Understanding Your Options After a Federal Court Denial

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

What can you do after a federal compassionate release denial?

Three routes, and one closes fast. Appeal within 14 days of the order’s entry on the criminal docket, filing the notice in the district court. File a new motion on materially changed circumstances — there is no limit on how many. Or switch vehicles to a § 2255 motion, clemency, or a Bureau of Prisons remedy.

Key takeaways after a federal court denial

• The 14-day clock is the only thing that cannot wait. A criminal notice of appeal is due within 14 days of entry of the order under Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(1)(A), and the district court may extend it by no more than 30 additional days, on a showing of excusable neglect or good cause (Rule 4(b)(4)). After that, the appeal is gone.
• The same 14 days is also the deadline to ask the judge to reconsider. There is no Rule 60(b) counterpart in a criminal case (United States v. Travis, 11th Cir. July 27, 2026), and a repeat motion that raises the same question after that window is a reconsideration motion in substance and is untimely (United States v. Mofle, 8th Cir. Mar. 2, 2021).
• There is no cap on how many compassionate release motions you may file. No statute imposes one, and there is no counterpart to § 2255(h)’s second-or-successive gate. The Eighth Circuit, joining every other circuit to reach the question, held there is no jurisdictional bar to second or successive sentence-reduction motions (Mofle, a § 3582(c)(2) case whose reasoning the Seventh Circuit applied to compassionate release in Kruse). The catch is that a repeat motion raising the same grounds is a reconsideration motion in substance and is time-barred.
• Courts denied 2,401 motions in fiscal year 2025 and gave 5,067 reasons for doing so — an average of more than two per denial (USSC FY2025 Compassionate Release Data Report, Table 11). Which reason your judge gave determines everything about what to do next.
• The most repairable denial is the most common procedural one. Failure to exhaust was cited 447 times in FY2025. A dismissal on that ground is ordinarily without prejudice (United States v. Alam, 960 F.3d 831 (6th Cir. 2020)) — you ask the warden properly, wait 30 days, and file again.
• Two Supreme Court decisions in May 2026 closed two doors permanently. If the denial rested on a nonretroactive change in law, refiling will not fix it (Rutherford). If it rested on innocence or trial error, that claim belongs in a § 2255 motion with a one-year deadline (Fernandez; 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f)).
• Appellate review is deferential but not empty. Four courts of appeals vacated compassionate release denials in the cases cited below — for failing to explain, for resting on a fact that was not true, for a one-sentence order, and for treating an offense as a categorical bar.

What a Compassionate Release Denial Actually Decides

A denial decides one of three things, and the order will tell you which if you read it for the reason rather than the result. This distinction is not academic. It is the entire difference between a problem you fix with paperwork and a problem you cannot fix at all.

Compassionate release is a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), decided by the United States District Court that imposed the sentence. If you need the underlying framework before the rest of this page makes sense, start with our plain-English overview, What Is Compassionate Release?, or the main federal compassionate release attorney page.

A procedural denial says the court could not reach the merits. Almost always this means the request requirement in § 3582(c)(1)(A) was not satisfied — the warden was never asked, or the 30 days had not run, or the request did not contain what 28 C.F.R. § 571.61(a) requires it to contain. This is a dismissal, not a rejection. The Sixth Circuit held that the exhaustion requirement is not jurisdictional but is a mandatory claim-processing rule, and that the remedy is dismissal without prejudice — meaning you may come back (Alam, 960 F.3d 831 (6th Cir. 2020)).

A merits denial on eligibility says the court reached step one and found no extraordinary and compelling reason. “Extraordinary and compelling” is the statutory threshold; the Sentencing Commission’s categories are listed at USSG § 1B1.13(b). A denial here is about proof or about category fit, and both can change with time and evidence.

A discretionary denial on the § 3553(a) factors says the court assumed or found eligibility and still said no, because the sentencing factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) — the seriousness of the offense, deterrence, protection of the public, the person’s history — outweigh the reason for release. Several circuits hold that a judge who denies on this ground alone never has to decide the eligibility question at all (United States v. Keitt, 21 F.4th 67 (2d Cir. 2021); United States v. Elias, 984 F.3d 516 (6th Cir. 2021)). This is the hardest denial to move, because nothing about the offense is going to change.

Denials are ordinarily without prejudice as to a future motion. Nothing in § 3582(c)(1)(A) limits a defendant to one motion, and the courts of appeals have said so directly. Compare 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h), which requires a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals to certify any second or successive § 2255 motion before a district court may even hear it. Section 3582 has no such gate. That difference is one of the few structural advantages this remedy has.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: The first thing we do with a denial order is highlight the operative sentence — the one the ruling actually turns on — and ignore everything around it. A three-page order that spends two and a half pages describing the offense and one sentence saying “the court need not decide whether extraordinary and compelling reasons exist because the § 3553(a) factors weigh against release” is a § 3553(a) denial, full stop. Filing a new motion with better medical records answers a question that judge never asked. Families read the offense recitation and conclude the judge did not believe the diagnosis. Usually the judge did believe it, and said so implicitly by not reaching it.

