Hewitt v. United States

Background

Three men—Tony Hewitt, Corey Duffey, and Jarvis Ross—were convicted of bank robbery and multiple gun-during-crime offenses and originally received extremely long, stacked sentences that exceeded 325 years. After some convictions were overturned, the district court vacated their sentences and resentenced them. The First Step Act of 2018 changed how judges must treat first-time offenders who used guns during other crimes, replacing stacked 25-year mandatory terms with much shorter mandatory minimums and saying its change applies where “a sentence . . . has not been imposed” as of the Act’s enactment date.

Reasoning

The Court addressed whether a prior sentence that was imposed before the Act but later vacated still counts as a sentence “imposed” for purposes of the Act’s limited retroactivity. The majority read the phrase “has . . . been imposed” to mean a sentence must be extant—still legally in effect—to block the Act’s relief. Because a vacated sentence is treated as void going forward, the Court held vacated pre-Act sentences do not count as imposed and therefore the Act’s reduced penalties apply when those defendants are resentenced after the Act.

Real world impact

The ruling means defendants who are resentenced after a vacatur of earlier gun-related sentences can receive the First Step Act’s more lenient mandatory minimums instead of the old stacked 25-year terms. The decision resolves a disagreement among federal appeals courts and sends these cases back to lower courts for resentencing under the Act. The change is not necessarily permanent for every defendant because it applies only when a prior sentence has been vacated and resentencing occurs.

Dissents or concurrances

A four-Justice dissent argued the statute refers to the historical fact that a sentence was imposed as of the Act’s date and that vacatur does not erase that historical fact; the dissent warned the majority rewrites the law and invents a broad vacatur rule.