What Do Federal Judges Consider?

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

The Findings a Judge Must Make

A federal judge makes three findings under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A) and USSG § 1B1.13: that extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant a reduction, that the person is not a danger under 18 U.S.C. § 3142(g), and that the § 3553(a) sentencing factors support the reduced sentence. The judge may deny on the last one alone.

Key takeaways on how judges weigh § 3553(a)

• These are the same § 3553(a) factors a judge weighs at an original sentencing, applied to a record that is years longer. Section 1B1.13(a) directs the court to consider them “to the extent that they are applicable.” What changes is not the list — it is that the judge now has a prison record, a medical file, and a release plan that did not exist at sentencing.
• The analysis has a gate and a weighing, and they are separate. Eligibility comes first: a court must “first ensure that a movant is part of the ‘limited class of prisoners’ who are ‘eligibl[e]'” (Rutherford, quoting Dillon v. United States, 560 U.S. 817 (2010)). Only then do the § 3553(a) factors come in.
• A judge can skip the gate and deny on § 3553(a) alone. When a court denies “in sole reliance on the applicable § 3553(a) sentencing factors, it need not determine whether the defendant has shown extraordinary and compelling reasons” (United States v. Keitt, 21 F.4th 67 (2d Cir. 2021)).
• That step is where motions die. In fiscal year 2025, courts cited the § 3553(a) factors 1,260 times as a reason for denial — 24.9% of the 5,067 reasons given across 2,401 denials, and more than twice the next most common (USSC FY2025 Compassionate Release Data Report, Table 11).
• There is a third finding people forget: dangerousness. USSG § 1B1.13(a)(2) requires a finding that the person “is not a danger to the safety of any other person or to the community, as provided in 18 U.S.C. § 3142(g)” — the pretrial-detention factors, imported wholesale.
• The Sentencing Commission asks judges to hear from victims before granting. Application Note 2 to § 1B1.13 encourages the court to make its best effort to ensure “any victim of the offense is reasonably, accurately, and timely notified, and provided, to the extent practicable, with an opportunity to be reasonably heard.”
• Where the case was prosecuted matters more than most families expect. FY2025 grant rates ran from 31.0% in the Ninth Circuit to 4.9% in the Eighth on identical law (FY2025 Report, Table 3).
• Two Supreme Court decisions in May 2026 removed a whole category of argument from what a judge may treat as extraordinary and compelling. A motion built on the length of the sentence rather than the condition of the person is a motion built on ground the Court has taken away.

How a Federal Judge Actually Decides: The Two-Step Structure

A compassionate release motion is decided in two distinct steps, and confusing them is the most common analytical error in denied filings. Step one asks whether the court is allowed to reduce the sentence. Step two asks whether it should.

Step one is a gate, not a balancing test

The court must find that “extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant such a reduction” and that the reduction “is consistent with applicable policy statements issued by the Sentencing Commission” (18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)). This determination does not involve weighing the § 3553(a) factors. The Supreme Court described the sequence in Rutherford, relying on Dillon v. United States, 560 U.S. 817 (2010): “Before determining the extent of a reduction based on the § 3553(a) factors, a court must first ensure that a movant is part of the ‘limited class of prisoners’ who are ‘eligibl[e]’ for such a reduction.”

That framing matters because it settles an argument defense counsel made for years. In Concepcion v. United States, 597 U.S. 481 (2022), the Court held that a district judge considering a First Step Act sentence reduction may consider intervening changes of law or fact. Rutherford confined Concepcion to its posture: that case “involved sentence-modification proceedings under a different provision of the Act, where eligibility for a sentencing reduction was conceded.” Concepcion governs how much. It never governed whether.

Step two is discretion, and the statute says “may”

If the gate is cleared, the court considers the sentencing factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) and decides whether to act. The statute says the court “may reduce the term of imprisonment.” It does not say “shall.” As the Sixth Circuit put it in United States v. Ruffin, 978 F.3d 1000 (6th Cir. 2020), “[e]ven if those conditions are met… a district court may still deny relief if it finds that the applicable § 3553(a) factors do not justify it.”

A judge who finds a terminal diagnosis extraordinary and compelling, and finds the person not dangerous, and still denies the motion has done nothing legally wrong. That is the single hardest thing for families to accept, and it is the reason a motion that proves only illness has done half the work.

The findings are necessary conditions in no fixed order

Several circuits have held that the required findings are conjunctive — each one is necessary — and that a court may resolve the motion on whichever one fails first. The Eleventh Circuit stated it plainly in United States v. Giron, 15 F.4th 1343 (11th Cir. 2021); the Ninth Circuit reached the same conclusion in United States v. Keller, 2 F.4th 1278 (9th Cir. 2021); and the Sixth Circuit held in United States v. Elias, 984 F.3d 516 (6th Cir. 2021), that a court may deny when any one prerequisite is lacking and need not address the others.

The practical consequence is the Keitt rule quoted above: a district judge may write a short order saying, in substance, “assuming without deciding that extraordinary and compelling reasons exist, the § 3553(a) factors do not support a reduction,” and that order is reviewable only for abuse of discretion. It is a complete answer to the motion.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: We brief § 3553(a) affirmatively, in the opening motion, before the government has raised it. A great many pro se filings and some counseled ones treat § 3553(a) as a rebuttal — something to answer if the prosecutor brings it up. By then the judge has already read a motion that never explained why a shorter sentence still reflects the seriousness of the offense, still deters, and still protects the public. The Commission’s own denial data says that is the argument the court is going to decide the case on. Write it first, not last, and write it as an argument about the sentence that would remain, not about the sentence already served.

The Judicial Decision Framework at a Glance

This is the whole decision, in order, with the authority for each step and what the national data shows about it. Every figure is from the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s fiscal year 2025 Compassionate Release Data Report unless otherwise noted.