Why Do Courts Deny Compassionate Release Motions? Every Measured Reason, and the Move That Fits It

Courts denied 2,401 compassionate release motions in fiscal year 2025 and cited 5,067 reasons across them, because a single denial usually rests on more than one ground (USSC FY2025 Compassionate Release Data Report, Table 11). Below are the reasons the Commission coded, in order of frequency, with what it means and the route that actually addresses it. Because this is the single largest category, it is worth reading our page on the 3553(a) factors before drafting anything new.

Read the percentages carefully: each one is a share of the 5,067 reasons cited, not of the 2,401 denials.

Reason the court gave	Times cited, FY2025	What the court actually decided	The move that fits
§ 3553(a) factors	1,260 (24.9%)	Eligibility may or may not have been decided; the sentencing factors outweighed release	Appeal if the order gives no reasoning or rests on a wrong fact; otherwise wait and rebuild — years served, institutional record, a concrete release plan. New medical proof alone will not move this
Rehabilitation insufficient	524 (10.3%)	Programming and good conduct were offered as the reason for release, and 28 U.S.C. § 994(t) forbids treating rehabilitation alone as extraordinary and compelling	New motion pairing rehabilitation with a qualifying ground under § 1B1.13(b). Rehabilitation was still the most-cited reason among FY2025 grants — always alongside something else
No extraordinary and compelling reason provided	512 (10.1%)	The motion did not identify a recognized category at all	New motion, drafted to a specific subsection of § 1B1.13(b), with the proof that subsection requires
Failure to exhaust administrative remedies	447 (8.8%)	The court never reached the merits	Exhaustion fix. Submit a proper written request to the warden, count 30 days from receipt, refile. Dismissal is ordinarily without prejudice (Alam)
Insufficient proof of a serious physical or medical condition	352 (6.9%)	The diagnosis was not documented, or the records did not show what the guideline requires	New motion with the complete BOP medical file plus an independent physician’s review addressing prognosis and self-care capacity
Able to provide self-care in prison	260 (5.1%)	The condition is real; the court found it does not “substantially diminish” the ability to provide self-care in a correctional facility, as § 1B1.13(b)(1)(B) requires	Wait for documented functional decline, then refile on function, not diagnosis — ADL assessments, Care Level changes, duty status, assistive devices
Not at risk from COVID-19	191 (3.8%)	A pandemic-era theory the courts have closed. COVID was cited in only 3 FY2025 grants	Switch grounds entirely. This is not a theory to refile
Protection of the public	143 (2.8%)	A danger finding under § 1B1.13(a)(2) and 18 U.S.C. § 3142(g)	Rebuild the danger record: clean discipline, completed programming, a supervised release plan with a named address and a named provider. Not a fast fix
Other care available for a minor child	142 (2.8%)	Under § 1B1.13(b)(3)(A), the court found someone else can care for the child	Appeal if the finding is factually wrong — the Fourth Circuit vacated a denial resting on the belief that a deceased spouse was still available (Swartz). Otherwise, refile only when the alternative caregiver is documented as gone or incapacitated
Fails § 3559 age and time-served requirements	120 (2.4%)	The motion invoked § 3582(c)(1)(A)(ii), which requires age 70, 30 years served on a sentence imposed under 18 U.S.C. § 3559(c), and a BOP Director determination	Refile under § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i) instead. Almost nobody qualifies under (ii); it is usually invoked by mistake
Insufficient proof of deteriorating health	66 (1.3%)	The aging-decline theory under § 1B1.13(b)(1)(B) or (b)(2) was not documented over time	Build a longitudinal record — serial clinical encounters showing the trajectory, not a single snapshot — then refile
Post-sentencing conduct	55 (1.1%)	Disciplinary infractions since sentencing cut against release	Time and a clean record. Nothing else answers this
Mandatory minimum	40 (0.8%)	The court read a statutory minimum as limiting relief	Appeal — a purely legal mistake is reviewable even under a deferential standard (Ruffin, 978 F.3d 1000 (6th Cir. 2020))
Other care available for a spouse or registered partner	23 (0.5%)	Same finding as the minor-child line, under § 1B1.13(b)(3)(B)	Document the absence of every alternative, by name, with a declaration from each person, then refile
Insufficient proof of functional or cognitive impairment	15 (0.3%)	Neurocognitive decline was asserted without testing	New motion with formal neuropsychological evaluation and functional assessment
Binding plea agreement	4 (0.1%)	The court read the plea agreement as constraining relief	Appeal. A legal reading of the agreement is a legal question
Other	882 (17.4%)	An uncoded reason — read the order itself	Depends entirely on the order. This category is why the operative sentence matters more than the statistics

Two clarifications that the raw table cannot carry.

“Nonretroactive change in law” no longer appears as a viable theory at all. In FY2025 courts cited the unusually-long-sentence provision, § 1B1.13(b)(6), 80 times as a reason for granting relief. In May 2026 the Supreme Court held that a disparity created by a change Congress declined to make retroactive cannot be an extraordinary and compelling reason “considered by itself or in combination with other factors,” and that “[t]o the extent that it counsels otherwise, the Commission’s policy statement is invalid” (Rutherford, slip op. at 16). If your denial was on that theory, it is not fixable by refiling. It is also worth knowing that the provision still appears in the printed Guidelines Manual, unamended, so a reader who looks it up will not see the problem.

