorize the court ‘to reconsider the application or interpretation of the sentencing guidelines or . . . simply to change its mind about the appropriateness of the sentence.'”

Ordinarily within Rule 35(a)	Ordinarily outside Rule 35(a)
An arithmetical mistake in adding or subtracting offense levels	A disagreement about whether an enhancement should have applied
A sentence announced in a term the statute does not permit	A request to reconsider the § 3553(a) weighing
A term of supervised release exceeding the statutory maximum	A guideline interpretation the court got wrong but decided deliberately
A clerical mismatch between the oral pronouncement and what was intended	New mitigation evidence discovered after sentencing
An obvious omission — a count left unsentenced, a credit plainly required	A change of heart by the court or a change of circumstances

Note also that a purely clerical discrepancy between the oral pronouncement and the written judgment is normally corrected under Fed. R. Crim. P. 36, which has no time limit, rather than under Rule 35(a). Where the two documents differ in substance, the oral pronouncement generally controls — which is another reason the transcript matters.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: The firm treats the sentencing hearing itself as the first Rule 35(a) opportunity, not the fourteen days afterwards. If a number is wrong when the judge says it, the moment to say so is before anyone leaves the courtroom, on the record. Everything after that is a race against a clock that cannot be extended, run against a court’s calendar rather than the defendant’s filing. Where a post-hearing correction is genuinely necessary, the filing should be captioned to make the deadline obvious on its face and should ask the court to act by a stated date.

The two 14-day clocks, and how they interact

There are two fourteen-day periods running immediately after a federal sentencing, they start on different days, and they are commonly confused.

	Rule 35(a) correction	Notice of appeal
Length	14 days	14 days
Starts from	The oral announcement of the sentence (Rule 35(c))	Entry of the judgment (Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(1)(A))
Who must act	The court must act within the period, in several circuits	The defendant must file within the period
Extendable?	No — Fed. R. Crim. P. 45(b)(2)	Yes, in limited circumstances — see below
What it produces	A corrected sentence	Appellate review

Because the written judgment is entered after the hearing, the Rule 35(a) clock generally expires before the appeal clock does. A defendant who waits for the judgment to arrive before doing anything will usually have lost Rule 35(a) and kept the appeal.

Three provisions of Fed. R. App. P. 4(b) matter here and are worth quoting.

A premature notice of appeal is saved. “A notice of appeal filed after the court announces a decision, sentence, or order—but before the entry of the judgment or order—is treated as filed on the date of and after the entry.” So a notice filed on the day of the hearing is effective.

The appeal deadline can sometimes be extended. “Upon a finding of excusable neglect or good cause, the district court may—before or after the time has expired, with or without motion and notice—extend the time to file a notice of appeal for a period not to exceed 30 days from the expiration of the time otherwise prescribed by this Rule 4(b).” Note that no equivalent relief exists for Rule 35(a).

And the two proceedings do not cancel each other out. “The filing of a notice of appeal under this Rule 4(b) does not divest a district court of jurisdiction to correct a sentence under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 35(a), nor does the filing of a motion under 35(a) affect the validity of a notice of appeal filed before entry of the order disposing of the motion.” Critically: “The filing of a motion under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 35(a) does not suspend the time for filing a notice of appeal from a judgment of conviction.”

That last sentence has cost people their appeals. A Rule 35(a) motion does not buy time. If both remedies are in play, both have to be pursued on their own schedules.

Does the defendant have to be present?

Not for a Rule 35 proceeding. Fed. R. Crim. P. 43(b)(4) provides that a defendant need not be present where “the proceeding involves the correction or reduction of sentence under Rule 35 or 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c).”

That is a convenience, not an obligation — courts frequently do produce a defendant, particularly for a contested Rule 35(b) hearing — but it means a reduction can be granted without transport, which matters for people held far from the sentencing district.

The errors Rule 35(a) most often reaches

A working list, offered so a reader knows what to look for when comparing the transcript to the judgment.

• A term of imprisonment above a statutory maximum, or a supervised release term above the maximum for the offense class.
• A count sentenced when it should not have been, or a count left unsentenced.
• Concurrent when the statute requires consecutive, or the reverse — 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) and § 1028A both mandate consecutive terms.
• An arithmetical mistake in the offense-level computation that the court adopted and that produced the wrong range.
• A sentence below a mandatory minimum without an authorizing motion or a safety-valve finding — see safety valve federal sentencing.
• A restitution or fine figure that does not match the finding, or a special assessment miscounted against the number of counts.
• An omitted credit that the statute plainly required.
• A condition of supervised release announced orally but not imposed, or imposed but not announced.