Decision point	The finding the judge makes	Governing authority	How it affects the ruling	What the FY2025 data shows
1. Authority to act at all	The sentence is a federal sentence the court may modify, and one of the § 3582(c) exceptions to finality applies	18 U.S.C. § 3582(c) — “The court may not modify a term of imprisonment once it has been imposed except that…”	Threshold. A federal sentence is presumptively final; this statute is one of a short list of exits	2,795 motions decided nationally; 394 granted (14.1%), Tables 2–3
2. Who filed	The motion came from the BOP Director or from the defendant after the request requirement was satisfied	18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)	A motion filed by a family member is not a motion the court can act on	Defendant-filed: 369 of 394 grants (93.7%); BOP Director: 16 (4.1%); joint: 9, Table 5
3. Exhaustion / the 30-day lapse	Either full exhaustion of BOP administrative appeals, or 30 days from the warden’s receipt of the request, whichever is earlier	18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A); United States v. Alam, 960 F.3d 831 (6th Cir. 2020)	Not jurisdictional, but mandatory if the government raises it. Dismissal is without prejudice	Failure to exhaust cited 447 times as a denial reason (8.8%), Table 11
4. Extraordinary and compelling reasons	A circumstance in USSG § 1B1.13(b)(1)–(6), “or a combination thereof”	USSG § 1B1.13(a)(1)(A); 28 U.S.C. § 994(t)	The eligibility gate. Fail it and the court never reaches discretion — unless it denies on § 3553(a) instead	“No extraordinary and compelling reason provided” cited 512 times (10.1%), Table 11
5. Rehabilitation	Considered, but never sufficient standing alone	28 U.S.C. § 994(t); USSG § 1B1.13(d)	Cannot open the gate by itself; can carry real weight in combination and at step two	Cited 95 times among grants (15.1% of reasons) — always with another reason. “Rehabilitation insufficient” cited 524 times among denials, Tables 10–11
6. Danger to the community	The person “is not a danger to the safety of any other person or to the community, as provided in 18 U.S.C. § 3142(g)”	USSG § 1B1.13(a)(2); 18 U.S.C. § 3142(g)	A separate, freestanding finding. Offense conduct, disciplinary record, and the release plan all feed it	“Protection of the public” cited 143 times as a denial reason, Table 11
7. Victim notification and input	Best effort to notify any victim of the offense and give an opportunity to be heard	USSG § 1B1.13, Application Note 2; 18 U.S.C. § 3771; Fed. R. Crim. P. 60	Encouraged, not a precondition. Victim opposition is input to § 3553(a), not a veto	The Commission does not publish victim-input data; § 3553(a)(7) restitution and § 3553(a)(2)(A) just punishment are where it lands
8. The § 3553(a) factors	The seven statutory factors, “to the extent that they are applicable,” applied to the reduced sentence	18 U.S.C. § 3553(a); USSG § 1B1.13(a)	The discretionary step, and the largest single cause of denial. A court may deny here without deciding step 4	1,260 citations, 24.9% of all denial reasons, Table 11
9. Extent of the reduction	How much time to cut, and whether to convert the remainder to supervision	18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A); USSG § 1B1.13(c)	Only reached after eligibility. A nonretroactive change in law may be considered here even though it cannot establish eligibility	Half of those granted in FY2025 were serving original sentences of 20 years or more, Figure 2
10. Conditions on release	Probation or supervised release “with or without conditions,” not exceeding the unserved portion of the prison term	18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A); 18 U.S.C. § 3583(d)	Lets a judge grant relief without simply opening the door — home detention, monitoring, treatment	Home detention is a discretionary condition under 18 U.S.C. § 3563(b)(19), available “only as an alternative to incarceration”
11. Explanation	Enough reasoning that an appellate court can see a reasoned basis	Chavez-Meza v. United States, 585 U.S. 109 (2018)	A short order can be enough — but an order that leaves the reasoning invisible can be vacated	The four appellate decisions discussed below turned on explanation, a mistaken factual premise, or a categorical rule
12. Review on appeal	Abuse of discretion; legal error is not insulated	United States v. Ruffin, 978 F.3d 1000 (6th Cir. 2020)	Deferential, not empty. A purely legal mistake, a clearly wrong fact, or no explanation can all be reversible	Defendant’s notice of appeal is due in 14 days; the government’s in 30 (Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(1))

What the § 3553(a) Factors Mean in a Sentence-Reduction Posture

The seven factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) are the same ones the judge used to build the original sentence. They are the answer to the query “what do judges consider when sentencing,” and they do not change when a sentence is reopened. What changes is the evidence available to answer them, and the fact that the judge is now measuring a shorter sentence against them rather than choosing one from a range. If you want the original-sentencing version of this analysis — offense levels, criminal history categories, departures and variances — that lives on our federal sentencing guidelines overview. We take the seven factors one at a time, with the evidence that answers each, on our page on the 3553(a) factors.

USSG § 1B1.13(a) directs the court to consider the factors “to the extent that they are applicable.” Some do most of the work in this posture; two do almost none.

§ 3553(a)(1) — the nature and circumstances of the offense and the history and characteristics of the defendant

The statute pairs these in a single clause, and judges treat them as a single question: who is this, and what did they do. In a compassionate release posture the second half is where the motion lives, because the “history and characteristics” of a person who has served twelve years is a different record from the one in the presentence report.

What is new since sentencing: the disciplinary record, work and education transcripts, program completions, medical decline, the death or incapacity of family members, the PATTERN risk score history, and the age of the person now. What is not new: the offense conduct. The judge already knows it, already weighed it, and in most districts imposed the sentence personally. Re-arguing the facts of the offense is the fastest way to lose a judge’s attention, and after Fernandez v. United States (2026), arguing that the conviction itself was wrong is not merely unpersuasive — it is the wrong statute. That argument belongs in a § 2255 motion, which carries a one-year deadline this statute does not; see post-conviction deadlines.

Criminal history is part of this factor and is not the disqualifier families fear. Among those granted relief in FY2025, 35.7% were in criminal history category VI, the highest category, and 20.7% were career offenders under USSG § 4B1.1 — proportions almost identical to those denied (36.3% and 18.4%) (FY2025 Report, Table 7). A long record does not close the door.

§ 3553(a)(2)(A) — seriousness of the offense, respect for the law, just punishment

This is the retributive factor, and it is the one that does the most quiet damage to motions filed early in a long sentence. The question the judge is answering is whether the time already served — plus whatever supervision would follow — still amounts to just punishment for what happened.

There is no time-served threshold in the statute for a medical or family-based motion, and no percentage a person must reach. The 10-year and 75% figures that circulate come from the age category at USSG § 1B1.13(b)(2) and apply only there. But the absence of a rule is not the absence of a pattern: half the people granted relief in FY2025 were serving original sentences of 20 years or more, and another 25.8% were serving 10 to under 20 years (Figure 2). Only 0.5% were serving under a year. Long sentences leave room for a reduction that still reads as just punishment; short ones do not.

One caution the Supreme Court added in 2026: an argument that the original sentence was unjust because Congress has since changed the law is no longer available at the eligibility step. Rutherford forecloses it. It may still bear on the extent of a reduction once eligibility is established on other grounds, because USSG § 1B1.13(c) preserves that use expressly.

§ 3553(a)(2)(B) — adequate deterrence

Deterrence has two halves and they behave differently in this posture. General deterrence — the message the sentence sends to other people — is largely unaffected by an individualized medical release, and courts say so. Specific deterrence — whether this person needs more prison to be deterred — is where a documented decline in health, a decade of clean conduct, or advanced age does real work.

The Commission’s data gives one indirect read on how much weight courts put here: post-sentencing conduct was cited as a reason for denial 55 times in FY2025, a small fraction of the 5,067 denial reasons (Table 11). Bad institutional conduct is not what usually sinks these motions. It sinks the ones it sinks decisively.

§ 3553(a)(2)(C) — protecting the public from further crimes of the defendant

This factor overlaps almost entirely with the separate danger finding under USSG § 1B1.13(a)(2), and in practice most judges analyze them together. The difference is procedural: dangerousness under § 1B1.13(a)(2) is a required finding at the eligibility stage, while public protection under § 3553(a)(2)(C) is one input among seven at the discretionary stage. A motion has to satisfy both.

“Protection of the public” appeared 143 times in the FY2025 denial reasons. Read against the 1,260 citations to § 3553(a) generally, that suggests most § 3553(a) denials are not framed as public-safety denials — they are framed as “not enough time served for this offense.”