Denial reasons cluster. With 5,067 reasons across 2,401 denials, most orders give more than one. An order that says both “the medical records do not establish an inability to provide self-care” and “in any event the § 3553(a) factors weigh heavily against release” has two independent holdings, and a new motion must answer both. Curing the medical half of a two-holding denial produces the same result the second time.

What to Do in the First 14 Days After a Denial

Do three things in this order: read the order for the operative holding, calendar the appeal deadline, and decide whether to protect the appeal while you think.

Read the order for what it rested on. Skip to the sentence beginning “because” or “in any event.” If the order is one or two sentences with no reasoning at all, that itself may be the appellate issue — the Third Circuit vacated a denial where a brief order left it impossible to tell whether the court had considered 166 pages of medical records filed the same day, making the ruling “essentially unreviewable” (United States v. Traumann, No. 23-2985 (3d Cir. Oct. 1, 2024) (not precedential)). The Fifth Circuit reached a similar conclusion about a one-sentence denial of an unopposed, documented motion (United States v. Handlon, 53 F.4th 348 (5th Cir. 2022)).

Calendar 14 days from entry, not from receipt. The clock runs from entry of the order on the criminal docket (Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(6)), which is often days or weeks before an incarcerated person receives the mail. In one Seventh Circuit case the prisoner received the January 22 denial at the end of March; by then both the 14-day deadline and the 30-day extension window had passed, and the appeal was dismissed (Kruse, No. 24-1978 (7th Cir. Dec. 18, 2024) (nonprecedential)). Assume the clock started the day the order issued.

Know the prison mailbox rule, and use it correctly. A notice of appeal by an incarcerated person is timely if deposited in the institution’s internal legal mail system on or before the last day, accompanied by a 28 U.S.C. § 1746 declaration or notarized statement giving the date of deposit and stating that first-class postage is prepaid, or by evidence such as a postmark (Fed. R. App. P. 4(c)(1)). If the institution has a legal mail system, it must be used to get the benefit of the rule. Handing the envelope to a unit officer is not the same thing.

Consider a protective notice of appeal. A notice of appeal is a short document. It must name the party appealing, designate the order appealed from, and name the court to which the appeal is taken (Fed. R. App. P. 3(c)(1)) — and it is filed with the district clerk, who then transmits it to the U.S. Court of Appeals (Rule 3(a)(1), (d)(1)). An appeal “must not be dismissed for informality of form or title” (Rule 3(c)(7)). Filing it preserves the option; you can still dismiss the appeal later. Missing the date does not work in reverse.

If the deadline has already passed, one narrow tool remains: the district court may extend the time by up to 30 days beyond the original deadline on a finding of excusable neglect or good cause, and may do so before or after expiration, with or without a motion (Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(4)). Thirty days is the ceiling. Past it, the criminal appeal is over — though a new § 3582 motion is not.

Can You Appeal a Compassionate Release Denial?

Yes. A denial is an appealable order, and the deadline is the 14-day criminal deadline, not the 30-day civil one.

That distinction has caused real confusion, so here is what the decisions actually hold. The Eighth Circuit, in a published decision, applied Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(1)(A)(i) to an order on a § 3582(c) sentence-reduction motion, stating plainly that “a criminal defendant has fourteen days from the entry of an order or judgment to file an appeal from that order or judgment” (Mofle, No. 20-1212 (8th Cir. Mar. 2, 2021)). Two courts of appeals have applied the same 14-day rule specifically to compassionate release denials under § 3582(c)(1)(A): the Seventh Circuit in Kruse and the Eleventh Circuit in Travis, No. 25-12927 (11th Cir. July 27, 2026). Both of those are nonprecedential, and both dismissed the appeal as untimely. Treat 14 days as the rule.

The deadline is not jurisdictional — it is a claim-processing rule the government can waive or forfeit. But when the government invokes it, the courts of appeals enforce it. The Seventh Circuit dismissed Kruse‘s appeal because “the government asks us to enforce the deadline”; the Eleventh Circuit said it “gives the Rule full effect when, as here, the Government raises the timeliness issue on appeal” (Travis, n.8); and the Eighth Circuit described the requirements as “inflexible” once properly raised (Mofle). Do not plan around a waiver.

What the U.S. Court of Appeals is actually reviewing

Abuse of discretion. That standard is deferential — the court of appeals will not substitute its own judgment for the district court’s simply because it might have ruled differently. But it is not empty. As the Fourth Circuit restated the standard in a 2025 compassionate release appeal, a district court abuses its discretion when it “acts arbitrarily or irrationally, fails to consider judicially recognized factors constraining its exercise of discretion, relies on erroneous factual or legal premises, or commits an error of law” (Smith, No. 24-6726 (4th Cir. July 7, 2025) (unpublished)). Four separate branches, and each one is a different appellate theory.

