Daniel Rutherford is serving a 32-year mandatory minimum. His stacked convictions under 18 U.S.C. 924(c), the federal statute that adds firearm penalties on top of an underlying crime, produced that number. Congress later decided that conduct like his should carry a 14-year minimum, not 32. The First Step Act made the change. But Congress made it apply going forward only, not to people already sentenced. So the 18-year gap stood, and Rutherford asked a federal court to close it through compassionate release.
On May 28, 2026, the Supreme Court refused. In Rutherford v. United States, No. 24-820, the Court held 6-3 that when Congress declines to make a sentencing reform retroactive, the resulting disparity is not an 'extraordinary and compelling reason' for a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(1)(A). Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority. The ruling closes one of the most-used back doors for prisoners serving pre-First Step Act stacked gun time.
What the Court actually held
The compassionate-release statute, 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(1)(A), lets a federal court reduce a sentence when there are 'extraordinary and compelling reasons' to do so. For years, defense lawyers argued that a sentence Congress itself had since deemed too long was exactly that kind of reason. If lawmakers cut the minimum for identical conduct from 32 years to 14, the argument went, leaving someone to serve the longer term is both extraordinary and compelling.
The Court rejected that reading. As SCOTUSblog's opinion analysis details, the 6-3 majority held that a disparity produced by a nonretroactive change in law does not meet the statutory standard. The gap between what Rutherford got and what a defendant sentenced today would get is real, but under the Court's reasoning it is not the kind of reason 3582(c)(1)(A) was written to address.
The reasoning: non-retroactivity is the default
The majority's logic turns on a baseline. Non-retroactivity is the default rule in federal sentencing. When Congress changes a penalty, the change ordinarily reaches future cases, not closed ones, unless lawmakers say otherwise. Because that is the norm, the Court reasoned, a disparity that flows from it is ordinary, not extraordinary. It reflects a deliberate line Congress drew: relief for some prisoners, not others.
Barrett framed compassionate release as a tool focused on the person, not the law. The inquiry, she wrote, is about 'how a defendant's personal circumstances have changed and who that defendant has now become,' not 'the crime itself, the proof of that crime, or changes in the law governing either.' Under that framing, a legal change Congress chose not to extend backward is outside the statute's purpose. The disparity is the predictable result of a choice lawmakers made, so it cannot be the surprise the words 'extraordinary and compelling' contemplate.
The Sentencing Commission takes a hit
The decision did more than reject Rutherford's individual argument. The Court also invalidated the U.S. Sentencing Commission's 2023 policy statement to the extent it authorized courts to treat nonretroactive changes in law as a basis for relief. That policy statement had given judges express room to weigh a later legal change in the compassionate-release calculus. The Court found it conflicted with the statutory scheme and could not stand where it did so.
That part of the ruling matters because the policy statement had been a foundation for lower-court grants. Removing it strips defense lawyers of the regulatory text they had leaned on, and it sets the ceiling for what district judges may consider.
Who this hits
The people most directly affected are prisoners serving pre-First Step Act stacked 924(c) terms. Stacking is what built Rutherford's 32 years: multiple firearm counts charged in a single case, each carrying a consecutive mandatory penalty, so the numbers compound fast. The First Step Act narrowed when those penalties stack, which is why a defendant sentenced after the Act for comparable conduct can face far less time. Rutherford forecloses the sentence-disparity argument for that group. The fact that an identically situated defendant sentenced today would serve far less is, after this ruling, not a ground for relief on its own.
What is left
Compassionate release is narrowed, not erased. According to the National Law Review's practitioner analysis, individualized grounds remain available: serious medical conditions and terminal illness, advanced age, and family or caregiving circumstances, along with the broader totality-of-circumstances assessment of who a defendant has become in prison. Those are the arguments that survive, because they speak to the person rather than to a change in the law.
Beyond compassionate release, two other avenues remain. A motion under Section 2255 is the standard route to challenge a federal sentence or conviction where the grounds fit that statute. And executive clemency, a pardon or commutation, sits outside the courts entirely. Defense-side analysis from LISA Legal Info Services frames these as the principal paths left for prisoners serving old stacked time, with compassionate release now confined to individualized factors rather than legal-change arguments.
The companion case: Fernandez v. United States
The Court decided a second compassionate-release case the same day. In Fernandez v. United States, the justices held that compassionate release is not a proper vehicle for actual-innocence or wrongful-conviction claims. Those claims must go through habeas corpus instead. Justice Jackson dissented in Fernandez.
Read together, the two decisions narrow the statute from opposite directions. Rutherford takes changes in the law off the table. Fernandez takes innocence claims off the table. What is left is the individualized core: medical, age, and family circumstances, and the question of who the defendant has become.
The dissent
Justice Sotomayor dissented in Rutherford, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson. The dissent's concern is fairness. Two people who engaged in the same conduct can now serve sentences that differ by 18 years based only on the date of sentencing, a line Congress drew and then declined to erase for those on the wrong side of it. To the dissenters, that gap is precisely the kind of result the compassionate-release safety valve exists to address, and reading it out of the statute leaves identical conduct punished by vastly different terms.
Takeaway for defense practitioners and affected families
If you or a family member is serving a pre-First Step Act stacked 924(c) sentence, the strategy has changed. The argument that Congress already cut the minimum is no longer a basis for compassionate release standing on its own. Motions built on that disparity will not succeed after Rutherford.
What can still work is an individualized case. Document medical conditions, age, and family or caregiving needs. Build the record of rehabilitation and changed circumstances that speaks to who the person has become, the inquiry the majority said the statute is actually about. Where the facts fit, evaluate a Section 2255 motion. And for the cases where the courts now offer no path, executive clemency becomes the remaining option. The door Rutherford closed was a wide one. The doors that remain are narrower and demand a more specific, person-focused showing.
Related reading
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Sources
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Court rejects broad interpretation of compassionate release statute, SCOTUSblog opinion analysis
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Rutherford v. United States (No. 24-820), SCOTUSblog case page
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In Two Sentencing Cases, Supreme Court Sets Limits on Compassionate Release, National Law Review
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Compassionate Release Lessons from Rutherford, LISA Legal Info Services
Note: This article contains AI-assisted content and has been reviewed by our editorial team.
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