Sentencing

As part of its notice regarding proposed priorities and amendments, the U.S. Sentencing Commission has announced what may become its broadest examination of the federal sentencing system in years. Rather than identifying only a handful of discrete Guidelines provisions for amendment, the Commission’s first priority for the 2026–27 amendment cycle is an evaluation of the Guidelines and federal sentencing practices as a whole, timed to coincide with two milestones: forty years since the original Guidelines Manual and roughly twenty years of experience with the advisory Guidelines regime created by United States v. Booker. The Commission seeks to determine whether the now-advisory Guidelines ranges continue to reflect the statutory purposes of sentencing, how advisory Guidelines influence actual sentencing practices, which provisions meaningfully distinguish culpability, and whether forty years of empirical experience support existing sentencing rules.

In an 8-1 decision (with multiple concurrences), the Supreme Court held that the appeal waiver in a defendant’s written plea agreement was not necessarily enforceable if enforcement would “produce a miscarriage of justice.” While that standard is narrow, the Court remanded the case for the Fifth Circuit to determine whether the appeal waiver was enforceable against an appeal of the sentencing court’s decision to impose a mandatory-medication condition of supervised release.

The Supreme Court held that a defendant may not be convicted under both 18 USC 924(c) and 18 USC 924(j), which provides separate penalties when a 924(c) conviction causes death), based on a single act involving a firearm.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission’s amendments to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are set to take effect on November 1, 2026.

The 2026 edition of the Guidelines includes seven principal changes: they eliminate 26 rarely-applied specific offense characteristics, raise monetary thresholds under the “loss table” to account for inflation, add fentanyl-related substances to the drug guidelines, replace the multiple-count framework, place sentencing options before the Sentencing Table, add references for two new federal offenses, and make technical corrections throughout the Guidelines Manual.

The 2025 Federal Sentencing Guidelines took effect on November 1, 2025. Changes to the Guidelines since last year include eliminating “departures” from the Guidelines, increasing judicial discretion in imposing terms of supervised release (and often in favor of leniency), and resolving circuit splits regarding enhancements for offenses involving “physical restraint,” “intervening arrests,” minor role reductions, firearms, and criminal history calculations.

The Tenth Circuit vacated a defendant’s sentence of multiple 25-year mandatory minimum prison terms under 18 U.S.C. § 3559(f)(2) based on kidnapping a child. The panel held that federal kidnapping crimes are not categorically a “crime of violence” under 18 U.S.C. § 16(a).

The Tenth Circuit vacated and remanded a defendant’s sentence for child sexual exploitation and child pornography after finding the district court improperly imposed a lifetime internet-access prohibition as a condition of supervised release without providing an analysis or explanation as required by 18 U.S.C. § 3583(d).

The Sentencing Commission has released FY25 Q3 data showing immigration cases driving the docket (35.7%), with drugs (25.6%) and firearms (12.3%) next, while overall variances from the Guidelines hold at 32% and government-sponsored reductions (5K1.1; fast-track pleas) make up a little over 15%. Median sentences span 6 months for immigration, 70 for drug trafficking, and 41 for firearms, with high-severity categories (CP, sexual abuse, murder) posting triple-digit medians. Regional differences have emerged, with border districts leaning on fast-track and imposing more within-Guideline-range sentences.

The Ninth Circuit vacated a felon-in-possession sentence after holding that Oregon’s aggravated unlawful use of a weapon statute does not qualify as a “crime of violence” under the Guidelines.

This case raises the question: When does the “felon-in-possession” statute not apply to felons? The Eleventh Circuit held that 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) applies only to prior felonies punishable by over one year of actual imprisonment, not probation or other consequences, and it vacated the defendant’s conviction for an Alabama Class D felony where the defendant was not subject to any actual prison time based on his specific circumstances. While the statute of conviction authorized over a year of prison for some defendants in certain cases, the panel held that courts considering a prior conviction under 922(g)(1) must apply a “defendant-specific” interpretation and not an “offense-specific” one.