Concretely, the courts of appeals have recognized each kind of error — Ruffin states the legal-error rule, and the other four decisions below vacated denials:

The error	What the court of appeals said	Decision
A purely legal mistake	Even under abuse-of-discretion review, a legal error is reversible; the statute says the court “may” reduce, which confers discretion but not immunity from legal error	United States v. Ruffin, 978 F.3d 1000 (6th Cir. 2020)
An erroneous factual premise	Denial rested on the belief that the defendant’s spouse remained available to care for a disabled adult child. She had recently died. Vacated	United States v. Swartz, No. 25-6090 (4th Cir. Nov. 3, 2025) (unpublished)
Failure to explain	A brief order left it unclear whether the court had read the medical records filed the same day, rendering the ruling “essentially unreviewable.” Vacated	United States v. Traumann, No. 23-2985 (3d Cir. Oct. 1, 2024) (not precedential)
A one-sentence denial of an unopposed, documented motion	May itself be an abuse of discretion	United States v. Handlon, 53 F.4th 348 (5th Cir. 2022)
Treating the offense as a categorical bar	“[N]o such categorical bar currently exists” based on the offense of conviction; it was error to treat the motion as deniable as a matter of law	United States v. Quirós-Morales, 83 F.4th 79 (1st Cir. 2023)

A caution on the Fourth Circuit’s 2025 Smith decision, which reversed with instructions to grant: the extraordinary-and-compelling premise the court accepted there was the § 924(c) stacking disparity, and Rutherford has since foreclosed that premise. The standard of review language survives; the eligibility theory does not.

What an appeal cannot do

An appeal reviews the record the district court had. It is not a second chance to submit evidence. If the problem is that the medical file was incomplete, or the alternative-caregiver declarations were never gathered, or the release plan named no address — an appeal will not fix any of that. Those are new-motion problems. Choosing the appeal when the real defect is the record is the most common strategic error we see after a denial.

The timeline, and the government’s own right to appeal

Once the appeal is docketed, the appellant’s brief is due within 40 days after the record is filed, the government’s response within 30 days after that, and any reply within 21 days (Fed. R. App. P. 31(a)(1)) — with extensions common. No rule sets a deadline for the court of appeals to decide, and we do not publish an estimate of how long these appeals take, because no reliable figure exists. Plan on months, and keep building the record for a new motion in parallel.

The traffic runs both ways. When the government is entitled to appeal, its notice is due within 30 days (Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(1)(B)) — and the government does appeal grants. The Sixth Circuit reversed a grant in United States v. Hall, No. 24-6094 (6th Cir. June 25, 2026), a published decision holding that Rutherford‘s reasoning is not confined to § 1B1.13(b)(6) and that the “other reasons” catch-all at § 1B1.13(b)(5) cannot be used to override a limit the statute imposes. For the broader appellate picture, see federal appeals.

Can You File a New Compassionate Release Motion After a Denial?

Yes — and this is the route most people should be thinking about, because it is the only one that lets you fix the record. The doctrinal detail — new motion versus reconsideration, and which deadline attaches to each — is on our second-motion page, can you file compassionate release twice.

There is no numerical limit and no gatekeeping certification. The Eighth Circuit held that Congress “did not clearly limit defendants to one motion” and joined “every other circuit that has considered the question in holding that there is no jurisdictional bar to second or successive” sentence-reduction motions (Mofle). The Seventh Circuit put it the same way: “a defendant may file more than one motion for compassionate release” (Kruse). Nothing here resembles the certification a second or successive § 2255 motion requires from a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals under 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h).

But a repeat motion on the same grounds is not a new motion — it is an untimely reconsideration motion. This is the trap that ends more post-denial efforts than any other, and it is worth stating exactly. The Eighth Circuit held that “once a court has issued an order granting or denying a § 3582(c)(2) sentence reduction, subsequent § 3582(c)(2) motions are subject to Rule 4(b)’s timeliness requirements if they present the same legal question that the court addressed in its previous order,” because “[s]uch motions are motions for reconsideration in substance, regardless of how they are labelled” (Mofle). The Seventh Circuit applied the mirror image to a compassionate release motion: “subsequent motions must be based on materially different conditions,” and district courts “are empowered to dismiss repetitive requests” (Kruse).

Put plainly: the new motion has to be about something that is materially different, and you have to be able to say what. Same diagnosis, same records, better writing is not different. Same diagnosis, two hospitalizations and a Care Level change later, is.

What counts as materially changed

Nothing in the statute defines this, and the answer is fact-specific. From the categories the Sentencing Commission actually codes and the reasons courts actually give, the changes that carry weight are:

