United States v. Stokley Austin

In United States v. Austin, 125 F.4th 688 (5th Cir. 2025), the Fifth Circuit held that a non-retroactive change in the law is not an extraordinary and compelling reason to reduce a defendant’s sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)—the compassionate release statute.

Reasoning: The court concluded that this issue was “squarely controlled by the binding holding in United States v. Escajeda,” 58 F.4th 184 (5th Cir. 2023).

In Escajeda, the court defined “extraordinary” as “‘beyond or out of the common order,’ ‘remarkable,’ and synonymous with ‘singular.’” It also defined “compelling” as meaning “‘to drive or urge with force, or irresistibly,’ ‘to force,’ and ‘to subjugate.’” For those reasons, the court held that defendants only show “extraordinary and compelling” reasons for compassionate release when they “face some extraordinarily severe exigency, not fore seeable at the time of sentencing, and unique to the life of the prisoner.” Escajeda, 58 F.4th at 186.

The court acknowledged that the Sentencing Commission has said the opposite, see USSG § 1B1.13(b)(6), but “the Sentencing Commission cannot make retroactive what Congress made non-retroactive.”

Lastly, the court declared that United States v. Jean, 108 F.4th 275 (5th Cir. 2024)—which had held that a district court may grant compassionate release based on non-retroactive changes in the law combined with other relevant factors—“was wrongly decided and does not control” because “[u]nder our rule of orderliness, when one panel decision disregards an earlier panel decision, we are duty-bound to follow the earlier one.”

NB: For curious readers, here is the breakdown of judges involved in each of these three cases, which disagreed on this issue:

Escajeda:

• Judge Oldham, joined by Judges Jones and Higginbotham

Jean:

• Judge Douglas, joined by Judge Wiener.

• Judge Smith dissented from the majority opinion that he called “a horrifying violation of this court's well-respected rule of orderliness.”

Austin:

• Judge Oldham, joined by Judge Jones and District Judge Hendrix