The justices to consider compassionate-release statute 

The Supreme Court will hear oral argument on Wednesday, Nov. 12, in two back-to-back cases posing basic questions about the breadth of the compassionate-release statute, 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i), that governs a type of sentence reduction for federal prisoners. The compassionate-release statute dates back to the enactment of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 and allows a court to grant a sentence reduction when a defendant presents “extraordinary and compelling reasons” for doing so and satisfies criteria specified by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

In Fernandez v. United States, the Supreme Court will consider whether a claim of error in a defendant’s sentence or conviction may be considered alone or in combination with other factors as an extraordinary and compelling reason for compassionate release. And in Rutherford v. United States, the court will consider whether a legislative change in a mandatory minimum sentence that Congress chose not to apply to defendants who have an existing sentence under the provision may be considered alone or in combination with other factors as an extraordinary and compelling reason for compassionate release. 

A brief history of the compassionate-release statute

It would be difficult to understand the current operation of the compassionate-release statute, and the issues presented in Fernandez and Rutherford, without knowing some of the statute’s history since its enactment. When it first became law in 1984, the compassionate-release statute required the federal Bureau of Prisons to initiate a sentence reduction on a prison inmate’s behalf, and until 2006, no U.S. Sentencing Guideline existed to govern that process. Ultimately, the U.S. Sentencing Commission created a sentencing guideline, § 1B1.13, that through a series of amendments authorized compassionate release for medical conditions like terminal illness, age and deteriorating health, family circumstances, and other reasons determined by the BOP. 

In the first two decades of the compassionate-release statute’s existence, this law did not see much action. Rather, this period was marked by a significant growth in the complexity of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, which were binding on courts until the Supreme Court rendered them advisory in 2005 in United States v. Booker. To its detractors, this two-decade period was one where district judges lacked discretion to impose the sentences that they thought appropriate while the sentencing guidelines became increasingly punitive. To its supporters, this period was one where the guidelines sought to achieve ever-greater refinement and consistency in evaluating the appropriate punishment for federal crimes. But regardless of how one views that debate, the two decades after the compassionate release act’s passage were plainly not a period where the idea of compassionate release and reducing offenders’ sentences received much attention and support. 

After Booker made the guidelines advisory-only in 2005, much changed about sentence reductions, however. At sentencings, district courts regularly began using their power to reject the guidelines’ recommendations. And several years after Booker, the U.S. Sentencing Commission began introducing a series of retroactive guideline amendments addressing specific issues in the guidelines’ application, mainly involving reducing sentences for drug trafficking. Litigation over what constitutes a crime of violence under federal law yielded significant sentence reductions. Presidential clemency also began being exercised across multiple administrations on a scale that would have been unthinkable in the 1980s and 1990s. In short, sentence reductions began occurring on a scale unseen since the Sentencing Reform Act was passed, affecting thousands of inmates.

Against that backdrop, in December 2018, as part of a broader package of federal criminal law known as the First Step Act, Congress amended the compassionate-release statute to permit defendants to initiate motions for sentence reductions without the BOP moving on behalf of the defendant (although the amended statute still required inmates to begin by making a request to it before filing a motion in court). And in 2020, a global pandemic hit, touching off a massive spike in motions for compassionate release and a judicial willingness to grant such relief. These factors, along with several others, dramatically increased the number of motions for compassionate release. 

Indeed, reports from the U.S. Sentencing Commission reflect how compassionate release went from a seldom used doctrine relevant to only a handful of inmates with serious medical conditions to a major force in federal criminal law. Following the First Step Act’s amendment to the compassionate-release statute, district courts have granted around one-sixth of the motions for compassionate release, finding them to have raised extraordinary and compelling reasons for sentence reductions, and from October 2019 until June 2025, the commission’s data shows that inmates filed over 36,000 motions for compassionate release. 

Compassionate release for claims of error and changes in law

In Fernandez v. United States, the defendant, Joe Fernandez, and his cousin, Patrick Darge, shot to death two men in 2000 who traveled to New York City to collect a $6.5 million drug debt for 274 kilograms of cocaine that a drug cartel had delivered to a New York drug ring. Darge shot one of the men in the back of his head, but his gun jammed before he could kill the second man. Fernandez then fired 14 shots, most of which hit the two men, and after confirming that both men were dead, he fled with Darge and a getaway driver. Darge was later paid $180,000 for the murders and gave $40,000 to Fernandez. 

Ultimately, Darge and others in the New York drug ring were indicted in 2010, and following Darge’s guilty plea, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Fernandez was indicted in 2011 but, unlike Darge, went to trial, arguing that he had been framed. Darge testified that Fernandez was indeed one of the shooters, and Fernandez’s own incriminating statements to a former cellmate were introduced at trial along with other evidence.

Convicted of all counts, Fernandez was sentenced to a mandatory life sentence. Fernandez’s post-trial motions, his direct appeal, and his two habeas petitions (collateral review) failed to disturb his life sentence. But in 2022, citing “a certain disquiet” about the strength of certain of the evidence against Fernandez (including the credibility of Darge’s testimony) and the lower sentences imposed on coconspirators who pleaded guilty, the district court reduced Fernandez’s sentence to time served, using the compassionate-release statute. The court of appeals reversed after concluding that neither the district court’s view about the strength of the evidence nor the comparison with codefendants’ sentences could qualify as “extraordinary and compelling reasons” for compassionate release. The correctness of the court of appeals’ ruling is now before the Supreme Court. 

In Rutherford v. United States, the court has consolidated two cases, one involving Daniel Rutherford and the other involving Johnnie Markel Carter. Rutherford and Carter both were convicted of, among other things, more than one firearm offense under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) for armed robberies. In Rutherford’s case, he carried out two armed robberies of a chiropractic office in July 2003, and in Carter’s case, he and his accomplices carried out a series of armed bank robberies in March and May of 2007. 

At the time that both defendants were sentenced, a second § 924(c) offense carried a consecutive mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years, raising their total sentences by decades. Rutherford ultimately received a total sentence of over 42 years, and Carter received a total sentence of 70 years.  

After their convictions and sentencings, Congress limited the 25-year sentence for a second § 924(c) to scenarios where a defendant’s subsequent § 924(c) offense occurred following an earlier conviction under § 924(c), which did not happen in either Rutherford’s or Carter’s cases. But Congress chose to make this legislative change to § 924(c) penalties apply prospectively. Hence, the issue in Rutherford’s and Carter’s cases is whether they can invoke Congress’ failure to apply the change in law to them as an “extraordinary and compelling” reason for compassionate release. Courts of appeals have divided on that question.

The parties’ arguments in a nutshell   

Fernandez, Rutherford, and Carter must all persuade the court that their circumstances fall within the ordinary meanings of the words “extraordinary and compelling,” words that on their face suggest a stringent standard for obtaining relief but are not terribly specific. Beyond grappling with the meanings of the words “extraordinary and compelling,” the parties must address how the compassionate-release statute relates to other statutory provisions. In Fernandez’s case, he seeks a sentence reduction by challenging the strength of the evidence against him, but all of his efforts to seek relief on that basis have, until now, been rejected in post-trial motions, on direct appeal, and in collateral review. The court will therefore grapple with to what extent bringing a motion for compassionate release may serve as an alternative to direct appeal and collateral review as a means to receive a sentence reduction for a challenge to a conviction or sentence. Similarly, in Rutherford, the question is to what extent a defendant may obtain relief via compassionate release for a change in law that Congress decided not to apply to them. May the compassionate-release statute alter Congress’ determination about the retroactivity of a change in statutory penalties? Fundamentally, both Fernandez and Rutherford therefore turn both on the meanings of the words “extraordinary and compelling” and how those words fit within a broader range of legislative enactments regulating federal convictions and sentences.