• Documented medical deterioration. New diagnoses, hospitalizations, a change in Care Level assignment, new functional limitations reflected in Activities of Daily Living assessments, a specialist’s changed prognosis. The relevant test under § 1B1.13(b)(1)(B) is whether the condition “substantially diminishes the ability of the defendant to provide self-care within the environment of a correctional facility” — so what matters is function, not the frightening name of the disease. This is covered in depth on compassionate release terminal illness.
• Care that has been sought and not provided. Section 1B1.13(b)(1)(C) reaches a condition requiring long-term or specialized care that is not being provided, risking serious deterioration or death. The proof is the gap — the referral made and never scheduled, the surgery approved and never performed. Grievances filed through the BOP administrative remedy process (28 C.F.R. part 542) document that gap contemporaneously in a way nothing else does.
• A new family collapse. The death or incapacitation of the person who was caring for a minor child, or of the alternative caregiver the court previously identified, changes the analysis under § 1B1.13(b)(3). Note that “other care available for a minor child” was cited 142 times as a denial reason in FY2025 — so the new motion must close that door by name.
• Additional time served plus a clean institutional record, which is the only thing that moves a § 3553(a) denial.
• A change in the governing policy statement, in the narrow situations where one applies. The Eleventh Circuit held that the Sentencing Commission’s 2023 addition of parental incapacitation was a substantive change, not a clarifying one, so it did not apply retroactively to a denial issued before the amendment — but the movant could “simply file a new motion” under the amended policy statement (United States v. Handlon, 97 F.4th 829 (11th Cir. 2024)). That is a different Handlon from the Fifth Circuit decision cited earlier on this page; the two hold different things.

Do you have to ask the warden again?

Assume yes, and do it. The statute conditions a defendant-filed motion on full exhaustion of BOP administrative rights or “the lapse of 30 days from the receipt of such a request by the warden,” whichever is earlier (18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)) — and the courts of appeals treat that condition as mandatory whenever the government invokes it, with no equitable exceptions and no futility escape (United States v. Houck, 2 F.4th 1082 (8th Cir. 2021)).

There is also a live circuit split on whether the grounds raised with the warden must match the grounds raised in court. The Seventh Circuit requires that match (United States v. Williams, 987 F.3d 700 (7th Cir. 2021)); the Fourth Circuit rejects it, holding that the 30-day route requires only the initial request (United States v. Ferguson, 55 F.4th 262 (4th Cir. 2022)). Until that is resolved, the only safe practice anywhere is to submit a new written request to the warden identifying the new grounds, count 30 days from receipt, and then file. The mechanics — what the request must contain under 28 C.F.R. § 571.61, how the Bureau of Prisons routes it internally, and how BP-9, BP-10, and BP-11 interact with all of it — are on bop compassionate release.

Applied Insight — Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, Managing Director: The gap between motions is not dead time — it is when the record gets built, and the Bureau’s own paperwork is what builds it. Between a denial and a refiling, the things worth generating are the ones the institution creates in the ordinary course: chronic care clinic encounters kept on schedule, a request for a Care Level reassessment, an ADL assessment, a medical duty status update, a housing accommodation request, and administrative remedies filed at each level when care is not delivered. Six months of that produces a documented trajectory. Six months of waiting produces a second motion that looks exactly like the first one, which is the motion a court is entitled to dismiss as repetitive.

Motions for Reconsideration, and Why Rule 60 Does Not Work

If your instinct is to ask the judge to look again, that instinct is right — but the window is the same 14 days as the appeal, and the civil rule everyone reaches for does not exist here.

There is no Rule 60(b) in a criminal case. The Eleventh Circuit stated it directly: “Rule 60 does not provide a vehicle for relief from a judgment in a criminal case, so the District Court correctly denied it” (Travis, No. 25-12927 (11th Cir. July 27, 2026) (not for publication)). The Seventh Circuit said the same thing structurally: “The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure do not have a counterpart to Rule 60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure” (Kruse).

What does exist is a common-law motion to reconsider, filed within the time to appeal. Criminal defendants “may invoke the common-law practice of moving to reconsider rulings denying sentence-reduction requests, but they must do so within the time to appeal — 14 days,” and motions filed outside that limit are “ineffectual” attempts at reconsideration that courts should instead treat as new motions for a sentence reduction (Kruse). The Eighth Circuit explained why the deadline has to work that way: otherwise a litigant who missed the appeal deadline could simply file a reconsideration motion and appeal the denial of that, circumventing Rule 4(b) entirely (Mofle).

The practical consequences are three. First, a timely reconsideration motion is the right tool when the order contains a plain factual error — a misread date, a caregiver the court believed was alive, a record the court did not have. Second, a late one is not a lifeline; the Seventh Circuit refused to reach the merits of one because doing so would “rejuvenate an extinguished right to appeal” (Kruse). Third, if you file a reconsideration motion inside the 14 days and it is denied, you get a fresh 14 days to appeal that order — which is how Kruse preserved review of the second ruling after losing the first.

Denials That Are Repairable, and Denials That Are Not

Sorting a denial into one of these two categories is the single most useful thing anyone can do in the week after an order issues. A denial resting on dangerousness is often the most improvable of all, because the record can be built — see danger to the community.

Repairable: the exhaustion denial

This is the most fixable outcome in the whole statute, and courts cited it 447 times in FY2025. A dismissal for failure to exhaust is ordinarily without prejudice (Alam, 960 F.3d 831 (6th Cir. 2020)), which means the court has not ruled on whether your family member qualifies. The Fifth Circuit calls it “a paradigmatic mandatory claim-processing rule” (United States v. Franco, 973 F.3d 465 (5th Cir. 2020)), and the Second Circuit has held the government may waive or forfeit it (Saladino, 7 F.4th 120 (2d Cir. 2021)). A denial that rested on a nonretroactive change in law is in the second category — see unusually long sentence.

The repair has four steps: submit a written request to the warden that contains both the circumstances relied on and proposed release plans, as 28 C.F.R. § 571.61(a) requires; keep proof of the date the warden received it; count 30 days; refile with the request attached as an exhibit. One further wrinkle worth knowing: a defendant must be in BOP custody to exhaust (United States v. Fower, 30 F.4th 823 (9th Cir. 2022)).

Repairable with time: the proof denial

Insufficient medical proof (352 citations), self-care capacity (260), insufficient proof of deteriorating health (66), and insufficient proof of functional or cognitive impairment (15) are all evidentiary findings about a record that no longer exists in the same form six or twelve months later. These are new-motion problems, not appeal problems.

Hard: the § 3553(a) denial

Cited 1,260 times, this is the most common denial and the least responsive to new evidence, because the facts driving it — the offense, the criminal history — are fixed. What can change is time served, the institutional record, and the concreteness of the release plan. What also matters is that several circuits permit a court to deny on this ground without ever deciding eligibility (Keitt; Elias; United States v. Giron, 15 F.4th 1343 (11th Cir. 2021); United States v. Keller, 2 F.4th 1278 (9th Cir. 2021)) — so an order that never mentions the illness may not be a rejection of the illness. How individual judges weigh these factors on a sentence they imposed themselves is its own subject: see what do judges consider when sentencing.

Not repairable by refiling: the nonretroactive-change denial

After Rutherford, a theory built on the gap between the sentence imposed and the sentence that would be imposed today, where Congress declined to make the change retroactive, is foreclosed — alone or in combination with anything else. The lower courts have read it broadly, not narrowly: the Sixth Circuit applied it to the § 1B1.13(b)(5) catch-all in Hall (published), the Eleventh Circuit applied it to a nonretroactive Controlled Substances Act change and rejected stacking unrelated factors under (b)(5) as not “similar in gravity” in United States v. Chineag, No. 25-10557 (11th Cir. July 2, 2026) (unpublished), and the Eighth Circuit read it as confirming its own prior rule in United States v. Loggins, Nos. 24-1488, 24-1569 (8th Cir. July 10, 2026) (published).

Two things Rutherford expressly did not decide are worth holding onto. The Court said: “We need not decide whether there are reasons beyond personal circumstances that could qualify as ‘extraordinary and compelling'” (slip op. at 10–11), and “We need not nail down the precise boundaries of the phrase” (slip op. at 16). And footnote 3 states that the 2023 victim-of-abuse provision “is not at issue in today’s cases” — § 1B1.13(b)(4) is untouched. See victims of sexual abuse lawyer.

When Compassionate Release Is the Wrong Vehicle

Some denials are a signal to stop pushing on this door. Saying so early is worth more than another motion, because two of the alternatives have deadlines of their own. Our page on rutherford v united states explains exactly which theories the two 2026 decisions closed.

If the theory was innocence or trial error, the vehicle is § 2255, and a one-year clock applies. The Supreme Court held in Fernandez v. United States that “[a] prisoner who collaterally attacks the validity of his conviction must proceed through 28 U.S.C. § 2255, not 18 U.S.C. § 3582.” The Court drew the line between what happened at trial and what is happening now: “When a prisoner moves for compassionate release based on a terminal illness, his motion does not suggest that his conviction is invalid. But if a prisoner moves for relief because of alleged problems with the underlying criminal investigation or trial, his motion suggests that his conviction is flawed” (slip op. at 14–15). Which statute a given claim belongs under, and the deadline attached to each, is set out on our page on compassionate release vs 2255.

This matters urgently because § 2255 carries a one-year period of limitation, running from the latest of four dates including the date the judgment of conviction became final (28 U.S.C. § 2255(f)) — and a second or successive motion must first be certified by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals as containing newly discovered evidence establishing innocence by clear and convincing evidence, or a new retroactive rule of constitutional law (§ 2255(h)). Section 3582 has neither limit; § 2255 has both. Time spent refiling a compassionate release motion built on a trial-error theory is time spent against a clock that is running. See federal 2255 motion lawyer and federal appeal deadline.

If the theory was a nonretroactive change in law, the realistic alternatives are clemency or a different ground entirely. Executive clemency is petitioned to the President through the Office of the Pardon Attorney at the Department of Justice (DOJ); the petition is a formal document addressed to the President and submitted to the Pardon Attorney, and commutation petition forms “may be obtained from the wardens of federal penal institutions” (28 C.F.R. § 1.1).

Three features of that process determine when it makes sense:

Feature	The rule	Practical effect
Sequencing	“No petition for commutation of sentence… should be filed if other forms of judicial or administrative relief are available, except upon a showing of exceptional circumstances” (28 C.F.R. § 1.3)	Clemency is positioned as what you turn to when the judicial routes are closed — which is precisely the post-Rutherford situation for a sentence-length theory
Process	The Attorney General investigates, may notify victims, and reports a recommendation in writing to the President (28 C.F.R. § 1.6)	There is no hearing, no adversary briefing, and no deadline
No enforceable rights	The regulations “are advisory only and for the internal guidance of Department of Justice personnel,” creating “no enforceable rights” (28 C.F.R. § 1.11)	A denial is not reviewable in court. Pardon petitions also carry a five-year waiting period after release under § 1.2; commutation does not

For that route, see clemency lawyers and commutation eligibility.

