Hewitt v. United States

P R E L I M I N A R Y P R I N T
Volume 606 U. S. Part 1
Pages 419–460
OFFICIAL REPORTS
OF
T H E S U P R E M E C O U R T
June 26, 2025
REBECCA A. WOMELDORF
reporter of decisions
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419
Syllabus
HEWITT v. UNITED STATES
certiorari
to the united states court of appeals for
the fth circuit
No. 23–1002. Argued January 13, 2025—Decided June 26, 2025*
Before the First Step Act was enacted in 2018, federal judges were re-
quired to sentence frst-time offenders convicted of violating 18 U. S. C.
§ 924(c)—a law that criminalizes possessing a frearm while committing
other crimes—to “stacked” 25-year periods of incarceration. The First
Step Act eliminated this harsh mandatory minimum penalty. Section
403(b) of the Act also made its more lenient penalties partially retroac-
tive. Specifcally, if a sentence “has not been imposed” upon an eligible
§ 924(c) offender as of the date of the First Step Act's enactment, the
Act applies. The question presented here concerns an edge case: What
penalties apply when a § 924(c) offender had been sentenced as of the
Act's enactment, but that sentence was subsequently vacated, such that
the offender must face a post-Act resentencing?
In 2009, petitioners Tony Hewitt, Corey Duffey, and Jarvis Ross were
convicted of multiple counts of bank robbery and conspiracy to commit
bank robbery, along with corresponding § 924(c) offenses for use of a
frearm during a crime of violence. Each petitioner received a manda-
tory 5-year sentence for his frst § 924(c) count of conviction and, despite
being frst-time offenders, each received 25-year mandatory sentences
on every § 924(c) count beyond his frst. Thus, each petitioner's sen-
tence exceeded 325 years. Petitioners successfully challenged some of
their convictions on direct appeal, and the Fifth Circuit vacated petition-
ers' sentences. In 2012, the District Court resentenced each petitioner
to between 285 and 305 years on the counts that remained.
In 2019, the Court held that the “crime of violence” defnition the
Government routinely used to support some § 924(c) convictions was un-
constitutionally vague. See United States v. Davis, 588 U. S. 445, 470.
Because that holding potentially affected some of petitioners' remaining
convictions, the Fifth Circuit granted petitioners authorization to fle a
second or successive postconviction motion. The District Court then
vacated the impacted § 924(c) convictions, as well as petitioners' sen-
tences. When the District Court held resentencings for the remaining
convictions, petitioners argued that the First Step Act's 5-year—not 25-
year—mandatory minimum penalties applied. Petitioners argued they
*Together with No. 23–1150, Duffey et al. v. United States, also on cer-
tiorari to the same court.

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420 HEWITT
v. UNITED STATES
Syllabus
were entitled to retroactive application of the Act's more lenient penal-
ties
because a vacated prior sentence is not a sentence that “has . . .
been imposed” for purposes of § 403(b). The District Court disagreed
and resentenced petitioners under the pre-Act sentencing scheme, giv-
ing them stacked 25-year mandatory minimums for each § 924(c) count
of conviction beyond their frst. Petitioners thus each received sen-
tences of 130 years or more.
On appeal, petitioners and the Government agreed that the First Step
Act should have applied at petitioners' resentencings. The Fifth Cir-
cuit denied their joint request for vacatur. In that court's view, § 403(b)
applies only “to defendants for whom `a sentence . . . ha[d] not been
imposed' as of the enactment date.” 92 F. 4th 304, 310. Because each
petitioner had been sentenced (twice) prior to the Act's enactment, the
panel concluded that petitioners were not eligible for the First Step
Act's more lenient mandatory minimums.
Held: The judgment is reversed, and the cases are remanded.
92 F. 4th 304, reversed and remanded.
Justice Jackson delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to
Parts I, II, and III, concluding that under § 403(b) of the First Step Act,
a sentence “has . . . been imposed” for purposes of that provision if, and
only if, the sentence is extant—i. e., has not been vacated. Thus, the
Act's more lenient penalties apply to defendants whose previous § 924(c)
sentences have been vacated and who need to be resentenced following
the Act's enactment. Pp. 427–433.