§ 3553(a)(2)(D) — needed educational or vocational training, medical care, or other correctional treatment

This is the factor most motions ignore, and it is the only one in the list that can cut for release on its face. The statute directs the court to consider the need “to provide the defendant with needed educational or vocational training, medical care, or other correctional treatment in the most effective manner.” Where the record shows the Bureau of Prisons is not delivering care the person needs — the referral that was never scheduled, the surgery approved and never performed, the oncology appointment postponed four times — § 3553(a)(2)(D) is a direct statutory hook, not an appeal to sympathy.

It pairs naturally with USSG § 1B1.13(b)(1)(C), the eligibility ground for a condition requiring long-term or specialized care “that is not being provided.” Note that the guideline asks only whether required care is being provided and whether the person is at risk of serious deterioration or death. It does not require proof of deliberate indifference — that is an Eighth Amendment standard from a different body of law, and importing it into a § 3582 motion concedes a burden the guideline does not impose. BOP’s failure to provide treatment was cited 12 times among FY2025 grants and 9 times in the first half of FY2026, a small but growing line (Table 10 of each report).

§ 3553(a)(3), (a)(4), and (a)(5) — kinds of sentences available, the guideline range, and policy statements

These three do limited work in a reduction posture, and the “to the extent that they are applicable” clause is why. The court is not selecting a sentence from a range; it is deciding whether to shorten one already imposed. The guideline range is historical context.

Factor (a)(5) is the exception, and it is not a small one: the “pertinent policy statement” here is USSG § 1B1.13 itself, which the statute makes binding through the separate requirement that any reduction be “consistent with applicable policy statements issued by the Sentencing Commission.” That is the clause that converts the Commission’s six categories from guidance into law, and it is the clause the Supreme Court used in Rutherford to hold § 1B1.13(b)(6) invalid in relevant part.

§ 3553(a)(6) — the need to avoid unwarranted sentence disparities

This factor is now the most legally delicate one on the list. The statute directs courts to consider “the need to avoid unwarranted sentence disparities among defendants with similar records who have been found guilty of similar conduct.”

After May 2026, a disparity created by a nonretroactive change in law cannot establish eligibility. Rutherford held that such a disparity is “an unexceptional feature of a system in which nonretroactivity is the default,” and that the change “considered by itself or in combination with other factors—cannot make a prisoner eligible for compassionate release.” That holding is about step one. Section 3553(a)(6) lives at step two, and § 1B1.13(c) still says a change in law “may be considered for purposes of determining the extent of any such reduction” once eligibility is established on other grounds.

Two other kinds of disparity are untouched by Rutherford entirely: disparities between co-defendants sentenced for the same conduct, and disparities produced by the same judge across similar cases. Neither depends on a nonretroactive statutory change.

The circuits have read Rutherford broadly, not narrowly. In United States v. Hall, No. 24-6094 (6th Cir. June 25, 2026), a published decision reversing a grant, the Sixth Circuit held that Rutherford’s logic is not confined to § 1B1.13(b)(6) — the catch-all at (b)(5) cannot be used to override a limit either. In United States v. Chineag, No. 25-10557 (11th Cir. July 2, 2026) (unpublished), the court applied Rutherford to a nonretroactive Controlled Substances Act change and rejected stacking unrelated factors under (b)(5) as not “similar in gravity.” In United States v. Loggins, Nos. 24-1488 and 24-1569 (8th Cir. July 10, 2026), the Eighth Circuit read Rutherford as confirming its own prior rule.

§ 3553(a)(7) — the need to provide restitution to any victims of the offense

The last factor is the one that ties the § 3553(a) analysis to victim participation. A reduced prison term does not disturb restitution, forfeiture, or fines — those are separate components of the judgment. But a judge weighing release will look at whether restitution has been paid, whether the payment schedule survives release, and whether releasing the person improves or worsens the prospect of payment. A person who can work in the community may pay more restitution than a person earning institutional wages, and that is an argument worth making explicitly rather than leaving the court to infer.

The Danger Finding: § 1B1.13(a)(2) and the § 3142(g) Factors

Separate from the § 3553(a) analysis, USSG § 1B1.13(a)(2) requires the court to determine that “the defendant is not a danger to the safety of any other person or to the community, as provided in 18 U.S.C. § 3142(g).” That cross-reference imports the federal pretrial-detention factors into a sentence-reduction motion — the same list a magistrate judge uses at a detention hearing before trial, applied years later to a person with a prison record. We work through all four statutory factors, and which of them a movant can actually change, on our page on danger to the community.

Section 3142(g) directs the judicial officer to “take into account the available information concerning” four things.

§ 3142(g) factor	The statutory text	What it looks like in a compassionate release motion
(g)(1) Nature and circumstances of the offense charged	Including “whether the offense is a crime of violence, a violation of section 1591, a Federal crime of terrorism, or involves a minor victim or a controlled substance, firearm, explosive, or destructive device”	The offense of conviction, not the current conduct. This is the factor most likely to be fixed against the movant, and the one that offense-type data tracks most closely
(g)(2) Weight of the evidence against the person	—	Largely spent. Guilt was established by plea or verdict; this factor does little independent work post-conviction
(g)(3) History and characteristics of the person	“character, physical and mental condition, family ties, employment, financial resources, length of residence in the community, community ties, past conduct, history relating to drug or alcohol abuse, criminal history, and record concerning appearance at court proceedings,” and whether the person was on probation, parole, or release at the time of the offense	The factor the record can actually move. “Physical and mental condition” is in the statute — the same medical decline that establishes eligibility also reduces capacity to reoffend. Family ties, community ties, and a documented residence are all named in the text, which is why a concrete release plan is a danger-finding argument and not just a logistics document
(g)(4) Nature and seriousness of the danger to any person or the community posed by release	—	The forward-looking question. Answered with the disciplinary record, program history, PATTERN score trajectory, age, medical limitations, and the specific structure of the release plan — supervision, monitoring, treatment, and who is responsible for what

Two points about how judges use this in practice. First, the finding is about danger if released on the terms proposed, which is why the conditions a motion asks for are part of the danger argument — a request for home detention with location monitoring and a named treating physician answers § 3142(g)(4) in a way that a request for outright release does not. Second, the danger finding is not a categorical bar keyed to the offense. The First Circuit vacated a denial in United States v. Quirós-Morales, 83 F.4th 79 (1st Cir. 2023), holding that where a denial implies the crime of conviction is a categorical bar, “no such categorical bar currently exists” and that it was error to treat the motion as deniable as a matter of law.

The FY2025 offense data bears that out unevenly. Among the 390 people granted relief whose offense type the Commission coded, drug trafficking accounted for 46.4%, robbery 16.2%, firearms 13.3%, murder 6.7%, fraud, theft and embezzlement 5.4%, sexual abuse 3.1%, and child pornography 0.0% — no grants at all (FY2025 Report, Table 8). Among the 2,386 denied, child pornography accounted for 3.4% and sexual abuse 4.7% (Table 9). Violent offenses are plainly not disqualifying — murder convictions were 6.7% of grants and 6.0% of denials, essentially the same share — but the child-pornography line is a zero, and a family should be told that rather than reassured.

