In their article that published in Westlaw Today, Alan Ellis and Ian Gold discuss the Supreme Court’s rulings in Rutherford v. United States and Fernandez v. United States, which “articulated a clearer boundary between sentence-modification discretion and collateral attack.” The two decisions together closed important avenues that defendants had been using to seek compassionate release under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A). But the decisions have not foreclosed compassionate release beyond a narrow set of medical or family circumstances. Nor did the Court attempt comprehensively to define what may qualify as “extraordinary and compelling.” Indeed, the opinions expressly leave significant questions unanswered.
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By Alan Ellis
By Mark Allenbaugh