What is not on that list is any argument that the sentence was too long. That is an appeal, a variance argument that was already made and lost, or nothing.

Rule 35(a) works in both directions

One feature of the rule’s drafting is easy to miss and occasionally decisive: Rule 35(a) is addressed to the court, not to a party. “Within 14 days after sentencing, the court may correct a sentence that resulted from arithmetical, technical, or other clear error.”

Three consequences follow.

The government can invoke it too. Prosecutors use Rule 35(a) where a court has imposed a sentence the statute does not permit — most often a term below a mandatory minimum where no authorizing motion was made and no safety-valve finding entered, or a term of supervised release below a statutory floor. A correction under Rule 35(a) in that posture increases the sentence.

The court can act on its own. Nothing in the rule requires a motion from anyone. A judge who realizes overnight that a number was wrong may correct it within the period.

Which means a defendant who spots an error in their own favor has a decision to make. Pointing out that the pronounced sentence is lower than the law allows is not required of the defense, and doing so inside the fourteen days invites exactly the correction the rule contemplates. Whether an error is genuinely favorable, and whether it will survive the fourteen days in any event, is a judgment that needs counsel and the transcript — not a decision to make from a cell or a kitchen table.

Notice and an opportunity to be heard. Where a court proposes to correct a sentence upward, the parties should be heard on the record. A defendant faced with a proposed Rule 35(a) correction that increases a sentence should not assume the correction is automatic; the questions are whether the claimed error is within the rule’s narrow scope at all, and whether the court retains authority to act. Both are litigable, and both have to be litigated fast.

Rule 35(b): reduction for cooperation after sentencing

Rule 35(b) is a different remedy with a different owner. It is not a way to revisit the sentence. It is the post-sentencing counterpart to § 5K1.1.

Who can file

Only the government. Rule 35(b)(1): “Upon the government’s motion made within one year of sentencing, the court may reduce a sentence if the defendant, after sentencing, provided substantial assistance in investigating or prosecuting another person.”

A defendant cannot file a Rule 35(b) motion. Neither can the court act on its own. As with § 5K1.1, the Supreme Court’s characterisation in Wade v. United States, 504 U.S. 181 (1992) — that these provisions give the government “a power, not a duty” — governs, and judicial review of a refusal is confined to unconstitutional motive or irrationality on a substantial threshold showing.

JM § 9-27.410 confirms that the same supervisory-approval requirements apply: “The procedures described above shall also apply to Motions filed pursuant to Rule 35(b) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, where the sentence of a cooperating defendant is reduced after sentencing on motion of the United States.” Approval authority “is limited to the United States Attorney, the Chief Assistant United States Attorney, and supervisory criminal Assistant United States Attorneys.”

The one-year default and its three exceptions

The ordinary window is one year from sentencing. Rule 35(b)(2) permits a later motion in three defined situations:

Exception	Text	What it is for
(A)	“information not known to the defendant until one year or more after sentencing”	The defendant learned something new — often in custody
(B)	“information provided by the defendant to the government within one year of sentencing, but which did not become useful to the government until more than one year after sentencing”	The information was given in time; the case it mattered to came later
(C)	“information the usefulness of which could not reasonably have been anticipated by the defendant until more than one year after sentencing and which was promptly provided to the government after its usefulness was reasonably apparent to the defendant”	The defendant did not realize it mattered, and moved promptly once it did

Exception (C) contains an obligation as well as a permission: the information must have been “promptly provided … after its usefulness was reasonably apparent.” A defendant who sits on information does not fall within it.

Two features that make Rule 35(b) more powerful than § 5K1.1

Presentence assistance counts toward the evaluation. Rule 35(b)(3): “In evaluating whether the defendant has provided substantial assistance, the court may consider the defendant’s presentence assistance.” The motion has to rest on post-sentencing assistance, but the court may weigh the whole picture in deciding how much it is worth.

It reaches a statutory mandatory minimum. Rule 35(b)(4), “Below Statutory Minimum”: “When acting under Rule 35(b), the court may reduce the sentence to a level below the minimum sentence established by statute.”

That second point deserves emphasis because of the asymmetry it creates. Before sentencing, a § 5K1.1 motion does not reach a statutory minimum — Melendez v. United States, 518 U.S. 120 (1996) (“We hold that it does not”) — and a separate motion under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(e) is required. After sentencing, Rule 35(b)(4) supplies that authority in the rule itself.

