Rutherford v. United States

Overview

Daxton Rutherford received a 25-year mandatory minimum sentence in 2003 under a federal law that stacked firearm charges on top of drug charges, a provision Congress itself later acknowledged was too harsh and changed in the First Step Act of 2018. But not retroactively. Rutherford asked for compassionate release, arguing that serving a sentence Congress had deemed unjust qualifies as an extraordinary and compelling circumstance that courts can act on. The Supreme Court disagreed: Congress's deliberate choice not to make the fix retroactive is itself the answer to whether sentences under the old law are extraordinary, not a reason to get around it. Bryan covers it as a case about what 'compassionate release' actually covers, and as an illustration of the gap between Congress acknowledging a law was wrong and actually fixing it for the people already inside.

Facts

Daniel Rutherford was 25 years old when he committed two armed robberies in 2003, stealing a watch and about $1,300 in jewelry and cash. No shots were fired. Because he carried a gun during each robbery, he got stacked mandatory minimums under federal law: 7 years for the first count, then a mandatory 25 years on top of that for the second. Total sentence: over 42 years. Congress fixed that stacking rule in 2018, when it passed the First Step Act. Under the new law, Rutherford would have faced 14 years. But Congress didn't make the fix retroactive, so Rutherford kept serving his 42-year sentence and asked a federal court for compassionate release.

Issue

Whether the First Step Act of 2018's amendment to 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). Eliminating mandatory consecutive sentences for multiple § 924(c) counts charged in a single indictment. Applies retroactively to defendants serving sentences imposed before the Act's enactment.

Rule

Under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), a defendant who uses a firearm during a crime of violence or drug trafficking crime faces mandatory consecutive terms. Historically stacked across multiple counts in the same proceeding. The First Step Act of 2018 prospectively eliminated stacking by providing that the mandatory 25-year consecutive term for a 'second or subsequent' violation applies only if the prior conviction was final before the current offense. Retroactive application of new sentencing rules is analyzed under Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989); substantive rules that narrow the range of conduct punishable by law apply retroactively, while new rules of criminal procedure generally do not.

Analysis

Congress had a problem it knew about for years. The way §924(c) was written, a defendant convicted of two gun counts in a single case got hammered twice: 7 years mandatory for the first, then 25 years mandatory, consecutive, for the second. A repeat offender who committed two separate crimes over time faced the same math. Congress eventually decided that was too severe for first-timers caught up in a single case, and it fixed the rule in the First Step Act of 2018.

The problem was the fix only applied going forward. People who had already been sentenced, like Rutherford, stayed right where they were. That left a two-tier system: one group serving sentences everyone agreed were too harsh, another group sentenced under the corrected law. For Rutherford, the gap was 28 years. For his co-petitioner Johnnie Carter, who had three stacked counts from a 2007 bank robbery spree, the gap was 36 years. Carter's co-conspirators who took plea deals got 10 to 23 years. Carter got 70.

Compassionate release is the mechanism Congress created for courts to reduce a sentence mid-term when circumstances warrant. Before 2018, only the Bureau of Prisons could trigger it. The First Step Act opened the door for prisoners to file directly. Rutherford and Carter walked through that door and argued the sentencing disparity created by Congress's own fix was the extraordinary and compelling reason they needed.

The Sentencing Commission backed them up. In 2023, the Commission amended its guidelines to add "unusually long sentence" as a recognized ground for compassionate release, specifically allowing courts to consider nonretroactive changes in law when those changes would produce a "gross disparity." That amendment was the formal policy vehicle for the argument Rutherford and Carter were making.

Conclusion

The Court held 6-3 that a nonretroactive change in sentencing law cannot serve as an extraordinary and compelling reason for compassionate release, even when the gap between the old and new sentence is measured in decades. The ruling invalidates the Sentencing Commission's 2023 guideline to the extent it allows courts to consider such disparities, and locks in a two-tier system for people sentenced before and after the First Step Act.