Applied Insight — Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, Managing Director: The danger finding is the one place where BOP’s own paperwork does most of the arguing for you, and where families reliably under-document. Pull the full SENTRY disciplinary printout, not a summary — a judge wants to see the incident report numbers and dates, and a clean fifteen-year stretch reads very differently as a printout than as a sentence in a brief. Pull the custody classification history and the PATTERN score history, because a documented drop from high to minimum over a decade is an institutional finding about risk, made by the government, that the government then has to argue against. Pull the work evaluations and the unit team’s progress reports. On the medical side, the Care Level designation and the Activities of Daily Living assessment do double duty: they establish the § 1B1.13(b)(1)(B) self-care element and they answer § 3142(g)(3)’s “physical and mental condition” clause at the same time. The legal argument built on all of that is Elizabeth’s; the records retrieval and the institutional read are ours.

What Counts as an Extraordinary and Compelling Reason — and What the Supreme Court Removed in 2026

The eligibility gate has six doors, all in USSG § 1B1.13(b), and the policy statement says extraordinary and compelling reasons exist under any of them “or a combination thereof.” Our hub page carries the full eligibility breakdown; what follows is what a judge is actually doing with those categories in 2026. What each decision held, and what it did not, is set out on our page on rutherford v united states.

The six categories are medical circumstances at (b)(1), advanced age at (b)(2), family circumstances at (b)(3), victimization by staff in custody at (b)(4), other reasons “similar in gravity” at (b)(5), and unusually long sentences at (b)(6). For the definitions and the documentation each one demands, see compassionate release definition; for the abuse ground specifically, see victims of sexual abuse lawyer. What survives of the unusually-long-sentence provision is covered on our page on the unusually long sentence ground.

What “extraordinary” means to a judge is narrower than the everyday word. The Supreme Court took its definitions from Webster’s Third New International Dictionary: “extraordinary” means “most unusual,” “far from common,” or “having little or no precedent,” and “compelling” means “tending to convince or convert by or as if by forcefulness of evidence” (Rutherford). The Court then made the structural point that decides most of these motions: “While the terms ‘extraordinary’ and ‘compelling’ leave room for judgment, they are not so flexible as to encompass any consideration. Their meaning depends on context: A reason is ‘extraordinary’ and ‘compelling’ only if it is sufficiently unusual and convincing to ‘warrant’ compassionate release.” A denial is usually not a finding that the circumstance is trivial. It is a finding that the circumstance is not weighty enough against the thing being undone.

The Court also described the statute’s center of gravity in terms worth quoting to any judge: the “heartland of compassionate release … has long been defined by a prisoner’s personal circumstances, such as medical condition, age, and family circumstances.”

The Fourth Circuit’s totality rule still governs how the categories combine. In United States v. Hargrove, 30 F.4th 189 (4th Cir. 2022), the court confirmed that a district judge considers the totality of the circumstances rather than testing each condition in isolation. That is the doctrinal basis for building a motion out of several partial grounds, and it is why § 1B1.13(b)’s “or a combination thereof” language matters.

The D.C. Circuit has read the catch-all narrowly. In United States v. Jenkins, 50 F.4th 1185 (D.C. Cir. 2022), the court applied ejusdem generis to the “other reasons” provision — a general catch-all at the end of a list takes its meaning from the specific items before it. Post-Hall, that reading has gained force everywhere.

What May 28, 2026 removed. Rutherford holds that where Congress declines to make a sentencing amendment retroactive, the resulting disparity cannot be an extraordinary and compelling reason — “considered by itself or in combination with other factors” — and that § 1B1.13(b)(6) “is invalid” to the extent it counsels otherwise. Fernandez holds that a prisoner who collaterally attacks the validity of a conviction must proceed under § 2255. The line Fernandez draws is 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).

What the Court expressly did not decide. Two reservations matter and most commentary has missed both, and both are Rutherford‘s. “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. Fernandez describes the heartland as “age, illness, a child left with no guardian” — reasons that “bear no resemblance to the grounds for relief under § 2255.” Heartland is not a closed list, and a page that tells families otherwise is stating more than the Court held.

One provision the Guidelines Manual has not caught up on. Section 1B1.13(b)(6) is still printed in the 2025 Guidelines Manual. The Commission has not amended it; the only § 1B1.13 change taking effect November 1, 2026 renames the Bureau of Prisons. Anyone who looks the guideline up will read a provision the Supreme Court has held invalid in significant part, with nothing on the page to say so. In FY2025 that provision was the second most-cited reason courts gave for granting relief — 80 of 631 reasons, 12.7% — and in FY2024 it was cited 98 times. A meaningful share of the recent grant data describes relief on a theory that is no longer available.

What the Data Says Judges Actually Do

Most pages on this topic describe what the law permits. The U.S. Sentencing Commission publishes what judges actually did, twice a year, with the reasons coded. The tables below are drawn from the FY2025 Compassionate Release Data Report and, where noted, from the FY2026 first-half report.

Two cautions before the numbers. First, courts cite more than one reason per ruling — 631 reasons across 394 grants, and 5,067 reasons across 2,401 denials — so the percentages are shares of reasons, never of cases. Second, the tables count motions decided, not motions filed.

Why judges granted relief in FY2025

Reason cited	Citations	Share of the 631 reasons
Rehabilitation (always in combination with another reason)	95	15.1%
Unusually long sentence, § 1B1.13(b)(6) — now curtailed by Rutherford	80	12.7%
Serious physical or medical condition, § 1B1.13(b)(1)(B)	71	11.3%
Reason missing from the record	53	8.4%
Multiple 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) penalties — now curtailed by Rutherford	45	7.1%
Other mandatory minimum or long-sentence rationale	31	4.9%
Terminal illness, § 1B1.13(b)(1)(A)	28	4.4%
Family — care for a parent, § 1B1.13(b)(3)(C)	23	3.6%
Young age at the time of the offense	19	3.0%
Family — care for a minor or disabled child, § 1B1.13(b)(3)(A)	18	2.9%
Enhanced drug penalties under 21 U.S.C. § 851	18	2.9%
Age 65 with deteriorating health, § 1B1.13(b)(2)	16	2.5%
Career-offender issues	16	2.5%
Family — other immediate family member, § 1B1.13(b)(3)(D)	14	2.2%
BOP failure to provide treatment, § 1B1.13(b)(1)(C)	12	1.9%
Deteriorating health due to aging	11	1.7%
Extraordinary and compelling reason not specified	9	1.4%
Nearly meets a § 1B1.13 category	5	0.8%
Abuse by a corrections officer or BOP contractor, § 1B1.13(b)(4)	5	0.8%
Serious functional or cognitive impairment	4	0.6%
Mandatory nature of the guideline	4	0.6%
Guideline amendment not yet in effect	4	0.6%
COVID-19, § 1B1.13(b)(1)(D)	3	0.5%
Family — spouse or registered partner, § 1B1.13(b)(3)(B)	2	0.3%
Armed Career Criminal Act issues	2	0.3%
Conviction or sentencing errors	2	0.3%
Other	41	6.5%

Source: USSC FY2025 Compassionate Release Data Report, Table 10. The Commission notes that in every case where a court gave rehabilitation as a reason for a grant, it also gave at least one other reason.

Read that table with the 2026 decisions in hand and roughly a fifth of it is gone. The 80 citations to § 1B1.13(b)(6) and the 45 to stacked § 924(c) penalties describe grants made on a reading of the statute the Supreme Court has since rejected. Any assessment of the odds built on FY2024 or FY2025 grant data overstates what is available today.

