Retro application of anti-stacking sentencing amendment rejected

Summary

• U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that nonretroactive First Step Act sentencing changes cannot support compassionate release.
• Decision resolves a circuit split over sentence reductions under 18 U.S.C. §3582(c)(1)(A)(i).
• Court held Congress intentionally declined to make §924(c) sentencing reforms retroactive.
• Majority found the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s 2023 policy statement conflicted with the federal law.

Congress’s inclusion in the First Step Act of a provision eliminating the “stacking” of a mandatory 25-year sentence for those convicted of a second firearm offense involving a crime of violence does not constitute an “extraordinary or compelling” reason for reduction of sentences imposed before passage of the act in 2018, a divided U.S. Supreme Court has decided in resolving a circuit split.

The First Step Act amended 18 U.S.C. §924(c) to eliminate language providing that defendants convicted of two counts of using and carrying a firearm during a crime of violence would be subject to a mandatory 25-year sentence for the second offense to run consecutively to the sentence handed down for the first offense. Congress did not make the amendment to §924(c) retroactive.

The matter before the court involved the consolidation of two cases from the 3rd U.S. Circuit of Appeals. Daniel Rutherford committed two separate robberies at gunpoint in 2003 and was convicted of two counts of using and carrying a firearm during a crime of violence in violation of §924(c). Johnnie Carter was convicted of three §924(c) violations in connection with his participation in a string of armed bank robberies in 2007. Pursuant to the prior sentencing scheme, Rutherford received a 42-year sentence and Carter received a 70-year sentence.

Both defendants relied on the First Step Act’s amendment to §924(c) when they later sought reductions to their sentences pursuant to the criminal code’s compassionate release provision, 18 U.S.C. §3582(c)(1)(A)(i). Under §3582(c)(1)(A)(i), a court may reduce a prisoner’s term of imprisonment after considering certain factors and finding that “extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant such a reduction.”

With the application of the First Step Act, Rutherford’s mandatory minimum under §924(c) would be reduced by 14 years while Carter’s sentence would be reduced by 21 years.

But the judges in both defendants’ cases decided that the First Step Act’s nonretroactive change to §924(c) does not constitute an “extraordinary and compelling” reason for purposes of reducing a sentence under §3582(c)(1)(A)(i). Separate panels of the 3rd Circuit affirmed the judgments below.

The 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Circuits have reached the same conclusion as the 3rd Circuit. But in a 2023 case, the D.C. Circuit reserved ruling on the question because the U.S. Sentencing Commission had just issued an amendment to its policy statement that directly bore on the issue but had yet to go into effect.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in the consolidated cases to resolve the split of circuit authority over whether the disparity created by a nonretroactive change to the federal sentencing statute is an extraordinary and compelling reason that warrants compassionate release.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court held that because Congress declined to make the sentencing amendment to §924(c) retroactive, a resulting sentencing disparity cannot serve as an “extraordinary and compelling” reason that warrants a sentence reduction under §3582(c)(1)(A)(i).

In reaching that conclusion, the majority found that a different result was not called for on the basis that the U.S. Sentencing Commission in 2023 issued an amended policy statement adding an “Unusually Long Sentence” to the list of “extraordinary and compelling” reasons that might warrant compassionate release under certain circumstances.

Click here to read the full text of the Supreme Court’s May 28 decision in Rutherford v. United States.

To the point

“We need not nail down the precise boundaries of the phrase ‘extraordinary and compelling’ to conclude that ‘with regard to the particular dispute in [this] case,’ the statute’s language ‘has a plain and unambiguous meaning.’ The statutory text and structure make clear that Congress’s nonretroactive change to §924(c) — considered by itself or in combination with other factors — cannot make a prisoner eligible for compassionate release. To the extent that it counsels otherwise, the Commission’s policy statement is invalid.”

— Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Brett M. Kavanaugh, opinion of the court

“Congress directed the United States Sentencing Commission, not this Court, to define what constitutes ‘extraordinary and compelling reasons’ for incarcerated individuals to receive a sentence reduction under the compassionate-release statute. In 2023, the Commission exercised its statutory authority and issued a policy statement that permitted district courts to consider sentencing disparities created by changes in law. Such disparities, the Commission specified, should be considered rarely and only as part of an inquiry into whether the totality of the circumstances warrant a reduction in a person’s sentence.

“Properly framed, the question presented by these cases is whether the Commission acted unreasonably when it issued that guidance. It did not. The Commission’s policy statement is consistent with Congress’s commands and centuries of legal practice in which courts look to the totality of the circumstances when deciding whether to modify a sentence. Because the Court concludes that the policy is unlawful, and that courts may never consider nonretroactive changes in law when deciding whether someone is eligible for compassionate release, I respectfully dissent.”

— Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissenting