A federal defendant may obtain compassionate release if a district court finds, among other things, that “extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant such a reduction” to his or her sentence. In Fernandez v. United States, the Supreme Court rejected that a defendant’s arguments questioning the validity of his conviction could count as an extraordinary and compelling reason for compassionate release. And in Rutherford v. United States, the court held that, after Congress decided to make nonretroactive a change to the mandatory minimum for a federal firearm offense, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), that penalty change could not alone or in combination with other factors constitute an extraordinary and compelling reason for compassionate release.
The majority opinions in both Fernandez and Rutherford were authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh. In Fernandez, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, concurred in the result, relying on a narrower ground: a motion for compassionate release cannot justify a reduced sentence if it relies solely on facts a court already considered when imposing sentence. Since Fernandez’s arguments involved those he had been making since trial, Sotomayor and Kagan would have denied relief on that basis. Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson dissented in Fernandez, reasoning that the compassionate release statute confers broad discretion on district judges. And in Rutherford, Sotomayor and Kagan joined Jackson in dissent.
Compassionate release cannot displace habeas relief
Joe Fernandez was convicted for killing two gang members and argued at trial and afterwards that he had been framed. According to him, his cousin and alleged co-conspirator, Patrick Darge, who testified against him at trial, was trying to protect the real shooter, Darge’s brother. The jury rejected Fernandez’s arguments, and the district court and court of appeals repeatedly turned aside those points and similar challenges to his conviction. Nevertheless, years later, the district judge granted Fernandez’s compassionate release relying in part on the judge’s misgivings about Darge’s testimony.
Barrett’s opinion for the court concluded that a defendant’s challenge to a conviction could not qualify as an extraordinary and compelling reason for compassionate release. The court reasoned that allowing challenges to the validity of a conviction through compassionate release would circumvent the procedural and substantive limits on habeas relief in 28 U.S.C. § 2255, which is specifically designed for such challenges. For example, motions under Section 2255 are subject to a one-year statute of limitations, do not generally permit relitigation of a previously rejected claim, and must demonstrate that an applicable substantive law entitles the defendant to relief. According to the court, the compassionate release statute could not be used to free a defendant from those limitations on relief in Section 2255. Rather, Barrett explained that the court “will not set [the compassionate release statute] and § 2255 at cross-purposes when we can construe them ‘in harmony.’”
Barrett emphasized that the word “extraordinary” means “‘most unusual,’ ‘far from common,’ and ‘having little or no precedent,’” and “[c]ompelling” means “tending to convince or convert by or as if by forcefulness of evidence.” Focusing on the meaning of “compelling,” Barrett explained that what counts as compelling depends on context, and a “reason is not ‘compelling’ if Congress has channeled it through the postconviction statutes.”
The majority emphasized that the compassionate release statute is intended for granting mercy based on personal circumstances, such as age or illness, rather than addressing legal wrongs. The court also noted that the Bureau of Prisons, which evaluates compassionate release motions, is not equipped to assess legal arguments about the validity of convictions.
Barrett further disputed Fernandez’s argument that he was not seeking to vacate his conviction, as would be the case under Section 2255, but merely sought a sentence reduction. According to Barrett, “[i]nstead of helping him, this argument highlights the mismatch between the error Fernandez alleges and the remedy he seeks.” But, in any event, Barrett rejected the premise of that argument: “to be clear: Fernandez is challenging the validity of his conviction, even though he is not asking to have it vacated or set aside.”
Compassionate release cannot override a congressional nonretroactivity determination
Daniel Rutherford and Johnnie Markel Carter sought compassionate release because of congressional changes to the penalties for their firearm convictions under Section 924(c). In the First Step Act of 2018, Congress reduced the penalties for successive Section 924(c) convictions when a defendant had not previously been convicted under that provision. Under the new, amended version of Section 924(c), Rutherford’s sentence for his multiple Section 924(c) convictions would have dropped from a minimum of 32 years to 14 years, and Carter’s minimum sentence of 57 years would have dropped to 21 years. But Congress chose to make the changes to Section 924(c) not retroactive, making the change inapplicable to defendants like Rutherford and Carter who had already been sentenced when the First Step Act was enacted.
Barrett explained that given the ordinary meaning of the phrase “extraordinary and compelling,” compassionate release requires a reason that is, at a minimum, “especially unusual and convincing.” As Barrett pointed out, Congress often makes statutory changes to federal penalties available only to future offenders and in fact has made that the default rule unless Congress expressly specifies otherwise. Thus, Congress’ decision to make the penalty change in Section 924(c) nonretroactive was not at all especially unusual or convincing. Moreover, according to the majority, “[t]reating the disparity resulting from § 924(c)’s amendment would undermine Congress’s choice to leave the sentence intact.”
Carter and Rutherford, like the dissent, emphasized that, when Congress authorized the U.S. Sentencing Commission to create a sentencing guideline governing compassionate release, Congress “included only one express limitation: ‘Rehabilitation of the defendant alone shall not be considered an extraordinary and compelling reason.’” In Barrett’s view, however, this limitation did not impliedly authorize a district court “to consider all other relevant information”: “A speaker’s choice to rule out one item does not always mean that the rest of the universe is on the table.”
Last, while the court acknowledged that the commission’s sentencing guideline purported to authorize compassionate release for nonretroactive changes in statutory penalties, this was invalid because it conflicted with the statutory scheme.
As well as altering the law on compassionate release in a number of lower courts, the Supreme Court’s rulings in Fernandez and Rutherford will likely encourage courts to focus on a defendant’s personal circumstances when considering his or her eligibility for compassionate release as opposed to taking sweeping, categorical views on what constitutes “extraordinary and compelling circumstances.”