Three provisions, three different reaches:

Provision	Timing of assistance	Reaches the guideline range?	Reaches a statutory minimum?
U.S.S.G. § 5K1.1	Before sentencing	Yes	No — Melendez
18 U.S.C. § 3553(e)	Before sentencing	Yes	Yes, on a government motion
Fed. R. Crim. P. 35(b)	After sentencing	Yes	Yes — Rule 35(b)(4)

Getting this wrong tells a defendant they have a door they do not have. Full treatment at 5k1.1 and mandatory minimum sentence.

What happens procedurally after a Rule 35(b) motion is filed

The mechanics vary by district, but the shape is consistent.

The motion is filed, often under seal. Materials describing cooperation are commonly sealed, and the hearing may be closed in whole or in part. That protection should be requested, not assumed.

The court sets a hearing, or rules on the papers. Some districts hold a hearing; some resolve straightforward motions without one.

The defendant is usually produced or appears remotely. Practice differs; the defendant’s presence is not always required for a reduction that is unopposed.

The court decides the extent. The reduction is discretionary. The § 5K1.1(a) factors — significance and usefulness, truthfulness and completeness, nature and extent, danger or risk to the defendant or family, timeliness — supply the familiar framework.

An amended judgment issues, and the Bureau of Prisons recalculates the release date from it. That recalculation is not instantaneous; a reduction granted in court takes time to appear in the sentence computation. See preparing for prison for how sentence computation works.

Applied Insight — Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, Managing Director: Two practical points about Rule 35(b) from the custody side. First, a person hoping for a Rule 35(b) motion should keep a contemporaneous record of every contact with agents or prosecutors — dates, names, subjects — because that record is what counsel will need, and memory in custody is not a substitute. Second, an amended judgment has to reach the Designation and Sentence Computation Center before a release date changes. Where a reduction is granted close to a projected release date, it is worth confirming that the amended judgment has actually been transmitted rather than assuming the change is automatic.

How much is a Rule 35(b) reduction worth?

There is no formula, and this page will not invent one.

The extent is the court’s. Rule 35(b)(1) says “the court may reduce a sentence.” The size of the reduction is a discretionary judgment, informed by the same considerations that govern a § 5K1.1 reduction: significance and usefulness, truthfulness and completeness, nature and extent, danger or risk to the defendant or family, and timeliness.

The government’s recommendation carries weight but does not cap the court. The government’s motion typically recommends an extent. The court is not bound by the recommendation, and the guideline commentary’s instruction that “[s]ubstantial weight should be given to the government’s evaluation of the extent of the defendant’s assistance” is a direction to weigh it, not to defer to it absolutely.

Rule 35(b)(3) widens the evidentiary picture. “In evaluating whether the defendant has provided substantial assistance, the court may consider the defendant’s presentence assistance.” A defendant whose pre-sentencing cooperation never produced a § 5K1.1 motion is not shut out of having it counted.

And Rule 35(b)(4) sets no floor. Where a statutory minimum applies, the rule permits a reduction “below the minimum sentence established by statute” — the only post-sentencing provision discussed on these pages that does.

What a reduction does, and does not, change

It changes the term of imprisonment. An amended judgment issues and the Bureau of Prisons recomputes the release date from it.

It does not automatically change supervised release. A Rule 35(b) reduction addresses the custodial term. The supervised release term and its conditions stand unless the court alters them.

It does not change the conviction. Rule 35 is a sentencing provision. Nothing about it disturbs the judgment of conviction, and it is not a route to any collateral consequence relief.

It is not immediate in practice. The amended judgment has to be transmitted and the computation redone. A reduction granted in court is not a release date until it appears in the sentence computation.

Where Rule 35 came from, and why bad advice circulates

Rule 35 has been rewritten twice in ways that matter, and both older versions are still quoted in circulation.

Before the Sentencing Reform Act, Rule 35 was a general sentence-reduction rule — a defendant could ask the sentencing court to reconsider. That version is gone. It is the source of the persistent and incorrect belief that a defendant can file a motion asking the judge to reduce a sentence because of good behavior or changed circumstances.