(a) The text of § 403(b) and the nature of vacatur support this conclu-
sion. Congress employed the present-perfect tense, requiring evalua-
tion of whether “a sentence . . . has . . . been imposed” upon the defend-
ant, rather than the past-perfect tense that would exclude anyone
upon whom a sentence “had” been imposed. The present-perfect
tense can refer to “an act, state, or condition that is now completed” or
“a past action that comes up to and touches the present” and thus con-
veys that the event in question continues to be true or valid. The Chi-
cago Manual of Style § 5.132, p. 268. When used in either sense, the
present-perfect tense addresses whether something has continuing rele-
vance to the present, not merely whether it occurred as a historical
fact. If an event is merely a relic of history because it was voided by
a subsequent action, the past-perfect (not the present-perfect) tense is
usually the more appropriate verb choice. The fact that adjacent
provisions of § 403 contain past-tense verbs only strengthens the conclu-
sion that § 403(b)'s use of the present-perfect tense is meaningful.
Pp. 427–431.

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as: 606 U. S. 419 (2025)
421
Syllabus
(b) Background principles regarding the legal effect of vacatur con-
fr
m that a sentence has been imposed for § 403(b) purposes only so long
as it remains valid. When interpreting statutes, the Court recognizes
that Congress legislates against the backdrop of certain unexpressed
presumptions. One such presumption is that vacated court orders are
void ab initio and thus lack any prospective legal effect. A criminal
defendant whose conviction has been vacated, for example, is to be
treated going forward as though he were never convicted. By opera-
tion of legal fction, the law acts as though the previous conviction never
occurred. Section 403(b) refects this commonsense understanding of
background vacatur principles. Just as defendants with vacated prior
felony convictions are not precluded from possessing weapons under the
federal felon-in-possession ban, § 403(b) retroactivity does not exclude
from its scope those whose prior sentences were vacated. By authoriz-
ing retroactive application of the First Step Act's more lenient penalties
on any eligible offender upon whom “a sentence . . . has not been
imposed,” the text of § 403(b) indicates that only past sentences with
continued validity preclude application of the Act's new penalties.
Pp. 431–433.
Jackson, J., delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I,
II, and III, in which Roberts, C. J., and Sotomayor, Kagan, and Gor-
such, JJ., joined, and an opinion with respect to Parts IV and V, in which
Sotomayor and Kagan, JJ., joined. Alito, J., fled a dissenting opinion,
in which Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, JJ., joined, post, p. 440.
Michael B. Kimberly argued the cause for petitioners in
both cases. With him on the briefs for petitioner Hewitt
were Paul W. Hughes, Sarah P. Hogarth, Andrew A. Lyons-
Berg, Charles Seidell, Eugene R. Fidell, and Charles A.
Rothfeld. Jo-Ann Tamila Sagar, Neal Kumar Katyal, Mi-
chael J. West, Dana A. Raphael, Vivek Jampala, John Tor-
rey Hunter, and Kevin B. Ross fled briefs for petitioner Duf-
fey et al.
Masha G. Hansford argued the cause for the United States
in both cases as respondent in support of petitioners. With
her on the briefs were Solicitor General Prelogar, Principal
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Argentieri, Deputy So-
licitor General Feigin, and Andrew C. Noll.

422 HEWITT
v. UNITED STATES
Opinion of the Court
Michael H. McGinley, by invitation of the Court, 603 U. S.
939,
argued the cause and fled a brief as amicus curiae in
support of the judgment below. With him on the
brief were Steven A. Engel, M. Scott Proctor, and Brian
A. Kulp.†
Justice Jackson delivered the opinion of the Court, ex-
cept as to Parts IV and V.‡
Before the First Step Act was enacted in 2018, federal
judges were required to sentence certain frst-time offenders
convicted of violating 18 U. S. C. § 924(c)—a law that crimi-
nalizes the possession of a frearm while committing other
crimes—to “stacked” 25-year periods of incarceration. The
First Step Act, 132 Stat. 5194, eliminated this harsh manda-
tory minimum penalty. Congress also made the Act's more
lenient penalties partially retroactive. Section 403(b) speci-
fes that the Act applies if a sentence “has not been imposed”
upon an eligible § 924(c) offender as of the date of the First
Step Act's enactment. Id., at 5222.
The question presented here concerns an edge case: What
penalties apply when a § 924(c) offender had been sentenced
†Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled for the District of
Columbia et al. by Brian L. Schwalb, Attorney General of the District
of Columbia, Caroline S. Van Zile, Solicitor General, Ashwin P. Phatak,
Principal Deputy Solicitor General, and Sean Frazzette, Assistant Attor-
ney General, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as
follows: Philip J. Weiser of Colorado, Kwame Raoul of Illinois, Aaron M.
Frey of Maine, Anthony G. Brown of Maryland, Andrea J. Campbell of
Massachusetts, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Aaron D. Ford of Nevada,
Matthew J. Platkin of New Jersey, Letitia James of New York, Ellen F.
