Hewitt v. United StatesHewitt v. United States
(Slip Opinion)
OCTOBER TERM, 2024
Syllabus
NOTE: Whеre it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
HEWITT v. UNITED STATES
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
No. 23-1002. Argued January 13, 2025—Decided June 26, 2025*
Before the First Step Act was enacted in 2018, federal judges were required to sentence first-time offenders convicted of violating
In 2009, petitioners Tony Hewitt, Corey Duffey, and Jarvis Ross were convicted of multiple counts of bank robbery and conspiracy to commit bank robbery, along with corresponding §924(c) offenses for use of a firearm during a crime of violence. Each petitioner received a mandatory 5-year sentence for his first §924(c) count of conviction and, despite being first-time offenders, each received 25-year mandatory sentences on every §924(c) count beyond his first. Thus, each petitioner‘s sentence exceeded 325 years. Petitioners successfully challenged some of their convictions on direct appeal, and the Fifth Circuit vacated petitioners’ sentences. In 2012, the District Court resentenced each petitioner to between 285 and 305 years on the counts that remained.
*Together with No. 23–1150, Duffey et al. v. United States, also on certiorari to the same court.
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In 2019, the Court held that the “crime of violence” definition the Government routinely used to support some §924(c) convictions was unconstitutionally vague. See United States v. Davis, 588 U. S. 445, 470. Because that holding potentially affected some of petitioners’ remaining convictions, the Fifth Circuit granted petitioners authorization to file a second or successive postconviction motion. The District Court then vacated the impacted §924(c) convictions, as well as petitioners’ sentences. When the District Court held resentencings for the remaining convictions, petitioners argued that the First Step Act‘s 5-year—not 25-year—mandatory minimum penalties applied. Petitioners argued they were entitled to retroactive application of the Act‘s more lenient penalties because a vacated prior sentence is not a sentence that “has . . . been imposed” for purposes of §403(b). The District Court disagreed and resentenced petitioners under the pre-Act sentencing scheme, giving them stacked 25-year mandatory minimums for each §924(c) count of conviction beyond their first. Petitioners thus each received sentences of 130 years or more.
On appeal, petitioners and the Government agreed that the First Step Act should have applied at petitioners’ resentencings. The Fifth Circuit denied their joint request for vacatur. In that court‘s view, §403(b) applies only “to defendants for whom ‘a sentence . . . ha[d] not been imposed’ as of the enactment date.” 92 F. 4th 304, 310. Because each petitioner had been sentenced (twice) prior to the Act‘s enactment, the panel concluded that petitioners were not eligible for the First Step Act‘s more lenient mandatory minimums.
Held: The judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded. Pp. 6–12.
92 F. 4th 304, reversed and remanded.
JUSTICE JACKSON delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, and III, concluding that under §403(b) of the First Step Act, a sentence “has . . . been imposed” for purposes of that provision if, and only if, the sentence is extant—i.e., has not been vacated. Thus, the Act‘s more lenient penalties apply to defendants whose previous §924(c) sentences have been vacated and who need to be resentenced following the Act‘s enactment. Pp. 6–12.
(a) The text of §403(b) and the nature of vacatur support this conclusion. Congress employed the present-perfect tense, requiring evaluation of whether “a sentence . . . has been imposed” upon the defendant, rather than the past-perfect tense that would exclude anyone upon whom a sentence “had” been imposed. The present-perfect tense can refer to “an act, state, or condition that is now completed” or “a past action that comes up to and touches the present” and thus conveys that the event in question continues to be true or valid. The Chiсago Manual of Style §5.132, p. 268. When used in either sense, the pre-sent-perfect tense addresses whether something has continuing relevance to the present, not merely whether it occurred as a historical fact. If an event is merely a relic of history because it was voided by a subsequent action, the past-perfect (not the present-perfect) tense is usually the more appropriate verb choice. The fact that adjacent provisions of §403 contain past-tense verbs only strengthens the conclusion that §403(b)‘s use of the present-perfect tense is meaningful. Pp. 6–10.
(b) Background principles regarding the legal effect of vacatur confirm that a sentence has been imposed for §403(b) purposes only so long as it remains valid. When interpreting statutes, the Court recognizes that Congress legislates against the backdrop of certain unexpressed presumptions. One such presumption is that vacated court orders are void ab initio and thus lack any prospective legal effect. A criminal defendant whose conviction has been vacated, for example, is to be treated going forward as though he were never convicted. By operation of legal fiction, the law acts as though the previous conviction never occurred. Section 403(b) reflects this commonsense understanding of background vacatur principles. Just as defendants with vacated prior felony convictions are not precluded from possessing weapons under the federal felon-in-possession ban, §403(b) retroactivity does not exclude from its scope those whose prior sentences were vacated. By authorizing retroactive application of the First Step Act‘s more lenient penalties on any eligible offender upon whom “a sentence . . . has not been imposed,” the text of §403(b) indicates that only past sentences with continued validity preclude application of the Act‘s new penalties. Pp. 10–12.
JACKSON, J., delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, and III, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and SOTOMAYOR, KAGAN, and GORSUCH, JJ., joined, and an opinion with respect to Parts IV and V, in which SOTOMAYOR and KAGAN, JJ., joined. ALITO, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which THOMAS, KAVANAUGH, and BARRETT, JJ., joined.
Opinion of the Court
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
TONY R. HEWITT, PETITIONER
v.
UNITED STATES
COREY DEYON DUFFEY, ET AL., PETITIONERS
v.