In the early guideline era, Rule 35(b) was captioned “Correction of Sentence for Changed Circumstances” and read: “The court, on motion of the Government, may within one year after the imposition of a sentence, lower a sentence to reflect a defendant’s subsequent, substantial assistance in the investigation or prosecution of another person who has committed an offense, in accordance with the guidelines and policy statements issued by the Sentencing Commission pursuant to section 994 of title 28, United States Code. The court’s authority to lower a sentence under this subdivision includes the authority to lower such sentence to a level below that established by statute as a minimum sentence.” That text was quoted by the district court in United States v. Emanuel, 734 F. Supp. 877 (S.D. Iowa 1990).

Two things are visible in that older text. The government-motion requirement was there from the beginning. So was the authority to go below a statutory minimum — now at Rule 35(b)(4).

The current structure — a 14-day correction provision at (a), a substantial-assistance provision at (b) with a one-year default and three exceptions, and the (c) definition of “sentencing” — is the product of later amendments, including the change of the correction window from seven days to fourteen.

Why the history matters for a reader. Search results and prison law-library materials contain all three versions. Anything describing a defendant’s own motion to reduce a sentence under Rule 35, or a 120-day window, or a 7-day correction window, is describing a rule that no longer exists. The operative text is quoted in full above, and it is the text on the current rule.

If you are the family member reading this

Half the people researching this topic are not the defendant. If someone you love was sentenced in the last two weeks, there are four things you can usefully do, and none of them requires legal knowledge.

Find out the date of the sentencing hearing. Not the date on any paperwork — the day everyone was in the courtroom and the judge said the number. Write it down. That is the date the Rule 35(a) clock runs from.

Ask counsel two questions, in writing. Has a notice of appeal been filed or is one being considered, and by when? And is there anything in the judgment that does not match what the judge said in court?

Get a copy of the judgment as soon as it is entered, and read it against your own notes or memory of the hearing. Terms on each count. Concurrent or consecutive. Supervised release length and conditions. Restitution. Any recommendation the judge made about facility or programming. Discrepancies are exactly what Rule 35(a) and Fed. R. Crim. P. 36 exist for, and they are most easily caught by someone who was in the room.

Understand what Rule 35(b) is and is not. It is not something your family member can file. It is not something you can ask a judge for. If cooperation is part of the case, the question for counsel is whether a Rule 35(b) motion is contemplated and on what timeline — and the honest answer may be that it depends on events nobody controls.

And be careful about what you are told inside. A great deal of well-meaning but obsolete advice circulates in federal facilities about “filing a Rule 35.” The current rule gives a defendant no motion to file. Where post-sentencing relief is genuinely available, it is under one of the provisions in the section below.

Where Rule 35 sits in the law of sentence finality

Federal sentences are final unless a statute says otherwise. 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c) opens: “The court may not modify a term of imprisonment once it has been imposed except that—”.

Rule 35 lives inside the second of those exceptions. Section 3582(c)(1)(B) permits the court to “modify an imposed term of imprisonment to the extent otherwise expressly permitted by statute or by Rule 35 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.”

The Supreme Court described that subsection in Concepcion v. United States, 597 U.S. 481 (2022): “Section 3582(c)(1)(B) is simply a gateway provision that refers to whichever statute ‘expressly permit[s]’ the sentencing modification. It does not impose any substantive or procedural limits on a district court’s discretion; for those details, it refers to the statute authorizing the sentence modification.”

So Rule 35 is not an exception to finality that a court can expand. It is the authority itself, and its limits are the limits.

What Rule 35 is not

Every item below is something people try to use Rule 35 for, and none of them works.

• It is not a second chance to argue the guidelines. Rule 35(a) reaches “arithmetical, technical, or other clear error,” not a disagreement about an enhancement the court considered and applied.
• It is not a vehicle for new mitigation. Evidence of rehabilitation, family circumstances, or health developing after sentencing is not clear error. Where it becomes extraordinary and compelling, the provision is § 3582(c)(1)(A) — see federal compassionate release attorney.
• It is not an appeal. A sentence that is unlawful, procedurally defective, or unreasonable is challenged on direct appeal under 18 U.S.C. § 3742, with a notice of appeal due within 14 days of entry of judgment. See federal appeals attorney.
• It is not a way to get a retroactive guideline amendment applied. That is § 3582(c)(2) — see federal sentence reduction.
• It is not a defendant-initiated cooperation remedy. Rule 35(b) is the government’s motion.
• It is not “Rule 35” in the sense the internet uses that phrase. The bare term is overwhelmingly used online to refer to something with no connection to federal criminal procedure. If you arrived here from that search, this page is about Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 35.

If the fourteen days have already run

This section exists because the alternative is leaving a reader with nothing.

Check the date again — carefully. The clock runs from the oral announcement, and Rule 45(a) excludes the day of the hearing, counts weekends, and rolls a deadline falling on a weekend or holiday to the next business day. Occasionally the fourteen days have not in fact expired.

Check whether the problem is clerical. A discrepancy between what the judge said and what the judgment says is normally corrected under Fed. R. Crim. P. 36, which has no deadline.

Direct appeal. The notice of appeal is due within 14 days after entry of the judgment — a different document and a different clock from Rule 35(a). A guideline miscalculation is procedural error reviewable on appeal, and Molina-Martinez v. United States, 578 U.S. 189 (2016), holds that a defendant who shows the court used an incorrect, higher range “will, in the ordinary case, have demonstrated a reasonable probability of a different outcome.” See standards of review and how to appeal a federal conviction.

§ 3582(c)(2) — retroactive guideline amendments. If a guideline that determined your range has since been lowered and made retroactive by the Commission, the sentence can be reduced. Amendment 821 is the live example. See federal sentence reduction.

§ 3582(c)(1)(A) — compassionate release. Available on the defendant’s own motion after exhaustion or the lapse of 30 days from a request to the warden, on extraordinary and compelling reasons. See federal compassionate release attorney.

§ 2255. A sentencing error that was not preserved and not raised on appeal is generally litigated as a collateral attack, usually framed as ineffective assistance of counsel. There is a one-year deadline with four possible trigger dates. See federal 2255 motion lawyer and ineffective assistance at sentencing.

Rule 35(b), if cooperation is in the picture. The one-year window from sentencing, or one of the three exceptions.

Clemency. Where no judicial route remains, a commutation petition is the remaining avenue. See federal clemency.

None of these is Rule 35(a), and none of them is as fast. That is exactly why the fourteen days matter.

A short checklist for the first two weeks after sentencing

1. Write down the date the judge announced the sentence. Not the judgment date.
2. Order the transcript — or at least ask counsel to review their notes against the judgment when it issues.
3. Compare the oral pronouncement to the written judgment as soon as the judgment is available: term of imprisonment on each count, concurrent or consecutive, supervised release, conditions, restitution, fines, credit for time served, and any judicial recommendations.
4. Raise any clear error immediately, in writing, with an express request that the court act within the Rule 35(a) period.
5. Calendar the notice of appeal deadline — 14 days from entry of judgment, a separate clock.
6. Confirm whether a notice of appeal has been filed, and by whom.
7. If cooperation is expected to continue, confirm in writing with counsel whether a Rule 35(b) motion is contemplated and on what timeline.

Where this leads next on cooperation and reductions

• Cooperation before sentencing: 5k1.1
• Reductions based on retroactive guideline amendments: federal sentence reduction
• What a statutory floor does, and the three doors under it: mandatory minimum sentence
• The document where a miscalculation usually begins: presentence report
• Arguing for a lower sentence in the first place: downward departure
• What happens in the courtroom on the day: federal sentencing hearing what to expect
• The full stage map: federal sentence mitigation attorney

Why work with Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. is a boutique federal criminal defense and appellate firm founded in 2019 and practicing nationwide on an intentionally small caseload. Elizabeth Franklin-Best has more than twenty years of federal and appellate criminal defense experience, has handled more than 330 federal proceedings, over 100 of them appeals, with sixteen published decisions as counsel of record, and is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and twelve of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals — every regional circuit (1st–11th) plus the D.C. Circuit. She is recognized by Best Lawyers in America 2026 for Appellate Practice and by Chambers USA 2026 for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations.

Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, the firm’s Managing Director, leads its federal prison consulting practice — Bureau of Prisons designation, sentence computation, First Step Act time credits, RDAP, and reentry planning — and is the author of the Federal Prison Handbook and four other books on the federal system.

Post-sentencing work is calendar work before it is legal work. The firm’s first act on a new post-sentencing matter is to establish the two dates that decide what is still available.

Talk to a federal sentencing lawyer

If sentencing was recent, the question is which clocks are still running. If it was not recent, the question is which of the remaining provisions fits the problem.

Schedule a confidential consultation or call (843) 620-1100. Columbia office: 3710 Landmark Dr #113, Columbia, SC 29204; the firm also maintains an office in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, and represents clients nationwide.

Have ready: the date of the sentencing hearing, the judgment, the docket sheet, and the presentence report if one is available.

Frequently Asked Questions About Rule 35 Motions

Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026