Rutherford v. United States

U.S. Supreme Court Oral Arguments

Oyez

Government & Organizations, National

4.7 • 661 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2025

⏱️ 81 minutes

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Summary

A case in which the Court will decide whether district courts may consider sentencing disparities created by the First Step Act’s nonretroactive reduction of mandatory minimum penalties—which can result in defendants serving sentences decades longer than those imposed for identical conduct today—when determining whether "extraordinary and compelling reasons" warrant a sentence reduction under the compassionate release statute, 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i).

Transcript

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0:00.0	Your argument next in case 24-820, Rutherford v. United States and the consolidated case.
0:07.4	Mr. Frederick?
0:08.2	Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court.
0:11.1	The 1984 Sentencing Reform Act confirmed that district courts have broad discretion to consider relevant information in imposing and modifying criminal sentences.
0:22.6	Section 994T limits only one category of information in compassionate release cases,
0:30.3	rehabilitation alone.
0:32.1	Section 3661 otherwise imposes, quote,
0:36.3	no limitation on the information a court may receive and consider during
0:42.1	sentencing.
0:43.2	The Third Circuit, however, imposed a judicial limitation on compassionate release.
0:48.7	It precluded district courts from considering a change in law that prospectively lowers sentences for offenses
0:56.1	like Mr. Rutherford's as one fact in the total mix of information for sentence modifications.
1:03.7	That categorical limitation should be reversed. The government concedes that age and illness
1:09.7	are ordinary circumstances for inmates.
1:13.0	Yet we, combined with other factors, age and illness may be extraordinary and compelling in appropriate situations.
1:20.7	Whether a change of law is ordinary, therefore, should not matter.
1:25.6	Congress did not expressly limit that as a factor in considering modification of extremely
1:31.4	long sentences.
1:33.2	The Court should reject the government's contention that the 2018 First Step Act impliedly repealed
1:40.4	the many provisions of the 1984 Act conferring broad discretion on district courts.
1:47.1	I welcome the Court's questions.
1:49.1	Mr. Frederick, Congress, it was Congress's choice not to make this retroactive.
	...

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