UNITED STATES
Nos. 23–1002 and 23–1150. Decided June 26, 2025
Before the First Step Act was enacted in 2018, federal judges were required to sentence certain first-time offenders convicted of violating
The question presented here concerns an edge case: What penalties apply when a §924(c) offender had been sеntenced as of the Act‘s enactment, but that sentence was subsequently vacated, such that the offender must face a post-
*THE CHIEF JUSTICE and JUSTICE GORSUCH join all but Parts IV and V of this opinion.
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Act resentencing? We hold that, under that circumstance, a sentence “has not been imposed” for purposes of §403(b). Thus, the First Step Act‘s more lenient penalties apply.
I
Title
In Deal v. United States, 508 U. S. 129 (1993), this Court interpreted that recidivism-related language to require an enhanced penalty for each and every §924(c) count of conviction beyond a defendant‘s first—even if those convictions were part of the same criminal prosecution. Id., at 132–137. As a result, a first-time offender convicted of two §924(c) counts would receive a mandatory 25-year sentence on the second count, “stacked” upon (i.e., running consecutively to) the first count‘s mandatory 5-year sentence, for a total of 30 years of imprisonment.1 And each additional §924(c) count would add another 25 years to that defendant‘s total term of incarceration. See id., at 131–132. Under this “stacking” interpretation of §924(c)‘s recidivism enhancement, sentences for §924(c) offenses ballooned rapidly to spаn decades or even centuries.
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On December 21, 2018, a supermajority of Congress enacted the First Step Act, a landmark piece of legislation that changed the federal criminal-sentencing system in numerous respects. See 132 Stat. 5194. Among other things, §403(a) of the First Step Act “clarif[ied]” that district court judges are not required to impose stacked 25-year sentences when sentencing first-time §924(c) offenders. Id., at 5221–5222 (capitalization deleted). Abrogating this Court‘s decision in Deal, the statute established instead that, for first-time offenders, 5-year mandatory minimums apply to each count of conviction.
The First Step Act also addressed the potential for retroactive application of this penalty reduction, by specifically identifying the §924(c) offenders to whom the Act applied. Ordinarily, because judges impose sentences based on the statutory penalties that exist at the time defendants commit their offenses,
“This section, and the amendments made by this section, shall apply to any offense that was committed before the date of enactment of this Act, if a sentence for the offense has not been imposed as of such date of enactment.” §403(b), 132 Stat. 5222.
II
In 2009, petitioners Tony Hewitt, Corey Duffey, and Jarvis Ross were convicted of multiple counts of bank robbery and conspiracy to commit bank robbery, along with corresponding §924(c) offenses for use of a firearm during a crime of violence. Each petitioner received a mandatory 5-year sentence as to their first §924(c) count of conviction. And, despite being first-time offenders, each received 25-year
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mandatory sentences on every §924(c) count beyond their first. Thus, in total, each petitioner‘s sentence exceeded 325 years. Roughly 25 of those years were due to the robbery offenses themselves, while the rest were attributable to stacked §924(c) counts.
Petitioners successfully challenged some of their convictions on direct appeal, and the Fifth Circuit accordingly vacated petitioners’ sentences.2 In 2012, the District Court resentenced each petitioner to between 285 and 305 years on the counts that remained—sentences that the Fifth Circuit affirmed on direct review. Petitioners also filed post-conviction motions under
After Congress passed the First Step Act in 2018, this Court held that the “crime of violence” definition the Government routinely used to support some §924(c) convictions was unconstitutionally vague. See United States v. Davis, 588 U. S. 445, 470 (2019). Because that holding potentially affected some of petitioners’ remaining convictions, the Fifth Circuit granted petitioners authorization to file a second or successive postconviction motion under
When the District Court held resentencings for the remaining convictions, petitioners argued that the First Step Act‘s 5-year—not 25-year—mandatory minimum penalties applied. Petitioners argued that they were entitled to retroactive application of the First Step Act‘s more lenient penalties because a vacated prior sentеnce is not a sentence that “has . . . been imposed” for purposes of §403(b).3 The
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District Court disagreed and resentenced petitioners under the pre-Act sentencing scheme, giving them stacked 25-year mandatory minimum sentences for each §924(c) count of conviction beyond their first. Petitioners thus each received sentences of 130 years or more—105 years of which were attributable to stacked §924(c) penalties.
On appeal, petitioners and the Government agreed that the First Step Act should have applied at petitioners’ resentencings. The parties thus jointly requested vacatur of petitioners’ sentences, which the Fifth Circuit denied. 92 F. 4th 304, 310 (2024) (case below). In that court‘s view,
We granted certiorari to decide whether §403(b) of the First Step Act confers the benefit of the Act‘s more lenient penalties to defendants facing post-Act resentencing following vacatur of their pre-Act sentence. 603 U. S. ___ (2024).4 Because the United States agrees with petitioners on the
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merits of their appeals, the Court appointed Michael H. McGinley as amicus curiae to defend the judgment below. 603 U. S. ___ (2024). He has ably discharged his responsibilities.
III
The Fifth Circuit held, and amicus and the dissent contend, that §403(b) excludes any defendant who was sentenced prior to the enactment date of the First Step Act—even if his sentence was later vacated. That is so, in their view, because the Act applies only “if a sentence for the offense has not been imposed аs of” the Act‘s enactment date, and a sentence “has . . . been imposed” upon that defendant as a matter of historical fact. 132 Stat. 5222 (emphasis added). But based on the text of §403(b) and the nature of vacatur, we conclude that a sentence has been imposed for purposes of that provision if, and only if, the sentence is extant—i.e., has not been vacated.