The first half of FY2026 already shows the shift beginning: among the 199 reasons given for 125 grants, rehabilitation rose to 34 citations (17.1%), serious physical or medical condition to 27 (13.6%), § 1B1.13(b)(6) fell to 17 (8.5%), terminal illness was 12 (6.0%), stacked § 924(c) penalties 11 (5.5%), and BOP failure to provide treatment 9 (4.5%) (FY2026 Q1–Q2 Report, Table 10). Those figures cover October 2025 through March 2026 — before Rutherford was decided.

Why judges denied relief in FY2025

Reason cited	Citations	Share of the 5,067 reasons
The § 3553(a) factors	1,260	24.9%
Rehabilitation insufficient	524	10.3%
No extraordinary and compelling reason provided	512	10.1%
Failure to exhaust administrative remedies	447	8.8%
Insufficient proof of a serious physical or medical condition	352	6.9%
Able to provide self-care in prison	260	5.1%
Not at risk from COVID-19	191	3.8%
Protection of the public	143	2.8%
Other care available for a minor child	142	2.8%
Fails the § 3559 age and time-served test	120	2.4%
Insufficient proof of deteriorating health	66	1.3%
Post-sentencing conduct	55	1.1%
Mandatory minimum	40	0.8%
Other care available for a spouse or partner	23	0.5%
Insufficient proof of functional or cognitive impairment	15	0.3%
Binding plea agreement	4	0.1%
Other	882	17.4%

Source: USSC FY2025 Compassionate Release Data Report, Table 11, covering 2,401 denied motions and 5,067 reasons. The rows above are the Commission’s principal coded categories; the remaining citations fall into smaller categories not listed here, so the column does not sum to the total.

Four lines in that table are worth reading as instructions. Failure to exhaust — 447 citations, 8.8% of all denial reasons — is a self-inflicted denial; the fix is a properly documented request to the warden and a calendar. Insufficient proof of a serious medical condition (352) and able to provide self-care in prison (260) are the entire medical fight, and both are evidentiary rather than legal: they are lost on what was filed, not on what the law is. Other care available for a minor child (142) and for a spouse or partner (23) say that the contested element in almost every caregiver motion is not the incapacitation but the absence of an alternative. And § 3553(a) at 1,260 dwarfs everything else.

The first half of FY2026 tracks the same shape: § 3553(a) 403 citations (23.0%), no extraordinary and compelling reason 235 (13.4%), rehabilitation insufficient 207 (11.8%), failure to exhaust 136 (7.8%), insufficient medical proof 118 (6.7%), self-care 107 (6.1%), and other care available for a minor child 58 (3.3%).

Who was granted relief

The Commission publishes demographic and sentence-length data alongside the reasons. In FY2025 the average age at the original sentencing was 38 for both those granted and those denied; the average age at the time of decision was 51 for those granted and 47 for those denied (Table 6). Women were 11.4% of grants and 7.8% of denials. U.S. citizens were 89.6% of grants. By race, those granted were 45.9% Black, 28.1% White, 19.6% Hispanic, and 6.4% other.

On sentence length, of those granted relief: 50.0% were serving original sentences of 20 years or more, 25.8% were serving 10 to under 20 years, 9.8% were serving 5 to under 10, 10.8% were serving 2 to under 5, 3.1% were serving 1 to under 2, and 0.5% were serving under a year (Figure 2). That is the original sentence, not the size of the reduction — the Commission does not publish reduction amounts, and any page that gives you an average reduction is giving you a number no one has published.

COVID-19 has effectively disappeared from the analysis. As a share of all reasons cited for granting, it fell from 61.6% in FY2020 (1,304 citations) to 52.4% in FY2021, 20.7% in FY2022, 7.8% in FY2023, 3.3% in FY2024, and 0.5% in FY2025 (3 citations). The Seventh Circuit’s decisions in United States v. Broadfield, 5 F.4th 801 (7th Cir. 2021), and United States v. Kurzynowski, 17 F.4th 756 (7th Cir. 2021), holding that vaccination status bears on a COVID-based claim, are where that trend started in the case law.

Why the Same Motion Fares Differently in Different Courthouses

Grant rates vary more by geography than by any other measurable variable, and because a § 3582(c)(1)(A) motion goes back to the sentencing court, this is fixed by where the case was prosecuted — not by where the person is now imprisoned. A transfer to a different facility does not move the motion. The circuit-by-circuit and district-by-district figures behind that are on our page on the compassionate release grant rate.

Circuit	FY2025 decided	Granted	Rate	FY2026 Q1–Q2 rate
Ninth	232	72	31.0%	26.6% (79 decided)
Second	118	32	27.1%	38.5% (26 decided)
D.C.	20	5	25.0%	33.3% (3 decided)
First	56	14	25.0%	47.6% (21 decided)
Tenth	101	21	20.8%	13.3% (30 decided)
Eleventh	447	75	16.8%	12.4% (105 decided)
Fourth	572	81	14.2%	19.9% (196 decided)
Third	95	12	12.6%	15.8% (38 decided)
Fifth	182	18	9.9%	9.5% (63 decided)
Sixth	271	24	8.9%	6.7% (90 decided)
Seventh	173	14	8.1%	5.4% (56 decided)
Eighth	528	26	4.9%	3.2% (187 decided)
National	2,795	394	14.1%	14.0% (894 decided)

Source: USSC FY2025 and FY2026 Q1–Q2 Compassionate Release Data Reports, Table 3. The FY2026 half-year figures for the D.C., First, Second, and Tenth Circuits rest on very small numbers of decided motions and should be read with the counts attached — the First Circuit’s 47.6% is 10 grants out of 21 decisions.

District-level variation is wider still. In FY2025, the District of Maryland granted 31.6% of 95 motions while the Southern District of Iowa granted none of 81. Other zero-grant districts with meaningful volume included the Eastern District of Wisconsin (0 of 35), the Eastern District of Arkansas (0 of 30), and the District of North Dakota (0 of 28). At the low-but-nonzero end: the Northern District of Ohio 2.5% (2 of 80), the Eastern District of Kentucky 2.6% (1 of 38), the District of Nebraska 2.9% (1 of 35), and the Western District of Missouri 3.5% (4 of 114). The largest-volume districts were the Southern District of Florida (187 decided, 12.8% granted), the Middle District of Florida (147, 9.5%), the Eastern District of Virginia (135, 12.6%), and the Western District of Missouri (114, 3.5%).

Texas is a useful case study because its districts diverge sharply from one another on the same law: in FY2025 the Southern District of Texas granted 12.5% (6 of 48), the Western District 6.5% (4 of 62), and the Eastern District 2.9% (1 of 34). The Northern District decided only 3 motions that year and none in the first half of FY2026, so it has no meaningful rate to quote. For what that means for a case prosecuted there, see compassionate release texas.

Some of this spread is circuit precedent, and after Rutherford some of that precedent has converged. The rest is judicial philosophy applied to identical statutory text — which is the honest answer to a family asking about odds, and a better answer than an adjective.

Before the Merits: Exhaustion, the 30-Day Rule, and Who May File

Before a judge reaches whether a person is sick enough, old enough, or needed at home, the court checks whether the motion is properly before it. Failure to exhaust alone accounted for 447 citations, 8.8% of the denial reasons courts gave in FY2025 — the fourth most common reason for turning a motion down, and the only one on the list that a calendar can prevent.