If the need is short-term and specific, the Bureau of Prisons has its own tools, and they are not the court’s. The BOP may release a person temporarily, for a period not to exceed thirty days, to visit a dying relative, attend a funeral of a relative, or obtain medical treatment not otherwise available (18 U.S.C. § 3622). That is a furlough, not a sentence reduction, and it is decided by the Bureau rather than the United States District Court — see temporary release from jail. Earned time credits, RDAP, halfway house, and home confinement run on entirely different statutes and change where or how long a term is served rather than the sentence itself; those are compared on federal early release and federal home confinement.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: The hardest conversation after a denial is the one where the right advice is to stop. A family that has spent eighteen months on a compassionate release theory built entirely on sentence length does not want to hear that the theory is finished — but after May 2026 it is, and the time that matters now may be running on a different clock entirely. We look at three dates in that conversation: when the judgment became final, whether a § 2255 motion has already been filed, and how long ago. Sometimes the answer is that the § 2255 window closed years ago and clemency is what remains. Sometimes the answer is that a compassionate release motion on a medical theory was never actually filed, because the sentence-length argument crowded it out. Those are opposite answers, and you cannot tell which one applies without reading the denial order and the docket together.

Building the Record Between Motions

The work between a denial and the next motion is documentary, and most of it has to be requested rather than waited for. A plan that was thin the first time is the most improvable thing in the file — see the compassionate release plan.

Medical. Request the complete Bureau of Prisons health record, not a summary — chronic care clinic notes, consultation reports, imaging, labs, medication administration records, and Health Services clinical encounters. Then add the institutional documents that describe function rather than diagnosis: Care Level assignment, Activities of Daily Living assessments, medical duty status and work restrictions, assistive devices, and housing accommodations already granted. Where the claim is that necessary care is not being delivered under § 1B1.13(b)(1)(C), the evidence is the gap: the referral made and never scheduled, the appointment postponed repeatedly. An independent physician’s review of those records, addressing prognosis and the capacity for self-care in a correctional setting, does work no BOP record does.

Administrative. File through the BOP administrative remedy process when care is not delivered. Informal resolution comes first, then a BP-9 to the warden within 20 calendar days of the incident, a BP-10 to the Regional Director within 20 days, and a BP-11 to the Central Office within 30 days, each measured from the date the prior response was signed (28 C.F.R. §§ 542.13–542.15). Response times are 20, 30, and 40 days respectively, extendable, and non-response counts as a denial at that level (28 C.F.R. § 542.18). Two things to know: no new issues may be raised on appeal within that process (§ 542.15(b)(2)), and only a warden’s denial of a reduction-in-sentence request routes into that appeal chain — a denial by General Counsel or the Director “constitutes a final administrative decision” (28 C.F.R. § 571.63).

Family and caregiver. Where the ground is § 1B1.13(b)(3), the second motion has to close the door the first one left open. That means death certificates, hospital and physician records for the incapacitated caregiver, guardianship or custody orders, school and social-services records, and a declaration from every relative a court might think could step in, each explaining specifically why they cannot. “Other care available for a minor child” accounted for 142 denial-reason citations in FY2025 and “other care available for a spouse or registered partner” for 23. See caregiver compassionate release.

Institutional and § 3553(a). SENTRY reports, the discipline record, program and education transcripts, work evaluations, and letters from unit staff, chaplains, or program coordinators. Rehabilitation can never carry a motion alone — 28 U.S.C. § 994(t) forbids it — but it was still the most-cited reason among FY2025 grants when paired with something else, and it is what answers the danger finding and much of § 3553(a).

Release plan. A named residence with an address and a letter from whoever owns or rents it; a confirmed medical provider with an intake appointment where possible; insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, or VA coverage documented; income or benefits identified; transportation from the facility. Section 571.61(a)(2) requires release plans at the BOP stage, and a plan naming a specific hospice, a specific bed, and a specific date is a different document from one saying the family will provide care.

What the Numbers Say About a Second Try

Nothing in the published data predicts an individual outcome, and we do not publish estimates the Sentencing Commission does not publish. What the data does show is where the pressure sits. The underlying figures, by circuit and by district, are on our page on the compassionate release grant rate.

Fiscal year	Motions decided	Granted	Grant rate
FY2023	3,140	432	13.8%
FY2024	3,015	481	16.0%
FY2025	2,795	394	14.1%
FY2026, first two quarters	894	125	14.0%

Source: U.S. Sentencing Commission Compassionate Release Data Reports, Tables 2–3 of each report.

