Third Circuit Rejects U.S. Sentencing Commission Amended Compassionate Release Policy
In a ruling on November 11, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rejected the amended compassionate release policy published by the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC) and declared that a Pennsylvania prisoner was not eligible for early release based on Congress’s nonretroactive statutory amendments that decrease penalties for crimes.
In 2003, then 22-year-old Daniel Rutherford committed two armed robberies in Philadelphia, leading to his conviction for numerous felonies, including two counts of using a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1). At the time of his sentencing, the penalty for the first violation of § 924(c) was a mandatory term of seven years in prison, and each subsequent violation carried an enhanced mandatory term of 25 years to run consecutively. As a result, Rutherford received a 32-year sentence for the two §924(c) violations alone. The district court imposed a term of 125 months on the remaining convictions to run consecutively, bumping his total sentence to roughly 42.5 years.
But in 2018, Congress amended § 924(c) when it passed the First Step Act (FSA), Public L. No. 115-391, 132 Stat. 5194 (2018). Prior to that amendment, defendants like Rutherford faced the 25-year mandatory minimum even when convicted of a subsequent § 924(c) violation at the same time as the first offense—commonly referred to as the “stacking requirement.” The amendment eliminated this stacking requirement by imposing a consecutive 25-year term only when defendants had a previous § 924(c) conviction at the time they were sentenced for the current violation. Consequently, if Rutherford were sentenced under § 924(c) today, he would face no more than two consecutive terms of seven years for each violation, or 14 years—18 years less than the 32 years he received.
In a motion for sentence reduction that Rutherford filed pro se in the federal court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, he argued that the amendment to § 924(c) provided grounds for compassionate release under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i). While his motion was before the district court, the Third Circuit decided United States v. Andrews, 12 F.4th 255 (3d Cir. 2021), prohibiting the change to § 924(c) from being considered when determining eligibility for compassionate release. The district court thus denied Rutherford’s motion. He filed an appeal.
While it was pending before the Third Circuit, the USSC issued its April 2023 Policy Statement, amending U.S. Sentencing Guidelines (USSG) § 1B1.13(b) to allow district courts in limited circumstances to consider the amendment to § 924(c) when determining eligibility for compassionate release. The Court then instructed the parties to submit briefings answering “to what extent, if any” the 2023 amendment abrogated the holding in Andrews.
Analysis and Conclusion
in the Third Circuit
The Court observed that the USSC is an independent agency of the federal judicial branch created by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. Its “fundamental purpose” is “to establish sentencing policies and practices for the Federal criminal justice system,” as laid out in 28 U.S.C. § 991(b)(1).
The definition of “extraordinary and compelling reasons” found in the compassionate release statute under consideration in this case, 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i), is an example of the USSC’s work. It was adopted in 2007, when only the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) was authorized to file a compassionate release motion on behalf of a prisoner. FSA opened the door 11 years later for prisoners to file compassionate-release motions themselves. Yet because the 2007 USSC Policy Statement was understood to apply only to motions filed by the BOP, it was considered inapplicable to prisoners’ motions in nearly every U.S. Circuit.
An updated Policy Statement following enactment of the FSA attempted to resolve this, but it took the USSC three more years—2019 to 2022—before it had enough members to establish a quorum and vote on the 2023 Policy Statement, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Mar. 2024, p.11.] Meanwhile, throughout most of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was “left to the courts to determine which circumstances qualified as extraordinary and compelling reasons for prisoner-initiated compassionate-release motions, and there was not uniform agreement,” as the Third Circuit recalled.
The 2023 Policy Statement said that courts could sometimes use a nonretroactive change in the law—like the amendment to § 924(c)—to make a compassionate release decision. Except that courts have taken a strict view of legislative intent in these instances, and they are loathe to make retroactive that which Congress did not. Had the Third Circuit done so, it could have overturned Andrews. Instead, it decided that the USSC had overstepped its authority.
The “amended Policy Statement conflicts with Andrews, and Andrews controls,” the appellate Court declared. “Therefore, the [FSA’s] change to § 924(c) cannot be considered in the analysis of whether extraordinary and compelling circumstances make a prisoner eligible for compassionate release.”
With that, Rutherford’s appeal was denied and the judgment of the district court affirmed. Before the Court he was represented by appointed counsel from attorneys Justin Berg, Geoffrey Block and Alex Treiger of Kellogg Hansen Todd Figel & Frederick in Washington, D.C. See: United States v. Rutherford, 120 F.4th 360 (3d Cir. 2024).
Related legal case
United States v. Rutherford
| Year | 2024 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 120 F.4th 360 (3d Cir. 2024) |
| Level | Court of Appeals |
| Appeals Court Edition | F.4th |