The request to the warden. Section 3582(c)(1)(A) permits a defendant-filed motion only “after the defendant has fully exhausted all administrative rights to appeal a failure of the Bureau of Prisons to bring a motion on the defendant’s behalf or the lapse of 30 days from the receipt of such a request by the warden of the defendant’s facility, whichever is earlier.” Two independent routes, and the Fourth Circuit confirmed as much in United States v. Muhammad, 16 F.4th 126 (4th Cir. 2021). The 30-day route is what most people use. What the request must contain, how the Bureau routes it internally, and how the BP-9/BP-10/BP-11 sequence interacts with all of this is covered on our compassionate release request to warden page.

It is mandatory, but it is not jurisdictional. Every circuit to address it has treated exhaustion as a claim-processing rule rather than a limit on the court’s power: United States v. Alam, 960 F.3d 831 (6th Cir. 2020); United States v. Franco, 973 F.3d 465 (5th Cir. 2020), calling it a “paradigmatic mandatory claim-processing rule”; and United States v. Sanford, 986 F.3d 779 (7th Cir. 2021), holding that such rules must be enforced when properly invoked. The distinction has two consequences a judge will apply: the government can waive or forfeit the objection by not raising it (United States v. Saladino, 7 F.4th 120 (2d Cir. 2021)), and a dismissal for failure to exhaust is without prejudice — the person can go back, file the request, and return.

There is no futility exception in at least one circuit. The Eighth Circuit held in United States v. Houck, 2 F.4th 1082 (8th Cir. 2021), that there are no equitable exceptions to the requirement, rejecting a futility argument. And the Ninth Circuit held in United States v. Fower, 30 F.4th 823 (9th Cir. 2022), that a defendant must be in BOP custody to exhaust — which matters for people who have not yet reported or who are held elsewhere.

One split is live and should shape how the warden request is written. Whether the grounds raised with the warden must match the grounds raised in court is unresolved. The Seventh Circuit requires issue exhaustion: 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 and does not limit the grounds later raised: United States v. Ferguson, 55 F.4th 262 (4th Cir. 2022). Until that is resolved, the safe course in every district is to put every ground in the warden request.

The person does not have to be in the courtroom. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 43(b)(4) provides that a defendant need not be present when “[t]he proceeding involves the correction or reduction of sentence under Rule 35 or 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c).” In practice, most of these motions are decided on the papers without any hearing at all, which is why the written record is the entire case.

The motion goes to the sentencing court. It is decided by the U.S. District Court that imposed the sentence — usually by the same judge, if that judge is still on the bench. That is a structural fact with strategic consequences: the judge has already heard the offense conduct, already resolved the guideline disputes, and already imposed the number the motion asks to change. For how the First Step Act of 2018 created this posture in the first place, see compassionate release first step act and our overview of the First Step Act.

Rehabilitation: Never Enough Alone, and Still the Most-Cited Reason for Granting

Rehabilitation can never open the gate by itself, and it is nevertheless the single most-cited reason judges gave when they granted relief. Both statements are true, and holding them together is the whole skill.

28 U.S.C. § 994(t) directs that “[r]ehabilitation of the defendant alone shall not be considered an extraordinary and compelling reason.” USSG § 1B1.13(d) implements it precisely: rehabilitation “is not, by itself, an extraordinary and compelling reason,” but “rehabilitation of the defendant while serving the sentence may be considered in combination with other circumstances in determining whether and to what extent a reduction … is warranted.”

So rehabilitation does three jobs and cannot do a fourth. It supports eligibility in combination with a qualifying ground. It answers the danger finding under § 3142(g)(3) and (g)(4). It carries weight at step two under § 3553(a)(1) and (a)(2)(B). What it cannot do is be the ground itself.

The numbers show courts using it exactly that way. In FY2025 rehabilitation was cited 95 times among the 631 reasons for granting — more than any other single reason — and the Commission adds a footnote that in every one of those cases the court also gave at least one other reason. On the other side of the ledger, “rehabilitation insufficient” was cited 524 times among denial reasons. The same evidence appears on both tables, which tells you it is rarely dispositive on its own in either direction.

What judges are reading when they evaluate it: the SENTRY disciplinary record with incident report numbers and dates; education and vocational transcripts with completion dates rather than enrollment; work evaluations and job assignments; participation in and completion of the Residential Drug Abuse Program or other treatment; FSA program participation and PATTERN risk history; and letters from unit staff, chaplains, education staff, or program coordinators who supervise the person daily. A letter from someone employed by the Bureau of Prisons who has watched the person work for six years is a different document from a letter from a cousin.

What tends not to move a judge: certificates without hours, program enrollment without completion, generic character letters, and a rehabilitation narrative that arrives without a qualifying ground attached. Post-sentencing conduct was cited as a reason for denial only 55 times in FY2025 — meaning bad conduct rarely decides these cases, but the absence of good conduct leaves the § 3553(a) argument with nothing to stand on.

Victim Notification, the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, and Where Victim Input Lands

Federal judges are asked to hear from victims before granting a compassionate release motion, and victim opposition is weighed rather than obeyed.

The Sentencing Commission’s instruction is in Application Note 2 to USSG § 1B1.13: “Before granting a motion pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), the Commission encourages the court to make its best effort to ensure that any victim of the offense is reasonably, accurately, and timely notified, and provided, to the extent practicable, with an opportunity to be reasonably heard, unless any such victim previously requested not to be notified.” The verb is “encourages.” It is not a jurisdictional precondition, and a grant is not void because a victim was not located.

The adjacent statutory authority is the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3771. It gives a crime victim the right to “reasonable, accurate, and timely notice of any public court proceeding … involving the crime or of any release or escape of the accused” (§ 3771(a)(2)); the right “to be reasonably heard at any public proceeding in the district court involving release, plea, sentencing, or any parole proceeding” (§ 3771(a)(4)); the reasonable right to confer with the attorney for the Government (§ 3771(a)(5)); the right to full and timely restitution (§ 3771(a)(6)); and the right to be treated with fairness and with respect for the victim’s dignity and privacy (§ 3771(a)(8)). Section 3771(b)(1) directs that “the court shall ensure that the crime victim is afforded the rights described in subsection (a),” and § 3771(c)(1) puts the notification duty on Department of Justice officers and employees — which is why in practice the U.S. Attorney’s office, not the court and not defense counsel, is the party that contacts victims.

Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 60 carries the same rights into the rules: the government “must use its best efforts to give the victim reasonable, accurate, and timely notice of any public court proceeding involving the crime,” and the court “must permit a victim to be reasonably heard at any public proceeding in the district court concerning release, plea, or sentencing involving the crime.” Section 3771(d)(1) is explicit that “[a] person accused of the crime may not obtain any form of relief under this chapter” — the defense cannot invoke the CVRA, and a victim whose rights are denied may seek mandamus under § 3771(d)(3).

Where victim input actually lands in the analysis. It is not a separate finding. It enters through § 3553(a)(2)(A) — the seriousness of the offense and just punishment — through § 3553(a)(1)’s nature and circumstances of the offense, and through § 3553(a)(7)’s need to provide restitution. A judge who denies a motion after hearing from a victim will typically say so in the § 3553(a) discussion, not in a separate victim section. Victim support for release travels the same route in reverse.