A
To understand why this is so, focus first on the language Congress used. Most notably, the operative phrase is not written in the past-perfect tense, excluding anyone upon whom a sentence “had” been imposed. Rather, Congress employed the present-perfect tense—thereby requiring evaluation of whether “a sentence . . . has . . . been imposed” upon the defendant. §403(b), 132 Stat. 5222 (emphasis added). In this context, that distinction makes a difference. See United States v. Wilson, 503 U. S. 329, 333 (1992) (“Congress’ use of a verb tense is significant in construing statutes“).
The present-perfect tense can refer to either (1) “an act, state, or condition that is now completed” or (2) “a past action that comes up to and touches the present.” The Chicago Manual of Style §5.132, p. 268 (17th ed. 2017) (emphasis
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added). But when used in either sense, the tense simultaneously “involves reference to both past and present.” R. Huddleston & G. Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language 143 (2002). That is, while “the primary focus is on the present,” the past maintains “current relevance.” Ibid.
Here is an example. Suppose the U. S. Olympic Committee enacted a rule stating that athletes may call themselves Olympic champions if a gold medal “has been awarded” to them. Pursuant to that rule, a U. S. sprinter who took first place in the 2016 Summer Olympics’ 100-meter finals could validly proclaim—today—that she is “an Olympic champion.” The existence of her win as a historical event triggers the rule‘s proper application, because it gives rise to the inference that the athlete remains an Olympic gold medalist at present, thereby justifying her continued use of the “Olympic champion” title. See ibid. (explaining that the relevant “connection with the present” here would be “that the resultant state still obtains now“).
But now imagine that the Olympic Committee stripped this sprinter of her medal after discovering that she used
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performance-enhancing drugs during the competition. Can that athlete, under the rule, still call herself an Olympic champion? The answer is no. Yes, she had been awarded such a medal, but it was revoked; the fact that she stood on the podium and was declared the winner in 2016 is inapposite for purposes of establishing whether she qualifies for Olympic-champion bragging rights under the rule today.6
When used in this way, the present-perfect tense conveys to a listener that the event in question continues to be true or valid. The dissent counters that, for purposes of the First Step Act, the relevant moment of analysis should not be the present, but rather the statute‘s date of enactment. See post, at 4–5. But that reframing is inconsistent with normal understandings of the present-perfect tense, which by definition focuses оn the present.7 Today, if an event is merely a
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(explaining that the past-perfect tense “represents an action as completed at some definite time in the past—that is, before some other past time referred to“); Chicago Manual of Style §5.133, at 268 (confirming that the past perfect “refers to an act, state, or condition that was completed before another specified or implicit past time or past action“). Our disqualified sprinter could thus still boast of her Olympic-champion status if the rule were, instead, that any athlete who “had been awarded” a gold medal was entitled to use that honorific.
The fact that adjacent provisions of §403 contain past-tense verbs only strengthens the conclusion that §403(b)‘s use of the present-perfect tense is meaningful. Cf. Barrett v. United States, 423 U. S. 212, 217 (1976) (emphasizing when Congress “used the present perfect tense in contrast to its use of the present tense” elsewhere in the statute). Section 404(c), for example, utilizes the simple past tense to address a defendant‘s prior sentencing. See 132 Stat. 5222 (“No court shall entertain a motion made under this section to reduce a sentence if the sentence was previously imposed or previously reduced in accordance with” the relevant amendments (emphasis added)). The past tense also features earlier in §403(b) itself. See ibid. (covering “any offense that was committed before the date of enactment of [the] Act” (emphasis added)). But the verb tense at issue here (“has been“) is consрicuously different—making only clearer that a past sentence must have a relevant connection to the present for purposes of the retroactivity provision.
Indeed, amicus and the dissent‘s historical-fact reading of §403(b) calls so naturally for the past-perfect tense that jurists who share this view often employ that tense by default. The Fifth Circuit below, for instance, stated that “the First Step Act applies to defendants for whom ‘a sentence ha[d] not been imposed’ as of the enactment date.” 92 F. 4th, at 310 (alteration in original). Other courts have
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construed §403(b) similarly. See, e.g., United States v. Jackson, 995 F. 3d 522, 525 (CA6 2021) (noting that “as of December 21, 2018, a sentence had been imposed” upon the defendant, even though it was later vacated). Congress of course “could have phrased its requirement in language that looked to the past . . . , but it did not choose this readily available option.” Gwaltney of Smithfield, Ltd. v. Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Inc., 484 U. S. 49, 57 (1987). The natural inference, then, is that Congress meant what it said, and, thus, that §403(b) covers only past sentences with continued legal validity, not those that have been vacated.