Rosenblum of Oregon, and Charity R. Clark of Vermont; for the American
Civil Liberties Union et al. by Kevin Poloncarz, Barbara E. Bergman,
Clark M. Neily III, Shana-Tara O'Toole, David D. Cole, Mary Price,
Emma Andersson, Nathan Freed Wessler, Yasmin Cader, and Cecillia D.
Wang; and for Sen. Richard J. Durbin et al. by Brent J. Gurney.
‡The Chief Justice and Justice Gorsuch join all but Parts IV and
V of this opinion.
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423
Opinion of the Court
as of the Act's enactment, but that sentence was subse-
quently
vacated, such that the offender must face a post-
Act resentencing? We hold that, under that circumstance, a
sentence “has not been imposed” for purposes of § 403(b).
Thus, the First Step Act's more lenient penalties apply.
I
Title 18 U. S. C. § 924(c) criminalizes the use or possession
of a frearm during and in relation to a crime of violence
or drug-traffcking offense. The statute prescribes a 5-year
mandatory minimum penalty for any first-time offense,
which must run consecutively to any other term of imprison-
ment. §§ 924(c)(1)(A)(i), (c)(1)(D)(ii). Before the First Step
Act, § 924(c) also contained a recidivism enhancement that
required imposition of an additional 25 years of imprison-
ment (on top of the 5-year mandatory minimum) for any
“second or subsequent conviction under this subsection.”
§ 924(c)(1)(C)(i) (2006 ed.).
In Deal v. United States, 508 U. S. 129 (1993), this Court
interpreted that recidivism-related language to require an
enhanced penalty for each and every § 924(c) count of convic-
tion beyond a defendant's frst—even if those convictions
were part of the same criminal prosecution. Id., at 132–137.
As a result, a frst-time offender convicted of two § 924(c)
counts would receive a mandatory 25-year sentence on the
second count, “stacked” upon (i. e., running consecutively to)
the frst count's mandatory 5-year sentence, for a total of 30
years of imprisonment.
1
And each additional § 924(c) count
would add another 25 years to that defendant's total term of
incarceration. See id., at 131–132. Under this “stacking ”
interpretation of § 924(c)'s recidivism enhancement, sen-
1
When this Court decided Deal in 1993, the enhanced mandatory mini-
mum penalty under § 924(c) was 20 years. See 18 U. S. C. § 924(c) (1988
ed.). Congress increased the mandatory minimum to 25 years in 1998.
See § 924(c) (1994 ed., Supp. IV); 112 Stat. 3469.
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424 HEWITT
v. UNITED STATES
Opinion of the Court
tences for § 924(c) offenses ballooned rapidly to span decades
or
even centuries.
On December 21, 2018, a supermajority of Congress
enacted the First Step Act, a landmark piece of legislation
that changed the federal criminal-sentencing system in nu-
merous respects. See 132 Stat. 5194. Among other things,
§ 403(a) of the First Step Act “clarif[ed]” that district court
judges are not required to impose stacked 25-year sentences
when sentencing frst-time § 924(c) offenders. Id., at 5221–
5222 (capitalization deleted). Abrogating this Court's deci-
sion in Deal, the statute established instead that, for frst-
time offenders, 5-year mandatory minimums apply to each
count of conviction.
The First Step Act also addressed the potential for retro-
active application of this penalty reduction, by specifcally
identifying the § 924(c) offenders to whom the Act applied.
Ordinarily, because judges impose sentences based on the
statutory penalties that exist at the time defendants commit
their offenses, 1 U. S. C. § 109, statutory changes to federal
penalties only beneft future offenders. But Congress al-
tered this default no-retroactivity rule in the Act itself.
Sec ti on 403( b)—titled “Applicability to Pending
Cases”—made § 403(a)'s reduced penalties applicable to cer-
tain existing § 924(c) offenders, as follows:
“This section, and the amendments made by this section,
shall apply to any offense that was committed before the
date of enactment of this Act, if a sentence for the of-
fense has not been imposed as of such date of enact-
ment.” § 403(b), 132 Stat. 5222.
II
In 2009, petitioners Tony Hewitt, Corey Duffey, and Jarvis
Ross were convicted of multiple counts of bank robbery and
conspiracy to commit bank robbery, along with correspond-
ing § 924(c) offenses for use of a frearm during a crime of
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as: 606 U. S. 419 (2025)
425
Opinion of the Court
violence. Each petitioner received a mandatory 5-year sen-
tence
as to their frst § 924(c) count of conviction. And, de-
spite being frst-time offenders, each received 25-year man-
datory sentences on every § 924(c) count beyond their frst.
Thus, in total, each petitioner's sentence exceeded 325 years.
