US Supreme Court Blocks Prison Sentence Reductions Under Reform Law

The US Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that judges cannot order the early release of prisoners solely on the grounds that they would have received shorter sentences today under a 2018 criminal justice reform law.

In a 6-3 decision backed by the court’s conservative majority, the justices upheld lower court rulings against two Pennsylvania men convicted of armed robberies who had sought compassionate release under the First Step Act, which was passed years after they were sentenced.

It was one of two rulings issued by the Supreme Court on Thursday concerning the landmark criminal justice reform law enacted during Republican President Donald Trump’s first term. The legislation sought to address some of the harsh sentencing practices of the past.

In a separate ruling, the court held that federal prisoners could not use the First Step Act’s compassionate release mechanism to seek early release based on doubts about the validity of their underlying convictions.

In ruling on the Pennsylvania cases, the Supreme Court also effectively struck down a 2023 policy adopted by the U.S. Sentencing Commission during former President Joe Biden’s administration that had expanded federal inmates’ ability to qualify for compassionate release.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, said Congress had never intended offenders sentenced before the law’s enactment to become eligible for reduced sentences under the First Step Act.

“Compassionate release is available only when a court finds that ‘extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant’ a sentence reduction,” Barrett wrote. “The disparity that results from Congress’s decision to leave a sentence untouched cannot serve as one of those reasons.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, joined by the court’s two other liberal justices. She argued that the Sentencing Commission had acted reasonably in allowing judges to consider sentencing disparities created by changes in the law when assessing compassionate release applications.

“The Commission’s policy statement falls well within the expansive scope of the terms ‘extraordinary’ and ‘compelling’ and is consistent with longstanding judicial practices, which Congress did not alter here,” Sotomayor wrote.

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, the leading Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the two rulings had “significantly weakened” the bipartisan criminal justice reform law and ran contrary to congressional intent.

The cases involved Daniel Rutherford, who received a prison sentence of nearly 42-and-a-half years for committing two armed robberies in 2003, and Johnnie Carter, who was sentenced to 70 years for his role in a series of armed bank robberies carried out in 2007.

Barrett noted that, had they been sentenced after the passage of the First Step Act, Rutherford and Carter would have faced significantly lower mandatory minimum sentences of 14 years and 21 years respectively.

Implementation of the First Step Act was delayed for years after the U.S. Sentencing Commission lost its quorum shortly after the law was enacted. As a result, the commission was unable for three years to update sentencing guidelines to implement the legislation, including provisions designed to expand opportunities for compassionate release.

In the absence of guidance from the commission, courts across the country were left to decide independently what qualified as “extraordinary and compelling” circumstances, leading to differing interpretations of the law.

After regaining a quorum under Biden, the Sentencing Commission voted 4-3 in 2023 to adopt a policy stating that changes in the law could be considered “extraordinary and compelling” if a defendant had served at least 10 years of an “unusually long sentence”.

Rutherford and Carter relied on that policy in seeking reduced sentences. However, the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected their requests, finding that the Sentencing Commission had exceeded its authority.

Barrett agreed in Thursday’s ruling, stating that the commission’s policy conflicted with the statute. Because Congress chose not to make the First Step Act’s sentencing amendments retroactive, she said, lengthy pre-2018 sentences could not qualify as “extraordinary and compelling” reasons for release.

The case is Rutherford v. United States, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 24–820.

 

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