B
Background principles regarding the legal effect of vacatur confirm that a sentence has been imposed for §403(b) purposes only so long as it remains valid. When interpreting statutes, we “recogniz[e] that ‘Congress legislates against the backdrop,’ of certain unexpressed presumptions.” Bond v. United States, 572 U. S. 844, 857 (2014) (quoting EEOC v. Arabian American Oil Co., 499 U. S. 244, 248 (1991)). One such presumption is that vacated court orders are void ab initio and thus lack any prospective legal effect. See United States v. Ayres, 9 Wall. 608, 610 (1870) (“[V]acating the former judgment . . . render[s] it null
A criminal defendant whose judgment of conviction has been vacated, for example, is to be treated going forward as though he wеre never convicted. See Fiswick v. United States, 329 U. S. 211, 223 (1946) (confirming that one whose conviction is vacated “stand[s] in the position of any [person] who has been accused of a crime but not yet shown to have committed it“). Thus, if Congress were to pass a stimulus provision that gives checks to any small-business
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owner who “has not been convicted of fraud,” an owner would not be rendered ineligible on the basis of a fraud conviction that was overturned on appeal. While the owner had been convicted of fraud, that judgment was invalidated and therefore became legally inoperable. In other words, that vacated conviction is subsequently treated as no conviction at all. See North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U. S. 711, 721 (1969) (verifying that vacatur causes a conviction to be “wholly nullified and the slate wiped clean“).8
Section 403(b) reflects this “common-sense” understanding of background vacatur principles. Lewis v. United States, 445 U. S. 55, 61, n. 5 (1980). Just as defendants with vacated prior felony convictions are not precluded from possessing weapons under the federal felon-in-possession ban, §403(b) retroactivity does not exclude from its scope those whose prior sentences have been vacated. See ibid.;
By authorizing retroactive application of the First Step
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Act‘s more lenient penalties on any eligible offender upon whom “a sentence . . . has not been imposed,” the text of §403(b) indicates that only past sentences with continued validity preclude application of the Act‘s new penalties. A judge would thus correctly conclude at resentencing that, if an offender‘s past sentence has been vacated, a sentencе “has not been imposed” upon that offender for purposes of the First Step Act; hence, the court can impose a new sentence today.
IV
A
The context and enactment history of the First Step Act and §403(b) further
Sentencing judges had been among the harshest critics. Before the First Step Act was enacted, more than one veteran District Court Judge decried how the “stacking” punishment for first-time §924(c) offenders was “grossly disproportionate” and “shockingly harsh given the nature” of the offenses and a defendant‘s “lack of criminal history.” United States v. Washington, 301 F. Supp. 2d 1306, 1309 (MD Ala. 2004) (lamenting the requirement of a 40-year term of imprisonment for a 22-year-old first-time offender, and remarking that it was “the worst and most unconscionable sentence [the judge] ha[d] given in his 23 years on the federal bench“).9 Judges on the Federal Courts of Appeals
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also “join[ed] in the litany of criticisms directed towards” §924(c)‘s penalty regime for requiring the imposition of sentences that were “‘out of this world.‘” United States v. Hunter, 770 F. 3d 740, 746–747 (CA8 2014) (Bright, J., concurring); see also United States v. Hungerford, 465 F. 3d 1113, 1118–1119 (CA9 2006) (Reinhardt, J., concurring in judgment) (deeming “irrational, inhumane, and absurd” the mandatory 159-year sentence imposed upon “a 52-year-old mentally disturbed woman with no prior criminal record” who had otherwise “led a spotless, law-abiding existence“); United States v. Smith, 756 F. 3d 1179, 1181 (CA10 2014) (Gorsuch, J.) (observing that it was “no fanciful possibility” that §924(c) stacking would lead to “prison term[s] of many decades” that were “certain to outlast the defendant‘s life and the lives of every person now walking the planet“).
Meanwhile, other institutional stakeholders raised similarly pointed objections to Deal‘s stacking system. In its annual report to Congress, the United States Sentencing Commission criticized how §924(c) stacking had “result[ed] in excessively severe and unjust sentences,” particularly in cases in which “the offense did not involve any physical harm or threat of physical harm to a person.” U. S. Sentencing Commission, Report to the Congress: Mandatory Minimum Penalties in the Federal Criminal Justice System 359 (Oct. 2011). The United States Judicial Conference expressed similar concerns.10
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The problem, as all seemed to recognize, was not that federal law permitted judges to impose lengthy sentences with respect to first-time §924(c) offenders—it was that the statute, as Deal had interpreted it, required it. District judges could not adhere to the statutory command that they
With sentencing judges routinely imposing what amounted to mandatory life sentences on first-time §924(c) offenders, in 2018, Congress eventually heeded the public
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outcry. An “extraordinary political coalition” formed, as members of Congress worked together to develop “a bipartisan sentencing and prison reform bill” to address §924(c) stacking. 164 Cong. Rec. S7645 (Dec. 17, 2018) (statement of Sen. Durbin); see also Brief for Sen. Richard J. Durbin et al. as Amici Curiae 5–8 (Senators Brief ). The First Step Act was the much-anticipated, much-heralded fruit of their labor—and one that many in Congress hoped would yield immediate benefits. See id., at 17.12
B
It is noteworthy for present purposes that the statute Congress crafted to depart from the much-maligned “stacking” sentencing regime did so in a two-part fashion. First, §403(a) eliminated 25-year stacked sentences for first-time §924(c) offenders. Second, §403(b) addressed the retroactivity of the §403(a) benefit in a “‘targeted way,‘” so as to ensure that judges were no longer constrained to impose 25-year stacked sentences on first-time §924(c) offenders moving forward. Id., at 15 (quoting 164 Cong. Rec., at S7645 (statement of Sen. Durbin)).
That second part of Congress‘s response—the focus of the cases before us today—was highly consequential. By displacing the background rule that changes to sentencing statutes apply only prospectively (to defendants who commit their offenses after the law‘s effective date), Congress made clear that the First Step Act‘s more lenient penalties were to apply to some “‘pending‘” cases, too—i.e., the new
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Senators Brief 15 (quoting §403(b), 132 Stat. 5222). Per §403(b), any defendant who still needed to be sentenced as of the First Step Act‘s effective date would receive the Act‘s more lenient penalties. Thus, as a practical matter, judges would no longer have to impose harsh “stacked” sentences upon first-time §924(c) offenders.
Notably, because §403(b) retroactivity was only partial, it differed substantially from the full retroactivity Congress employed with respect to other kinds of penalty changes it instituted in the First Step Act. See, e.g., §404(b), 132 Stat. 5222; Terry v. United States, 593 U. S. 486, 491 (2021) (explaining that Congress made the First Step Act‘s statutory changes to the crack-cocaine minimums fully retroactive, and thus “gave courts authority to reduce the sentences” of previously sentenced crack offenders, where applicable). Congress certainly had the full-retroactivity option before it when it crafted §403; indeed, earlier versions of the Act would have extended §403(a) benefits to at least some §924(c) offenders who were already sentenced. See, e.g., Sentencing Reform Act of 2015, H. R. 3713, 114th Cong., 2d Sess., §5(b)(2), pp. 14–16 (2016) (providing for reduced terms of imprisonment in “certain past cases” (capitalization and italics deleted)); Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2017, S. 1917, 115th Cong., 1st Sess., §104(b)(2), pp. 13–15 (2017) (permitting “sentence reduction” for certain “past cases” (capitalization deleted)). But authorizing the reopening of closed cases upends finality and can also be administratively burdensome. See Senators Brief 15 (noting that Congress forwent full retroactivity to serve “judicial economy” and “preserv[e] sentences that were actually valid and final“). Section 403‘s partial retroactivity avoided these problems, while still advancing Congress‘s aim of changing how first-time §924(c) defendants are sentenced.
In short, §403(b)—a middle-ground solution to the prob-
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lem of harsh “stacked” sentences for first-time §924(c) offenders—reflected a balance of Congress‘s policy objectives. By leaving intact §924(c) sentences that judges had already imposed, Congress reinforced its interest in finality and avoided burdening district courts with additional litigation. But it also substantially advanced its goal of returning a significant amount of sentencing discretion to district court judges moving forward, by giving retroactive effect to the Act‘s more lenient penalties for those first-time §924(c) offenders who had yet to be sentenced.
V
The reading of §403(b) that petitioners and the Government promote thus coheres with the text, context, and history of that provision. Under this view, First Step Act sentencing benefits apply to all first-time §924(c) offenders sentenced after the Act‘s enactment date (whether it is an initial sentencing or a resentencing). This means that §403(b)‘s retroactivity line falls between those past §924(c) offenders with final sentences that are still in effect, on the one hand, and those who still need to be sentenced for their §924(c) offense, on the other. The former are stuck with their old sentences, for finality reasons, while the latter are eligible for First Step Act benefits at resentencing, since they have to be sentenced regardless.
Under amicus and the dissent‘s reading, however, there exists a further line of division within the group of offenders who currently lack a sentence—separating those who have been sentenced previously for the §924(c) offense at issue from those
Carving up the yet-to-be-sentenced group of offenders in this way does not reflect Congress‘s intent. See Senators Brief 17 (a bipartisan group of Senators, explaining that
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“[t]he considerations animating the First Step Act‘s enactmеnt undermine any suggestion that Congress intentionally excluded from Section 403‘s reach pre-Act offenders whose sentences are invalid as a matter of law“). Nor does it comport with the statutory scheme that Congress enacted, for two primary reasons.
First, the text and context of
By contrast, requiring judges to impose Deal-era stacked
Second, the reading of
* * *
Under the interpretation of
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE ALITO, with whom JUSTICE THOMAS, JUSTICE KAVANAUGH, and JUSTICE BARRETT join, dissenting.
In the First Step Act of 2018, Congress reduced the mandatory-minimum sentence for certain firearm offenses. Like all changes to sentencing law, this amendment applies prospectively. But Congress also thought it wise to apply the amendment to “Pending Cases.” Of course, “Pending Cases” does not mean “All Cases,” and Congress limited the retroactive reach of the amendment to defendants for whom “a sentence for the offense has not been imposed as of [the Act‘s] date of enactment.” 132 Stat. 5222. In other words, the amendment applies retroactively only if the defendant had yet to be sentenced when Congress passed the Act in 2018. Petitioners, who were sentenced in 2010, do not come close to meeting that test.
Today, the Court disfigures the Act in order to reach a different result. Its interpretation relies on two necessary premises. First, the Court insists that what Congress really meant to say is that the amendment applies retroactively unless “a legally valid sentence” is in force on the Act‘s date of enactment. Second, to get around the fact that petitioners did have “legally valid” sentences when the Act was passed, the Court invents a novel “vacatur” principle. The Court tells us that the 2022 vacatur of petitioners’ sentences rendered those sentences legal nullities from their inception. The Court‘s interpretation thus unspools the Act‘s carefully wound retroactivity command to mean that any defendant whose sentence is vacated at any time and for any reason may claim the benefit of the Act‘s reduced mandatory minimum. But nothing in the text or broader context supports such a boundless interpretation. Indeed, the portions of today‘s decision that command the votes of only three Justices give the game away. Animating the Court‘s atextual interpretation is a thinly veiled desire to march in the parade of sentencing reform. But our role is to interpret the statute before us, not overhaul criminal sentencing.
I
Sixteen years ago, a jury convicted petitioners Corey Duffey, Tony Hewitt, and Jarvis Ross of multiple
Petitioners’ sentences had thus long been final when Congress enacted the First Step Act on December 21, 2018. The Act introduced a bevy of sentencing reforms, including an amendment that eliminated the practice of
“APPLICABILITY TO PENDING CASES.—This section, and the amendments made by this section, shall apply to any offense that was committed before the date of enactment of this Act, if a sentence for the offеnse has not been imposed as of such date of enactment.” 132 Stat. 5222.
On the “date of enactment,” petitioners’ 2012 sentences remained in full force. As such, petitioners did not move to reduce their sentences in the immediate aftermath of the Act‘s passage.
But several strokes of good fortune soon came petitioners’ way. The year after Congress passed the First Step Act, we held in United States v. Davis, 588 U. S. 445, 448 (2019), that
II
As all agree, petitioners’ argument requires us to interpret what Congress meant when it said “a sentence for the offense has not been imposed as of [the Act‘s] date of enactment.” What first jumps out about this provision is that Congress used the present-perfect tense in the phrase “has not been imposed.” The present-perfect tense “denotes an act, state, or condition that” is either (1) “now completed” or (2) “continues up to the present.” The Chicago Manual of Style §5.132, p. 268 (17th еd. 2017).
Context often indicates whether a speaker is using the former sense of the present-perfect tense (e.g., “he has been awarded a trophy“) or the latter sense of the present-perfect tense (e.g., “he has trained for a trophy for the last three years“). See B. Garner, The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation 97 (2016). Consider the following example. Suppose I ask a man passing by a courthouse, “Has a sentence been imposed on John Smith?” He could respond either, “Yes, on July 1” or “Yes, since July 1.”
The First Step Act‘s “grammatical structure conceivably leaves some room for either reading,” United States v. Uriarte, 975 F. 3d 596, 607 (CA7 2020) (en banc) (Barrett, J., dissenting), but petitioners lose either way. On one hand, the phrase “a sentence . . . has . . . been imposed as of [the Act‘s] date of enactment” could refer to the historical fact that a district court imposed a sentence before the Act‘s passage, regardless of whether that sentence remains legally valid in the future. This “historical-fact interpretation” plainly forecloses relief for petitioners because, as no one disputes, the District Court first imposed their sentences well before the Act‘s passage.1 On the other hand, “a sentence . . . has . . . been imposed as of [the Act‘s] date of enactment” could mean that a defendant was subjеct to a legally valid sentence that continued to be in force on the Act‘s enactment date. But again, petitioners did have legally valid sentences “as of [the Act‘s] date of enactment,” so they lose under this “legal-validity interpretation” of the Act too.2
Realizing the Act‘s use of the present-perfect tense alone cannot help petitioners, the Court invents a novel “vacatur” principle to supercharge the legal-validity interpretation. The Court tells us that the First Step Act incorporates the background “presumption” that “vacated court orders are void ab initio and thus lack any prospective legal effect.” Ante, at 10. This revamped version of the legal-validity interpretation means that “a sentence . . . has . . . been imposed as of [the Act‘s] date of enactment” if a defendant receives a legally valid sentence before the Act‘s passage and that sentence is never, at any future time, vacated. Under this view, the
The Court‘s vacatur-inflected legal-validity interpretation thus rests on two necessary premises. First, the legal-validity interpretation is superior to the historical-fact interpretation. Second, the Act incorporates the “vacatur” principle. If either premise falters, so does the Court‘s interpretation. In my view, there is little doubt that both of the necessary premises fail.
III
A
To start, the most plausible reading of the retroactivity provision is that “a sentence . . . has . . . been imposed” when, as a matter of historical fact, a district court has sentenced a defendant. Subsequent legal changes—such as the vacatur of a previously imposed sentence—do not change the purely historical fact that a defendant was, at a point in time, actually sentenced. When the Act asks whether a sentence “has . . . been imposed,” it refers to the unchanging historical fact of sentencing and whether it occurred before the “date of enactment.”
To see why, begin with the word “imposed.” A “sentence is imposed” when there is a “pronouncement of judgment.” Lott v. United States, 367 U. S. 421, 426 (1961); see Young v. United States, 943 F. 3d 460, 463 (CADC 2019) (“[I]n ordinary usage a sentence is ‘imposed’ when the district court pronounces it“). The Sentencing Reform Act treats the “imposition” of a sentence as the moment when a district court “state[s] in open court the reasons for . . . the particular sentence.”
Our cases and other provisions of Title 18 confirm that the word “imposed” marks the historical point at which a sentence is pronounced regardless of whether that sentence has continuing legal validity. For example, in the midst of a discussion about plenary resentencing (a topic of particular relevance to these cases), we once noted that “[i]n remanded cases . . . trial courts have imposed a sentence on the remaining counts longer than the sentence originally imposed on those particular counts.” Greenlaw v. United States, 554 U. S. 237, 253 (2008) (emphasis added). In another case, a joint opinion of the Court noted that the “death sentences imposed for armed robbery, however, were vacated.” Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 161–162 (1976) (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.) (emphasis added). In both instances, our use of “imposed” signified only that a court had, at some point in time, pronounced a sentence. Our use of “imposed” could not possibly be understood to refer to the legal validity of those later-invalidated sentences. Further, in other parts of Title 18, Congress uses “imposed” to signify the historical fact of a
Additional support for the historical-fact interpretation is found in Congress‘s use of the phrase “a sentence.” The word “a” is an “indefinite article” that “points to a nonspecific object, thing, or person that is not distinguished from the other members of a class.” B. Garner, Modern English Usage 1195 (5th ed. 2022) (Modern English Usage). “When used as an indefinite article, ‘a’ means ‘[s]ome undetermined or unspecified particular.‘” McFadden v. United States, 576 U. S. 186, 191 (2015) (quoting Webster‘s New Internal Dictionary 1 (2d ed. 1954)). In that sense, Congress‘s use of the indefinite article lends a broad construction to the word “sentence,” as if to say “any sentence” ever imposed, including a later-vacated sentence. In conjunction with the word “imposed,” the phrase “a sentence” thus puts the statutory focus on the existence of any kind of sentence pronounced in the record, regardless of that sentence‘s present legal status.
Indeed, contrary to the Court‘s suggestion, the word “sentence” does not ineluctably mean a “legally valid” sentence. Our own cases prove the point because we have often found it necessary to clarify whether a sentence is valid or invalid. See, e.g., Swarthout v. Cooke, 562 U. S. 216, 220 (2011) (per curiam) (“There is no right under the Federal Constitution to be conditionally released before the expiration of a valid sentence” (emphasis added)); Pollard v. United States, 352 U. S. 354, 357, 360 (1957) (“The only sentence that was entered at the 1952 hearing was the one of probation, admittedly invalid because of petitioner‘s absence” (emphasis added)); Richmond v. Lewis, 506 U. S. 40, 43 (1992) (“[P]etitioner‘s conviction was found valid but his sentence invalid” (emphasis added)); see also Uriarte, 975 F. 3d, at 607 (Barrett, J., dissenting) (“That is why it is perfectly coherent to describe the procedural posture of a case by saying, ‘a sentence was imposed last year, but it has since been vacated on appeal‘“). If Congress sought to narrow “a sentence” in a specialized way to indicate a legally valid sentence, it could have referred to “a final sentence,” “a legally valid sentenсe,” or more prosaically, “the sentence.” Accord, United States v. Hernandez, 107 F. 4th 965, 969 (CA11 2024).
Reading the retroactivity provision in context, the phrase “a sentence has not been imposed” most straightforwardly means that a district court has not, as a matter of historical fact, sentenced a defendant for his
The Court‘s failure to defend the legal-validity interpretation is thus an independently fatal blow to its holding.
B
Assuming the Court had proved up the legal-validity interpretation, it would still need to establish its “vacatur” principle. That is, it would still need to prove not only that the Act is concerned with a sentence‘s continuing legal validity up to the “date of enactment,” but also that the Act hinges on the continuing validity of a sentence after the date of enactment. The Court can prove as much only by inventing a “legal fiction” that a vacated sentence “never occurred.” Ante, at 10. But one need only scratch the surface of this purported “legal fiction” to understand how thoroughly unpersuasive it is.
As a preliminary matter, the Court‘s “vacatur” principle does not exist. The Court assures us that there is a well-established principle in the criminal law that “vacated court orders are void ab initio and thus lack any prospective legal effect.” Ibid. It derives this rule by over-reading a few creative turns of phrase in our cases. See ante, at 11 (citing North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U. S. 711, 721 (1969) (stating vacatur causes a conviction to be “‘wholly nullified and the slate wiped clean‘“); Pepper v. United States, 562 U. S. 476, 507 (2011) (noting vacatur “‘wipe[s] the slate clean‘“)). But a more careful reading of our precedents and other provisions in Title 18 indicates that vacatur does not erase the historical fact of a previously imposed conviction or sentence. Further, even if the “vacatur” principle exists, the *
Act‘s retroactivity provision does not incorporate it.
1
Our precedents foreclose the Court‘s “vacatur” principle. Take, for example, one of the cases the Court cites, Lewis v. United States, 445 U. S. 55 (1980). See ante, at 11. There, the defendant challenged his conviction under a federal statute prohibiting “‘[a]ny person who . . . has been convicted by a court of the United States or of a State‘” from “‘receiv[ing], possess[ing], or transport
Although it supports the petitioners in this appeal, the United States also concedes (albeit sheepishly in a footnote) that the Court‘s “general background legal principle that vacatur makes a sentence void from the start for all purposes” is “incorrect.” Brief for United States 27, n. 4 (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). As it acknowledges, lower courts routinely follow Lewis and uphold convictions despite the later vacatur of predicate offenses. See, e.g., Burrell v. United States, 384 F. 3d 22, 27–28 (CA2 2004) (“[I]t is the mere fact of [a prior] conviction at the time of the charged possession, not the reliability of the conviction, that establishes the
Moreover, as the United States also acknowledges, Lewis‘s logic crosses into the constitutional context. Consider Bravo-Fernandez v. United States, 580 U. S. 5 (2016), in which we considered the application of issue preclusion under the Double Jeopardy Clause when a jury returns inconsistent verdicts. It is well established that if a jury convicts on one count but acquits on another count involving the same conduct, the acquittal has no issue preclusive effect. See id., at 13. Likewise, if a jury acquits on one count but fails to reach agreement on another count, the acquittal has such an effect. See id., at 13–14. In Bravo-Fernandez, a jury convicted on one count but acquitted on others that were claimed to involve the same conduct. The conviction, however, was vacated due to “an unrelated legal error,” and the defendant argued that the Court should treat the conviction as if it had never occurred and that the acquittal had issue preclusive effect barring reprosecution. Id., at 9. We rejected this argument, holding that the conviction‘s later invalidation did not “erase” its historical existence for the purposes of issue preclusion because the vacatur did not “bear on the factual determinations actually and necessarily made by the jury.” Id., at 21 (internal quotation marks omitted). Bravo-Fernandez thus treated the historical fact of a later-vacated conviction as legally relevant, which is irreconcilable with the Court‘s “vacatur” principle.
The only “‘unexpressed presumptio[n]‘” I can derive from our cases and those from the courts of appeals is the opposite of the one the Court advances today. Ante, at 10 (quoting Bond v. United States, 572 U. S. 844, 857 (2014)).
2
Congress too has rejected the Court‘s “vacatur” principle. In the Sentencing Reform Act, Congress “se[t] forth a special . . . background principle” that is incompatible with the “vacatur” rule invented today. Dorsey v. United States, 567 U. S. 260, 275 (2012) (emphasis deleted).5 That is, after a sentence is vacated, a district court during resentencing must apply the Sentencing Guidelines that “were in effect on the date of the previous sentencing of the defendant prior to the appeal.”
