John Blaine Stancil, the younger half-brother of the late Michael J. Miske, Jr., is being held at Terminal Island, a low security federal prison in downtown Los Angeles, while awaiting a decision from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on a long shot challenge to his 20-year sentence for racketeering conspiracy.

Stancil was sentenced a year ago, February 11, 2025, to the maximum prison term allowed by law for his role in Miske’s racketeering organization over a period from at last 2012 through mid-2018. He is currently scheduled to be released on June 10, 2037.

Stancil accepted a last minute plea deal with prosecutors in January 2024, on the same day he was scheduled to go on trial with his brother. He was the last of 12 Miske codefendants to plead guilty.

In his plea agreement, Stancil admitted to being part of Miske’s racketeering organization and committing a variety of offenses violent offenses over several years. In exchange for Stancil’s guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to drop 12 additional counts, including murder-for-hire conspiracy, assault and attempted murder in aid of racketeering as well as conspiracy, carrying and using a firearm in a drug crime, conspiracy to use a chemical weapon, use of a chemical weapon, armed robbery, and drug trafficking.

Those offenses could have resulted in a sentence of life in prison, which Stancil avoided by accepting the plea deal.

But Idaho-based attorney, W. Miles Pope, who took over the case after trial and sentencing, filed the appeal on Stancil’s behalf on December 24, 2025, hopes it will lead to resentencing that will prove to be a “get out of jail early” card that gets his client out several years early.

Federal prosecutors responded by filing a motion to dismiss the appeal.

In the appeal, Pope argues Judge Derrick K. Watson, who presided over the Miske proceedings, trial, and sentencing, erred in several ways when he sentenced Stancil to a 20-year term, the maximum for racketeering conspiracy.

Pope says that Stancil stepped away from Miske’s organization in 2018 when the feds began closing in and several key associates began cooperating with prosecutors. Since then, according to Pope’s appeal, Stancil has proved to be a devoted father to a young son who worked hard to support his family before his arrest, and should have been credited with “his 4.5 years of unblemished good conduct in pretrial detention….”

In addition, Pope argued, Watson made “clear factual errors” by failing to classify Stancil as a “minimal” or “minor” participant in several crimes, including the murder-for-hire scheme that targeted a Waimanalo man believed to be providing information about Miske to law enforcement.

The government’s motion to dismiss the appeal, filed last month, cites a central provision common in plea agreements in which Stancil waived his right to appeal except under very limited circumstances.

According to the plea agreement:

The defendant is aware that he has the right to appeal his convictions and the sentence imposed. The defendant knowingly and voluntarily waives the right to appeal, except as indicated in subparagraph “b” below, his convictions and any sentence within the Guidelines range as determined by the Court at the time of sentencing, and any lawful restitution order imposed, or the manner in which the sentence or restitution order was determined, on any ground whatsoever, in exchange for the concessions made by the prosecution in this Agreement.

The exception to the waiver would only be available if Judge Watson imposed “a sentence greater than specified in the guideline range determined by the Court to be applicable to the defendant.” In that case, Stancil could appeal and challenge that portion of the sentence that exceeded the sentencing guideline range.

The transcript of Stancil’s sentencing hearing show that the guideline range Watson found applicable to Stancil was a sentence between 210 and 265 months. However, the maximum sentence allowed by statute for racketeering conspiracy is 240 months, and that is the sentence Watson handed down in this case.

Prosecutors argue the sentence did not exceed the guideline range accepted by Watson, so the waiver of appeal rights requires the appeal to be dismissed as a matter of law.

Stancil’s appeal cites one instance in which Judge Watson summarized the waiver provision by saying Stancil had the right to appeal if the sentence exceeded applicable guidelines, without adding the qualification that the guidelines referred to those “determined by the Court to be applicable to the defendant.”

However, the government’s motion to dismiss argues this one statement was taken wholly out of context, and that the waiver is spelled out in the written plea agreement itself signed by Stancil and his attorney, and was repeatedly described in the course of Stancil’s plea hearing, and again at his later sentencing, as applying only to a sentence above the sentencing guidelines “determined by the Court to be applicable.”

“Simply put, the record does not support [Stancil’s] argument,” prosecutors argue.

In their final legal filing, prosecutors reviewed the record.

During the plea colloquy, Stancil told the court that he had read the plea agreement in full, spoke to counsel about it, and that he was confident that he understood each of its terms. The prosecutor went over the appellate waiver in detail, informing Stancil that he was waiving his right to appeal the sentence imposed except in two limited circumstances, one of which was if the court were to sentence Stancil to a sentence that is “above and beyond the guideline range that the Court finds is applicable to the case.” (emphasis added). The district court then informed Stancil that it agreed with the prosecutor’s summary of the appellate waiver and summarized the appellate waiver in “sum and substance,” again citing the exception for an appeal of a sentence that exceeds the same “applicable” guidelines range just referenced by the prosecutor. Notably, the district judge also told Stancil that the appellate wavier meant Stancil was “agreeing to a very broad, general waiver of your rights to challenge the Court’s final judgment in this case, including the sentence that I impose.” [citations omitted]