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Supreme Court Narrowed Compassionate Release. A Freed Bus Driver May Return to Prison.

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Anthony Bailey, a 61-year-old Indianapolis bus driver, came home in July 2024 after 27 years in federal prison. A judge granted him compassionate release. Since then he has held a steady job and helped raise his young grandson. Now federal prosecutors want to send him back, and a Supreme Court ruling has cleared their path, NPR reported.

What the Supreme Court Decided

On May 28, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Rutherford v. United States that judges cannot grant compassionate release just because a prisoner is serving a sentence Congress later decided was too harsh. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion.

Compassionate release, under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), lets a judge cut a sentence for “extraordinary and compelling reasons.” The Court held that a long sentence Congress chose not to shorten retroactively does not count, on its own or combined with other factors.

How Bailey Got 27 Years

In September 1997, Bailey took part in a bank robbery and two carjackings. Because he used a gun in more than one count, the law at the time “stacked” the firearm charges. Each additional count carried its own mandatory minimum, piling decades onto the total.

A first-time offender could draw 30, 40, or 50 years from a single case this way. The sentence was driven by the stacking rule, not by a judge weighing what the conduct deserved.

The 2018 Reform That Left Bailey Behind

The First Step Act, signed in 2018 with votes from both parties, ended gun-charge stacking. A case like Bailey’s would produce a far shorter sentence today.

Congress made that change going forward only. People already serving stacked sentences got no relief. For years, judges used compassionate release to close that gap, freeing people whose sentences everyone agreed were out of step with current law. Rutherford shut that door.

6-3 Supreme Court vote in Rutherford v. United States limiting compassionate release for outdated sentences.

A Dozen People Could Go Back

About a dozen people who were already released face the same threat as Bailey. Prosecutors can now ask courts to revoke their release and return them to prison. If Bailey loses, his new release date is around 2050, when he would be nearly 86.

Retired federal judge John Gleeson, who has worked on these cases, put it plainly.

“These are indefensibly long sentences, and they need to be corrected.”

John Gleeson, retired U.S. District Judge

Reimprisoning Bailey would not undo the 1997 crimes or make anyone safer. It would spend taxpayer money to lock up a grandfather who is already living within the law. The wider toll of sentences like his is the subject of our mass incarceration explainer.

What You Can Do Now

  1. Use the letter below to ask your members of Congress to pass S.3482, the First Step Implementation Act of 2025. It makes the 2018 sentencing reforms retroactive, so people with outdated stacked sentences can ask a judge for the same relief everyone sentenced after them already gets.

  2. Call your representatives at (202) 224-3121. Tell them the Supreme Court closed the compassionate release path in Rutherford, and Congress can reopen it by making the First Step Act retroactive.

  3. If you live in Indiana, contact your senators about Anthony Bailey by name. A specific constituent case puts a face on an abstract sentencing rule.

Sources

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