3
Even assuming the “vacatur” principle is not a figment of the Court‘s imagination, it lacks any foothold in the Act‘s text. “When called on to resolve a dispute over a stаtute‘s meaning, this Court normally seeks to afford the law‘s terms their ordinary meaning at the time Congress adopted them.” Niz-Chavez v. Garland, 593 U. S. 155, 160 (2021). Of course, we sometimes look to principles beyond the four corners of a statute to understand the background against which Congress legislated. But we typically do so in discrete situations. For example, we look to background common-law principles to fill in obvious gaps in statutes, such as a missing mens rea element in a criminal statute. See, e.g., Staples v. United States, 511 U. S. 600, 619 (1994) (mens rea); Agency Holding Corp. v. Malley-Duff & Associates, Inc., 483 U. S. 143, 150 (1987) (statutes of limitations); Marx v. General Revenue Corp., 568 U. S. 371, 382 (2013) (attorney‘s fees and costs). Or we import extra-textual meaning when Congress employs a “term of art that had an established meaning under” a relevant “backdrop.” Stewart v. Dutra Constr. Co., 543 U. S. 481, 487 (2005).
The First Step Act fits neither mold, and the Court makes no effort in Part III–B to analyze how its “vacatur” principle maps on to the text. The Court points to no obvious gap in the Act‘s retroactivity provision that could be filled with “recognized” “background principles of construction.” Bond, 572 U. S., at 857. Nor does the Court suggest that the utterly ordinary words in the Act‘s retroactivity provision carry some specialized meaning related to vacatur. “In the absence of some strong contrary indication” of specialized meaning, we must assume that the ordinary meaning” of words like “sentence,” which captures both extant and vacated sentences, “controls.” Monsalvo Velázquez v. Bondi, 604 U. S. ___ (2025) (ALITO, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 4); see Part III-A, supra.
C
The superiority of the historical-fact interpretation and the nonexistence of the Court‘s “vacatur” principle are independent reasons to reject the Court‘s holding. But even if the matter were close, two more factors counsel against the Court‘s rule.
First, the retroactivity provision‘s title—“APPLICABILITY TO PENDING CASES“—advises against the Court‘s boundless interpretation. “[T]he title of a statute and the heading of a section аre tools available for the resolution of a doubt about the meaning of a statute.” Dubin v. United States, 599 U. S. 110, 120–121 (2023) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Yates v. United States, 574 U. S. 528, 552 (2015) (ALITO, J., concurring in judgment) (“Titles can be useful devices to resolve doubt about the meaning of a statute” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Here, the phrase “Pending Cases” suggests Congress was concerned with the finite population of defendants who, on the date of the First Step Act‘s enactment, lacked an initial sentence for
Second, the presumption against retroactivity further weighs against the Court‘s unnecessarily broad interpretation. The Federal Saving Statute sets forth “an important background principle of interpretation” that “a new criminal statute that ‘repeal[s]’ an older criminal statute shall not change the penalties ‘incurred’ under that older statute ‘unless the repealing Aсt shall so expressly provide.‘” Dorsey, 567 U. S., at 272, 274 (quoting
IV
After the Court is through with the text and nonexistent principles of vacatur, three Justices continue on for pages, sparing no effort, to extol the “much-anticipated, much-heralded” First Step Act. Ante, at 15. But what is the point of all this lauding? Perhaps realizing the weakness of their textual argument, the three Justices think it wise to spruce up the opinion. They attempt to do so by asserting that when a “bipartisan” “supermajority” of Congress passes “landmark” legislation, it intends to go big, down to the very last subsection (or here, application note to a subsection). Ante, at 3; ante, at 15 (opinion of JACKSON, J., joined by SOTOMAYOR and KAGAN, JJ.). So I gather they would have us broadly construe every atom of the “landmark” First Step Act in a way that furthers Congress‘s supposedly grand ambition to turn the page on “harsh” sentencing practices. Ante, at 16.
There is no “landmark” canon of construction requiring the Court to construe important legislation to its furthest possible implication. “[N]o legislation pursues its purposes at all costs.” American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant, 570 U. S. 228, 234 (2013) (quoting Rodriguez v. United States, 480 U. S. 522, 525–526 (1987) (per curiam)). Indeed, just last Term we rejected the same sort of “landmark” argument when interpreting a different provision of the First Step Act. See Pulsifer v. United States, 601 U. S. 124, 151-152 (2024). Experience shows that more often than not, “landmark” legislation reflects the necessary log-rolling of the legislative process, which prizes political compromise over statutory clarity. That reality cautions against the precise move the Court makes today: an inference that Congress hid in an “ancillary” and intentionally circumscribed provision a retroactivity command that would “alter the fundamental details” of how
The three-Justice opinion rattles off the public criticisms that supposedly spurred Congress to reform the practice of
Carried away with its enthusiasm for the changes effected by the First Step Act, the three Justices bestow an entirely undeserved windfall on the actual petitioners in these cases. Due to the especially violent nature of their robberies,7 petitioners were convicted of more than a dozen
In 2019 we decided Davis and provided a basis to set aside petitioners’
three Justices attribute today‘s outcome to grand congressional design coming to fruition, but in reality, petitioners’ change in fortune can be attributed only to the happenstance of legal developments with not the faintest relationship to the First Step Act.
* * *
The Court ignores Congress‘s intention to afford only limited retroactive relief to certain offenders under the First Step Act. Instead, the Court embraces an interpretation that has no limiting principle and affords petitioners a windfall. That is an indefensible result based on indefensible reasoning. I cannot agree with the Court‘s decision, so I must respectfully dissent.