Practical consequences for a motion. Where there is an identifiable victim, assume the government will contact them and assume the court will read what they send. Restitution status is worth addressing directly — how much is owed, what has been paid, what the schedule looks like on release, and whether employment in the community improves the prospect of payment. Where there has been genuine contact through a victim-offender program or a restorative process, documentation of it is evidence; an assertion of remorse without it is not.

The Order a Judge Actually Enters: Supervision, Conditions, and Home Detention

A grant is a modified sentence, not a vacated conviction, and it rarely means an unconditional walk-out. The statute gives judges a middle path that a great many motions fail to ask for. What the movant proposes shapes what the judge can order, which is why the compassionate release plan is drafted before the motion, not after.

Section 3582(c)(1)(A) authorizes the court to “reduce the term of imprisonment (and may impose a term of probation or supervised release with or without conditions that does not exceed the unserved portion of the original term of imprisonment).” USSG § 1B1.13(a) repeats the authority. That parenthetical is the mechanism behind what people loosely call “release to home confinement” on a compassionate release motion: the judge converts the remaining prison time into supervised release and attaches conditions to it. It is a court-imposed condition of supervision, and it is a different thing from the Bureau of Prisons’ own home confinement placement authority.

The conditions a judge may impose. Section 3583(d) makes certain conditions mandatory — no new federal, state, or local crime; restitution under the applicable statute; no unlawful possession of a controlled substance; DNA collection where authorized; drug testing within 15 days of release and at least two periodic tests thereafter. Beyond those, the court may impose any discretionary condition of probation listed in 18 U.S.C. § 3563(b) plus “any other condition it considers to be appropriate,” provided the condition is reasonably related to the § 3553(a)(1), (a)(2)(B), (a)(2)(C), and (a)(2)(D) factors, involves “no greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary,” and is consistent with the Commission’s policy statements.

Home detention is on that list, with a limit. Section 3563(b)(19) authorizes a condition that the person “remain at his place of residence during nonworking hours and, if the court finds it appropriate, that compliance with this condition be monitored by telephonic or electronic signaling devices” — but the statute adds that this condition “may be imposed only as an alternative to incarceration.” A motion asking for home detention should address that clause directly rather than assume it, and should frame the condition as what is replacing the unserved prison term. Other conditions § 3563(b) makes available and judges commonly use here include residing in a specified place (§ 3563(b)(13)), remaining within the court’s jurisdiction (§ 3563(b)(14)), reporting to a probation officer (§ 3563(b)(15)), and permitting home visits (§ 3563(b)(16)).

Deportation as a condition. Where a person is subject to removal, § 3583(d) permits the court to order as a condition of supervised release that the person be deported and remain outside the United States, and to order delivery to an immigration official. A non-citizen granted compassionate release may be transferred to immigration custody rather than to a home address, and the release plan should say where the medical care will come from in that scenario.

Violations and revocation. Supervision is not a formality. Under § 3583(e)(3), a court that finds a violation by a preponderance of the evidence may revoke and require the person to serve in prison all or part of the authorized term — capped at five years for a Class A felony, three for a Class B, two for a Class C or D, and one year otherwise. Section 3583(g) makes revocation mandatory for possession of a controlled substance, possession of a firearm in violation of federal law or a condition, refusal to comply with drug testing, or testing positive more than three times in a year. Section 3583(e)(2) also lets a court modify, reduce, or enlarge conditions at any time before the term expires — which is the route for a person whose medical circumstances make a condition unworkable.

A judge may prefer a smaller remedy. Application Note 1 to § 1B1.13 states that a reduction “is not appropriate when releasing the defendant under 18 U.S.C. § 3622 for a limited time adequately addresses the defendant’s circumstances.” Section 3622 is the furlough statute. Where the need is a funeral, a bedside visit, or a medical procedure not available at the facility, a court may conclude that a temporary release answers it and a sentence reduction is not warranted — which is a reason to be precise about what the motion is actually asking for. On the BOP side of that process, see furlough requests.

What survives a grant. Restitution, forfeiture, fines, and the conviction itself. A reduced prison term does not disturb any of them.

The Explanation Requirement and What Happens on Appeal

Denials are reviewed for abuse of discretion, which is deferential and not empty. What gets a ruling vacated is usually not the outcome — it is the reasoning, or its absence. Appeal is not the only route after a denial — see can you file compassionate release twice.

How much explanation is enough. The controlling case is Chavez-Meza v. United States, 585 U.S. 109 (2018), a sentence-reduction case in which the district judge had granted a partial reduction on a checkbox form order certifying that he had “considered” the motion and “tak[en] into account” the § 3553(a) factors. The Supreme Court held the explanation adequate: “Because the record as a whole demonstrates the judge had a reasoned basis for his decision, the judge’s explanation for petitioner’s sentence reduction was adequate.” Quoting Rita, the Court restated the standard — the sentencing judge need only “set forth enough to satisfy the appellate court that he has considered the parties’ arguments and has a reasoned basis for exercising his own legal decisionmaking authority” — and observed that “sometimes a judge simply writes the word ‘granted’ or ‘denied’ on the face of a motion while relying upon context and the parties’ prior arguments to make the reasons clear.”

That is a low bar, and it is the reason most appeals from these denials fail. It is also not an unlimited one, and four recent decisions mark the edges.

Decision	Court and date	What was wrong	Status
United States v. Traumann	3d Cir., No. 23-2985 (Oct. 1, 2024)	A brief order left it unclear whether the court had engaged with the medical record filed the same day, making the ruling “essentially unreviewable”	Vacated; not precedential
United States v. Swartz	4th Cir., No. 25-6090 (Nov. 3, 2025)	The denial rested on an erroneous factual premise — that a spouse was still available to care for a disabled adult child, when she had died	Vacated; unpublished
United States v. Handlon	5th Cir., 53 F.4th 348 (2022)	A one-sentence denial of an unopposed, documented motion	May be an abuse of discretion
United States v. Quirós-Morales	1st Cir., 83 F.4th 79 (2023)	The court treated the motion as deniable as a matter of law based on the seriousness of the offense; “no such categorical bar currently exists”	Vacated

The pattern across all four: an appellate court will not second-guess how a judge weighed the factors, but it will vacate when it cannot tell that the judge weighed them, when the weighing rested on a fact that is not true, or when the judge treated a discretionary question as a legal one. United States v. Ruffin, 978 F.3d 1000 (6th Cir. 2020), states the underlying principle: a district court abuses its discretion when it makes “a purely legal mistake,” even under deferential review.

A caution about the two vacaturs above that are unpublished. Traumann is marked not precedential and Swartz is unpublished. They are accurate illustrations of what appellate courts do, and they are not binding authority anywhere. A brief that cites them should cite them for what they are.

