Docket 23-1002
Hewitt
DecidedJun 26, 2025
5-4decision
Source: CourtListener.
First Step Act's reduced gun sentences apply at resentencing after a prior sentence is vacated
What it does
The Court held that the First Step Act's reduced mandatory minimum sentences apply to any defendant who is being sentenced after the Act's enactment date, including those whose earlier sentences were vacated. A vacated sentence is treated as though it no longer exists, meaning the defendant is considered to have "not been sentenced" for purposes of the Act's retroactivity provision. This overturns the Fifth Circuit's ruling that a defendant sentenced even once before the Act's passage is permanently locked out of its benefits.
Who benefits
Federal defendants convicted of firearm offenses under 18 U.S.C. §924(c) whose pre-2018 sentences were vacated and who face resentencing, making them eligible for the Act's 5-year mandatory minimums instead of the old stacked 25-year minimums.
Who is affected
Federal prosecutors and district court judges who must now apply the First Step Act's lower mandatory minimums when resentencing §924(c) defendants whose prior sentences have been vacated, regardless of when the original sentence was imposed.
Practical impact
Federal defendants convicted of multiple §924(c) firearm offenses whose sentences are vacated — for any reason — and who face resentencing will now receive the First Step Act's 5-year mandatory minimum per count rather than the old stacked 25-year minimums, potentially reducing sentences by decades. District court judges conducting such resentencings no longer need to determine whether a defendant was previously sentenced under the old regime; they apply the new minimums uniformly. The ruling resolves a split among federal appeals courts that had produced inconsistent outcomes for similarly situated defendants across the country.
Majority — Jackson
Joined by: Roberts, Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch
The majority held that the key phrase in the First Step Act — "a sentence has not been imposed" — is written in the present-perfect tense, which refers to something that continues to be true up to the present, not merely something that happened at some point in the past. The Court reasoned that a vacated sentence, by longstanding legal principle, is treated as though it never legally existed — courts call this being "void ab initio" (meaning invalid from the very beginning) — so a defendant whose sentence was vacated has no currently valid sentence for purposes of the Act. The majority also pointed to the contrast between the present-perfect tense used in the retroactivity provision and the simple past tense used in neighboring provisions of the same law, concluding that Congress's word choice was deliberate and meaningful. The Court further reasoned that its reading is more straightforward to administer: judges sentencing any first-time §924(c) offender after the Act's passage simply apply the new, lower minimums without needing to dig into a defendant's prior sentencing history. Finally, the majority found that requiring judges to revert to the old stacking regime for defendants at resentencing would undermine Congress's clear goal of moving away from those harsh sentences.
Dissent reasoning
The dissent argued that the most natural reading of "a sentence has not been imposed" is a straightforward historical question: was the defendant ever sentenced before the Act's enactment date? Because petitioners were sentenced in 2010 and again in 2012 — years before the Act passed in 2018 — the dissent concluded they plainly do not qualify for its benefits. The dissent contended that the word "imposed" refers to the concrete act of a court pronouncing a sentence at a specific moment in time, not to whether that sentence remains legally valid today, and that the word "a" before "sentence" signals any sentence ever pronounced, including one later vacated. The dissent further argued that the majority's "vacatur voids everything" principle does not exist as a recognized background legal rule — pointing to cases like Lewis v. United States, where the Court upheld a felon-in-possession conviction even though the underlying predicate conviction was later invalidated, and to a federal sentencing statute that expressly requires judges at resentencing to apply the Sentencing Guidelines that were in effect at the time of the original sentencing. The dissent also noted that the section heading "Applicability to Pending Cases" suggests Congress was thinking of a fixed, finite group of defendants who had not yet been sentenced at all when the Act passed — not an ever-expanding group whose sentences might be vacated years later for unrelated reasons. Finally, the dissent argued that the presumption against retroactivity counsels reading the Act's retroactivity command narrowly, not as broadly as the majority does.
Constitutional question
When a federal defendant was sentenced before the First Step Act of 2018 took effect, but that sentence was later vacated, does the Act's more lenient mandatory minimum penalty apply at the subsequent resentencing?
Precedent changed
The ruling abrogates the Fifth Circuit's holding below (92 F.4th 304) and effectively narrows the Sixth Circuit's contrary holding in United States v. Jackson, 995 F.3d 522 (6th Cir. 2021); it does not explicitly overrule a Supreme Court precedent, though it builds on and extends the Court's earlier decision in Deal v. United States, 508 U.S. 129 (1993), which the First Step Act itself had already abrogated legislatively.