Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn breached a six-year-old plea deal when they sought and received nearly triple the amount of jail time for a defendant, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found in an order issued Thursday.

The decision by the appellate panel of Circuit Judges Dennis Jacobs and Guido Calabresi, and U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York sitting by designation, added to the legal lineage of the circuit’s guidance under the so-called Pimentel estimate, finding the defendant, Shondell Walker, could not reasonably have expected the government to change its position.