Durbin, Booker Urge Supreme Court To Maintain Of Landmark Bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform Law In Fernandez V. United States
In newly filed amicus brief, the Senators urge the Justices to reverse a Second Circuit judgement that would restrict compassionate release and run afoul of Congressional intent
CHICAGO – U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court urging the justices to maintain the strength of their landmark bipartisan criminal justice reform law, the First Step Act.
In the upcoming case Fernandez v. United States, the justices will consider whether there are limitations on what circumstances may serve as the extraordinary and compelling reasons that allow district courts, on a case-by-case basis, to consider granting incarcerated individuals’ requests for compassionate release. Joe Fernandez is currently serving a mandatory life sentence for a crime he maintains he did not commit. In 2021, a district court judge determined that there were “extraordinary and compelling reasons” to reduce Fernandez’s sentence and did so. The Second Circuit reversed this decision.
The Senators outlined Congressional intent when authoring the text of the law, which clearly sought to expand the ability of district courts to consider compassionate release, writing: “Under 18 U.S.C. § 3582, district courts are vested with authority to grant requests for compassionate release upon a prisoner’s showing of an extraordinary and compelling reason warranting relief. Compassionate release is an exercise in leniency addressed to the district court’s sound discretion. And in the First Step Act, Congress modified section 3582 with the express intention of ‘Increasing the Use and Transparency of Compassionate Release,’ § 603(b), 132 Stat. 5239. The question presented here is whether, in deciding a request for compassionate release, courts may consider grounds that could also be alleged as grounds for vacatur of a sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. The Act’s text and purpose, as well as established principles of federal sentencing law, show that the answer is yes.”
The Senators further elaborated, writing: “Section 3582’s text gives district courts authority to consider requests for compassionate release, with no restriction on the slate of extraordinary and compelling reasons that could warrant relief. The sole constraint Congress imposed on the grounds that may qualify as extraordinary and compelling—that rehabilitation alone will not suffice, 28 U.S.C. § 994(t)—in no way bars consideration of other grounds that could also support relief under section 2255. Indeed, Congress’s decision to expressly bar only one ground from consideration—and even then to allow consideration of that ground together with other factors—evinces Congress’s intent not to bar courts from considering other grounds, including those that could also support relief under section 2255.”
The Senators then highlighted contradictions in the Second Circuit’s ruling, writing: “As the foregoing makes clear, the Second Circuit erred in concluding that petitioner Joe Fernandez could not seek compassionate release on the basis of potential innocence simply because his claim could also be brought under section 2255. The court overlooked that compassionate release and habeas are distinct avenues for relief, with different purposes, bases for relief, and remedies. And even if section 3582 and section 2255 could be read to overlap, the Second Circuit should have avoided any conflict and harmonized the provisions by reading section 3582 to cover requests forleniency based on a district court’s individualized review of the prisoner’s circumstances and section 2255 to encompass claims asserting legal error in a conviction or sentence.”
The Senators then wrote: “The Second Circuit’s judgment should be reversed.”
Click here for the Senators’ full amicus brief.
Championed by Durbin, Booker, and U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Mike Lee (R-UT), the First Step Act was signed into law in 2018 and serves as a beacon for “smart on crime” policies. The law makes the Fair Sentencing Act’s reforms retroactive, as well as:
- Requires the Department of Justice to develop a risk and needs assessment system to assess the recidivism risk of all prisoners, place them in programs and activities to reduce risk, and permit early transition into prerelease custody based on earned time credits;
- Reduces mandatory minimum sentences for some drug trafficking offenses;
- Expands the safety valve to allow judges to sentence low-level, nonviolent drug offenders with minor criminal histories to less than the required mandatory minimums; and
- Authorizes incarcerated individuals to file compassionate release motions in federal court.
These reforms have been tremendously successful. As noted in a January 2024 hearing, of the 44,671 incarcerated adults then-released under First Step Act reforms, only 9.7 percent had been arrested for new crimes. By comparison, the overall Bureau of Prisons recidivism rate currently stands at around 45 percent. To date, there have been 4,162 retroactive sentence reductions and 4,867 compassionate release motions granted.
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