Justices limit judicial discretion over compassionate release

WASHINGTON (CN) — Ruling against prisoners seeking sentence reductions, the Supreme Court on Thursday barred judges from using discretion to offer sentence reductions to account for trial errors or chances in the law.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Donald Trump appointee, led two majority opinions joined by her conservative colleagues holding that a 2018 criminal justice reform law couldn’t be used to expand circumstances where courts can reduce a prisoner’s sentence under the compassionate release provision.

“Petitioners in both cases contend that the phrase ‘extraordinary and compelling reasons’ vests courts with broad discretion to grant a prisoner compassionate release for virtually any reason whatsoever,” Barrett wrote. “We reject these arguments. While the terms ‘extraordinary’ and ‘compelling’ leave room for judgment, they are not so flexible as to encompass any consideration.’”

Under the compassionate release provision, courts can modify criminal sentences in certain cases. Before 2018, the Bureau of Prisons had to file a motion as a prerequisite for such consideration, but Congress expanded a federal sentencing statute in the First Step Act to eliminate that requirement.

Courts have since adopted a broader view of compassionate release factors beyond personal circumstances like old age or illness. The high court was asked whether the extraordinary and compelling reasons judges consider when offering sentence reductions could include factors like trial errors or changes in the law.

The liberal justices slammed the majority’s refusal to allow consideration of such factors. In various opinions, the three Democratic appointees said Congress intended for judges and the Sentencing Commission to have flexibility over what should be considered under compassionate release.

“In the majority’s view, permitting holistic consideration of all relevant evidence, including changes in law, would also permit judges to grant relief based on their personal view that a mandatory-minimum sentence is too harsh,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote in dissent. “Those fears are unfounded.”

In 2023, the Sentencing Commission adopted a policy allowing courts to consider sentencing disparities created by nonretroactive changes in the law in limited circumstances. Daniel Rutherford said his sentence presented one such case.

Rutherford was sentenced to over 30 years in prison for several armed robberies in 2003. One of his firearm charges alone resulted in 25 years of his sentence, but Rutherford argued that under the First Step Act, he would have only received 7 years for the same charge.

Thursday’s ruling rejected Rutherford’s claim, holding the Sentencing Commission did not have authority to implement the 2023 policy.

“When Congress declines to make a sentencing amendment retroactive, the fact that a preamendment sentence is longer than it would have been postamendment is not an ‘extraordinary and compelling reaso[n]’ that ‘warrant[s’ a sentence reduction,” Barrett wrote in Rutherford v. United States. “Insofar as the Commission’s amended policy statement maintains otherwise, it conflicts with the statute.”

Barrett said that allowing otherwise would give judges discretion over any mandatory minimum they disagreed with.

“Take a judge who believes that a mandatory minimum is unduly harsh,” Barrett wrote. “Could she treat the severity of the sentence as an ‘extraordinary and compelling reason’ for compassionate release? Petitioners refused to rule out this possibility at oral argument.”

Similar to a judge’s inability to weigh whether they think Congress mandated the right punishment for a given crime, Sotomayor said the statute has never allowed policy disagreements to be a relevant consideration at sentencing.

“It does, however, instruct judges to consider sentencing disparities, including those created by nonretroactive changes in law,” Sotomayor wrote. “That instruction is perfectly consistent with courts’ longstanding discretion to consider all relevant information, including changes in law, when resentencing a defendant.”

Justices Elena Kagan, another Obama appointee, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Joe Biden appointee, joined Sotomayor’s dissent in Rutherford. However, the liberal justices split over the court’s second ruling.

Joe Fernandez, who faces two consecutive life sentences, told the justices that errors significantly increasing a defendant’s sentence should be one of these factors.

In 2011, Fernandez was found guilty of murder for hire and firearms charges and sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment for killing two men who owed $6.5 million to a New York drug ring. He maintains his innocence, however, and convinced a judge to reduce his sentence based on extraordinary and compelling circumstances.

That judge said “a certain disquiet remains” over the co-conspirators’ testimony that was used to convict Fernandez. All three of the co-conspirators received lighter sentences for their testimony. Fernandez’s innocence claim and the sentencing disparity constituted extraordinary and compelling circumstances, that court determined, reducing his sentence to time served.

When the high court heard oral arguments in November, the justices appeared uneasy with allowing judges to consider factors that also fall under the federal habeas statute. Thursday’s ruling subsequently held that Fernandez’s challenge had to be brought as a habeas appeal.

In Fernandez v. United States, Barrett said Congress set habeas corpus as the appropriate remedy for state prisoners attacking the validity of their conviction and sentence. And she said Fernandez couldn’t pursue a collateral attack outside the rigorous habeas framework.

“Challenges ‘close to the core of habeas corpus’ must be brought, if at all, under ‘the specific federal habeas corpus statute’…which was ‘explicitly and historically designed to provide the means for a state prisoner to attack the validity of his confinement,’” Barrett wrote. “A contrary result would allow prisoners to evade [habeas] requirements, and so would ‘wholly frustrate explicit congressional intent.’”

Sotomayor and Kagan said the majority’s holding added a complex habeas analysis on top of a sentence-reduction framework that calls for holistic review.

“The rule adopted today risks shutting out meritorious claims for a sentence reduction simply because they might resemble, in some amorphous way, a claim that might call into question a sentence or conviction,” Sotomayor wrote.

However, the Obama appointees agreed with rejecting Fernandez’s appeal. In a concurrence, Sotomayor said a compassionate release sentence reduction couldn’t be granted if it solely relied on facts a court already considered when imposing the initial sentence.

Jackson penned a solo dissent, arguing in favor of returning Fernandez’s case for another review. The Biden appointee said that while in most cases rehashing old evidence would not satisfy the compassionate release standard, there was no reason to categorically bar relief in all cases.

The majority’s framing of compassionate release as an end-run around habeas restrictions, Jackson said, reflected a misunderstanding of the safety-valve mechanism Congress created and then broadened.

“Congress designed compassionate release as a tool for preserving a modicum of mercy in an otherwise harsh sentencing system,” Jackson wrote. “And nothing about the text or history of the compassionate-release provision suggests that Congress meant for this discretionary second-look opportunity to be cabined in the way the majority suggests.”

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