WASHINGTON, DC – Following oral argument at the Supreme Court this morning in Fernandez v. United States, a case in which the Court is considering the scope of a sentencing judge’s discretion to grant compassionate release under the Sentencing Reform Act, Constitutional Accountability Center Senior Appellate Counsel Smita Ghosh issued the following reaction:

Drawing on a centuries-long tradition of granting wide discretion to judges when imposing sentences, the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 allows federal judges to reduce a previously imposed sentence when they conclude that there are “extraordinary and compelling reasons” to do so. This part of the statute, often called the “compassionate release” provision, was at issue in the Court’s oral argument today. Specifically, the Court considered whether a sentencing judge can rely on his “disquiet” about a verdict in concluding that “extraordinary and compelling reasons” warrant a sentence reduction.

The Court should hold that it can. As CAC’s brief in this case made clear, Congress enacted the compassionate release provision in response to requests from sentencing judges for the broad authority to take a “second look” at previously imposed sentences to prevent unfairness. In other words, the point of the provision was to enable judges to exercise the power to deal with what one congressman described as “the very exceptional situation where someone obviously slips through the cracks and gets a much longer sentence.”

This congressional plan was front and center in today’s argument. Justice Jackson, for example, echoed our brief to explain that Congress’s “design” of the compassionate release provision was to create a broad “safety valve” for sentences that, on second look, were too long.

To confer this discretion on sentencing judges, Congress used the phrase “extraordinary and compelling reasons,” which allows for what Justice Kavanaugh called a “capacious” inquiry. In 1984, as our brief explained, “extraordinary and compelling” meant a determination that was broad, individualized, and fact-dependent.

The Court should take the text and history of the Sentencing Reform Act seriously. Creating atextual limits on the meaning of “extraordinary and compelling” would not only affect federal prisoners seeking compassion—it would also undermine Congress’s plan in passing that law in the first place.