Where the case was prosecuted matters more than anything a family controls. In FY2025 the grant rate ran from 31.0% in the Ninth Circuit (72 of 232) to 4.9% in the Eighth (26 of 528). District-level spread is wider still: the District of Maryland granted 31.6% of 95 motions, the Northern District of Florida 11 of 14, and the Southern District of Iowa none of 81. Because the motion is decided by the sentencing court, this is fixed by where the prosecution happened, not by where the person is imprisoned now. See compassionate release texas.

One caution about reading FY2024 and FY2025 grant data as a forecast. Among the 631 reasons courts gave for the 394 grants in FY2025, 80 were the unusually-long-sentence provision and 45 were multiple § 924(c) penalties. Those describe grants made under a reading of the statute the Supreme Court rejected in May 2026. Any estimate of the odds built on that data overstates what is available today.

Who was granted relief in FY2025, for whatever orientation it provides: average age at decision 51 for those granted and 47 for those denied; half of those granted were serving original sentences of 20 years or more; criminal history category VI accounted for 35.7% of grants, so a long record is not disqualifying. Among offense types, drug trafficking accounted for 46.4% of individuals granted relief, robbery 16.2%, and firearms 13.3%.

How a Lawyer Changes What Happens After a Denial

Most of the work after a denial is not argument. It is reading one order correctly and then obtaining documents from an institution with no obligation to help, on behalf of someone who cannot make the calls.

Concretely, that means: reading the denial order to identify the operative holding and whether it is procedural, evidentiary, or discretionary; calendaring the 14-day appeal deadline from docket entry rather than receipt, and filing a protective notice of appeal with the district clerk if the analysis is not finished; deciding between appeal and a new motion based on whether the defect is in the ruling or in the record, because an appeal cannot cure a record; obtaining the complete BOP medical file rather than the summary a family can request; identifying which subsection of § 1B1.13 the documented facts actually support, which is frequently not the one the first motion used; drafting a fresh warden request that satisfies 28 C.F.R. § 571.61 and preserves every ground for court given the unresolved issue-exhaustion split; briefing § 3553(a) affirmatively rather than defensively; and saying plainly when the remedy is a § 2255 motion or clemency instead.

On the question of who can represent someone in these matters: there is no automatic entitlement to appointed counsel on a compassionate release motion, but appointed representation under the Criminal Justice Act extends “through appeal, including ancillary matters appropriate to the proceedings” (18 U.S.C. § 3006A(c)), and federal defenders do litigate these cases — the Office of the Federal Public Defender briefed and argued the 2025 Fourth Circuit compassionate release appeal cited above (Smith). Whether counsel is appointed in a given case depends on the district. Ask; do not assume the answer is no.

Christopher Zoukis leads the firm’s federal prison consulting work — designation, sentence computation, First Step Act credits, RDAP, medical-care advocacy, and reentry planning. The legal work on any compassionate release motion, renewed motion, or appeal is handled by Elizabeth Franklin-Best and the firm’s attorneys.

Why work with Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best is the founder and Principal Attorney of Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C., a boutique firm devoted to federal criminal appeals and post-conviction relief. Over more than 20 years she has handled more than 330 federal proceedings, over 100 of them appeals, with sixteen published decisions as counsel of record. She is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and twelve of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals — every regional circuit (1st–11th) plus the D.C. Circuit — and has appeared pro hac vice in federal courts from Montana to Florida. She is recognized by Best Lawyers in America 2026 for Appellate Practice and by Chambers USA 2026 for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations, and was named South Carolina Public Defender of the Year in 2010. She is the author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction: Develop Your Winning Strategy (2023) and serves as Board Chair of Justice 360.

Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, is the firm’s Managing Director and a nationally recognized federal prison expert. He is the author of the Federal Prison Handbook, Directory of Federal Prisons, Prison Education Guide, and College for Convicts, and serves as Chairman of the Board of the Human Rights Defense Center. He has been quoted as a federal prison expert by outlets including CNN, the Associated Press, and The Washington Post. He earned his J.D. at the University of California, Davis School of Law after serving roughly a decade in the federal Bureau of Prisons, where he became an award-winning incarcerated journalist — a combination of formal training and firsthand knowledge that few in federal defense can offer.

The firm runs a national federal practice on an intentionally small caseload, from offices in Columbia and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Compassionate release motions and appeals are handled in the district that imposed the sentence and the U.S. Court of Appeals for that circuit, wherever in the country that is.

Talk to a Lawyer About Appeal, Refiling, or Another Route

If a motion was denied and you are trying to work out whether to appeal, refile, or change direction, the useful first step is short: someone reads the denial order, the docket, and the medical file together, and tells you which of the three it is.

Four things make that first conversation productive, and a family can usually gather all four:

• The denial order itself, in full — not a description of it. The operative sentence is what everything turns on.
• The date the order was entered on the docket, which is what starts the 14-day clock under Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(1)(A) — not the date it arrived in the mail.
• The request that went to the warden, if there was one, and any proof of the date it was received.
• The district and the judge, because grant rates differ by more than sixfold across circuits on identical law.

The 14-day appeal window makes this time-sensitive. Call (843) 620-1100 or schedule a consultation directly. The firm handles compassionate release matters nationwide, in every federal district.

Frequently Asked Questions About Options After a Denial

Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026