Deadlines. A defendant’s notice of appeal is due within 14 days after entry of the order under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(b)(1)(A); the government’s is due within 30 days under Rule 4(b)(1)(B). The government does appeal grants, and it wins some — Hall (6th Cir. 2026) reversed a grant on the government’s appeal. What to do after a denial, including when a renewed motion on changed circumstances beats an appeal, is covered on our compassionate release denial page, and the mechanics of appellate practice generally on our federal appeals page.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: The appellate lesson runs backward into how the district court motion is written. Chavez-Meza means a judge can deny you in three sentences and be affirmed — unless the record makes it impossible to write those three sentences honestly. So we build the motion to be hard to dispose of summarily: every factual premise the court might rely on is addressed and documented in the motion itself, so a denial resting on a wrong premise is visible on the face of the record, as it was in Swartz. Every § 3553(a) factor is briefed by name, so silence on one of them is silence about an argument the court was asked to reach, as in Traumann. That is not appellate positioning for its own sake. A motion built that way is also a motion the district judge finds harder to deny, which is the point.

Elderly, Medically Vulnerable, Caregiver, and Abuse Cases: Where the Analysis Shifts

Judges apply the same statutory framework to everyone, but several groups reach the court with different records and different failure modes. Each has its own page in this section of the site; what follows is how a judge’s analysis shifts.

Elderly and infirm prisoners. The dedicated age ground at USSG § 1B1.13(b)(2) requires all three of: at least 65 years old, serious deterioration in physical or mental health because of the aging process, and at least 10 years or 75% of the term served, whichever is less. It was cited 16 times among FY2025 grants, and a separate “deteriorating health due to aging” line was cited 11 times. Note that failing the time-served element does not end the inquiry — the same facts can support a motion under the medical grounds at (b)(1), which carry no time-served requirement at all. The commonly-cited § 3582(c)(1)(A)(ii) route for people aged 70 with 30 years served applies only to sentences imposed under the federal three-strikes statute, 18 U.S.C. § 3559(c), and requires a BOP Director determination — which is why “fails the § 3559 age and time-served test” appeared 120 times in the FY2025 denial reasons. See compassionate release for elderly inmates.

Medically vulnerable prisoners. The judge’s question under § 1B1.13(b)(1)(B) is functional, not diagnostic: whether the condition “substantially diminishes the ability of the defendant to provide self-care within the environment of a correctional facility” and whether recovery is expected. Terminal illness under (b)(1)(A) is defined as “a serious and advanced illness with an end-of-life trajectory,” and the guideline states expressly that “[a] specific prognosis of life expectancy … is not required” — a point worth knowing, because the Bureau’s screening policy used an 18-month prognosis until Program Statement 5050.51 replaced PS 5050.50 on September 3, 2026. The new policy uses the guideline’s end-of-life-trajectory wording (§ 4.a), and either way it is the Bureau’s internal filter, not the test a court applies. The two most common medical denial reasons in FY2025 were insufficient proof of the condition (352 citations) and ability to provide self-care in prison (260). Both are evidentiary. See compassionate release medical condition.

Caregiver cases. Under § 1B1.13(b)(3) the contested element is almost never the incapacitation — it is whether the person in prison is the only available caregiver. “Other care available for a minor child” was cited 142 times and “other care available for a spouse or partner” 23 times among FY2025 denials. Care for a parent under (b)(3)(C) was actually the most-cited family ground among grants (23 citations), ahead of care for a minor or disabled child (18). Swartz is the cautionary case in both directions: the Fourth Circuit vacated because the district court believed a caregiver was available who had died, which is what happens when the record does not affirmatively close off every alternative. See caregiver compassionate release.

People who were young at the time of the offense. “Young age at time of offense” was cited 19 times among FY2025 grants — more often than the age-65 ground. It is not a listed category in § 1B1.13(b); courts reaching it are working through the (b)(5) catch-all or through § 3553(a). After Hall and Chineag that route is narrower than it was, and a motion resting on it should not rest on it alone.

People who were abused in custody. Section 1B1.13(b)(4) survived Rutherford untouched — footnote 3 of the slip opinion says the provision “is not at issue in today’s cases.” It was cited 5 times among FY2025 grants and 11 times in FY2024. We have found no circuit decision granting relief under it; the developed body of law is district-court orders. The best published appellate discussion of the ground and of the proof problem it creates is in a Bivens case rather than a § 3582 motion — Kalu v. Spaulding, 113 F.4th 311 (3d Cir. 2024). See victims of sexual abuse lawyer.

What Moves a Ruling, and What Does Not

Pulling the framework, the case law, and the data together, five things separate the motions that get granted from the ones that do not.

A qualifying ground that is documented rather than asserted. The three largest evidentiary denial categories in FY2025 — insufficient proof of a medical condition (352), self-care in prison (260), and other care available for a minor child (142) — total 754 citations. Every one of them is a proof failure, not a legal defeat. The medical record, the functional assessment, and the affirmative closing-off of alternative caregivers are the case.

A § 3553(a) argument written first, not last. With 1,260 citations, this is where more motions die than anywhere else, and it is the one part of the analysis a judge can reach without deciding anything else.

A release plan concrete enough to answer § 3142(g). Named residence with an address and a letter from whoever controls it; a confirmed medical provider with an intake appointment where possible; documented insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, or VA coverage; identified income or family support; and transportation from the facility. The § 3142(g)(3) factors name family ties, community ties, and length of residence in the community explicitly — the plan is not logistics, it is evidence.

An ask that matches what the judge can comfortably grant. A judge unwilling to release outright may be entirely willing to convert the remaining term to supervised release with home detention and location monitoring under § 3582(c)(1)(A) and § 3563(b)(19). A motion that offers only one outcome invites a single answer.

Sequencing that respects the 2026 decisions. If the theory of the motion is that the sentence was too long, the theory needs rebuilding. If the theory is that the conviction was wrong, it belongs in a § 2255 motion with its own one-year clock, or in a federal clemency petition through the Office of the Pardon Attorney. For how these mechanisms compare, see compassionate release attorneys.

What does not move a ruling: the length of the motion, the number of generic support letters, a rehabilitation narrative without a qualifying ground, a re-argument of the trial evidence, and any argument that treats the judge as if they have not read the file. They have. They wrote it.

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. He leads the firm’s federal prison consulting work, including the BOP records retrieval and institutional analysis that a compassionate release motion is built on; the legal work — the motion, the briefing, and any appeal — is handled by Elizabeth Franklin-Best and the firm’s attorneys.

The firm runs a national federal practice on an intentionally small caseload, from offices in Columbia and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. These motions are filed in the district that imposed the sentence, wherever in the country that is.

Talk to a federal compassionate release lawyer

If you are trying to work out how a particular judge is likely to see a particular case, the useful starting point is the actual record — the medical file, the disciplinary history, the sentence, the district, and what that judge has done with these motions before.

Five things make a first review productive, and families can usually assemble all of them:

• The judgment and commitment order, which names the sentencing judge, the district, the counts of conviction, the sentence on each count, and the term of supervised release already imposed.
• The sentence computation from the Bureau of Prisons, showing the projected release date, time served, and good conduct time — this is what tells you where the person sits on the § 3553(a)(2)(A) question.
• Whatever medical records the family already has, plus a signed release so the complete BOP health record can be requested rather than summarized.
• A copy of any request already sent to the warden, with the date it was received, because that date is the only enforceable clock in the process.
• A realistic picture of the release destination — who lives there, whether there is room, what medical care is reachable, and who would be responsible for what.

Call (843) 620-1100 or schedule a consultation directly. We handle federal compassionate release motions nationwide, in the district that imposed the sentence.

Frequently Asked Questions About What Judges Consider

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