Roughly 25 of those years were due to the robbery offenses
themselves, while the rest were attributable to stacked
§ 924(c) counts.
Petitioners successfully challenged some of their convic-
tions on direct appeal, and the Fifth Circuit accordingly va-
cated petitioners' sentences.
2
In 2012, the District Court
resentenced each petitioner to between 285 and 305 years on
the counts that remained—sentences that the Fifth Circuit
affrmed on direct review. Petitioners also fled postconvic-
tion motions under 28 U. S. C. § 2255, which were each
denied.
After Congress passed the First Step Act in 2018, this
Court held that the “crime of violence” defnition the Gov-
ernment routinely used to support some § 924(c) convictions
was unconstitutionally vague. See United States v. Davis,
588 U. S. 445, 470 (2019). Because that holding potentially
affected some of petitioners' remaining convictions, the Fifth
Circuit granted petitioners authorization to fle a second or
successive postconviction motion under 28 U. S. C. § 2255.
The District Court then vacated the impacted § 924(c) convic-
tions, as well as petitioners' sentences.
When the District Court held resentencings for the re-
maining convictions, petitioners argued that the First Step
Act's 5-year—not 25-year—mandatory minimum penalties
applied. Petitioners argued that they were entitled to ret-
roactive application of the First Step Act's more lenient pen-
2
Petitioners were initially convicted of attempted bank robbery, too.
Those convictions—along with the corresponding § 924(c) counts—were
vacated following petitioners' successful challenges on direct appeal. See
United States v. Duffey, 456 Fed. Appx. 434, 444–445 (CA5 2012).
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426 HEWITT
v. UNITED STATES
Opinion of the Court
alties because a vacated prior sentence is not a sentence that
“
has . . . been imposed” for purposes of § 403(b).
3
The Dis-
trict Court disagreed and resentenced petitioners under the
pre-Act sentencing scheme, giving them stacked 25-year
mandatory minimum sentences for each § 924(c) count of con-
viction beyond their frst. Petitioners thus each received
sentences of 130 years or more—105 years of which were
attributable to stacked § 924(c) penalties.
On appeal, petitioners and the Government agreed that
the First Step Act should have applied at petitioners' resen-
tencings. The parties thus jointly requested vacatur of peti-
tioners' sentences, which the Fifth Circuit denied. 92 F. 4th
304, 310 (2024) (case below). In that court's view, § 403(b)
applies only “to defendants for whom `a sentence . . . ha[d]
not been imposed' as of the enactment date.” Ibid. (alter-
ation in original). Because each petitioner had been sen-
tenced (twice) prior to the Act's enactment, the panel con-
cluded that petitioners were not eligible for the First Step
Act's more lenient mandatory minimums.
We granted certiorari to decide whether § 403(b) of the
First Step Act confers the beneft of the Act's more lenient
penalties to defendants facing post-Act resentencing follow-
ing vacatur of their pre-Act sentence. 603 U. S. 904 (2024).
4
3
During Duffey's and Ross's resentencings before the District Court,
the Government maintained that petitioners were ineligible for First Step
Act relief. But, by the time of Hewitt's resentencing, the Government
had changed its position; it supported Hewitt's request for resentencing
under the Act.
4
The Courts of Appeals have divided over whether offenders who were
sentenced pre-Act, but whose sentences were later vacated, are eligible to
receive First Step Act benefts at their post-Act resentencing. Compare
United States v. Merrell, 37 F. 4th 571, 577–578 (CA9 2022) (holding that,
under § 403(b), such an offender benefts from the Act at resentencing),
and United States v. Mitchell, 38 F. 4th 382, 386–389 (CA3 2022) (same),
with United States v. Jackson, 995 F. 3d 522, 525–526 (CA6 2021) (holding
that such an offender does not beneft from the Act at resentencing, if the
prior sentence was vacated after the Act's enactment); see also United
States v. Uriarte, 975 F. 3d 596, 601–602, and n. 3 (CA7 2020) (en banc)
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as: 606 U. S. 419 (2025)
427
Opinion of the Court
Because the United States agrees with petitioners on the
mer
its of their appeals, the Court appointed Michael H. Mc-
Ginley as amicus curiae to defend the judgment below. 603
U. S. 939 (2024). He has ably discharged his responsibilities.
III
The Fifth Circuit held, and amicus and the dissent con-
tend, that § 403(b) excludes any defendant who was sen-
tenced prior to the enactment date of the First Step Act—
even if his sentence was later vacated. That is so, in their
view, because the Act applies only “if a sentence for the of-
fense has not been imposed as of ” the Act's enactment date,
and a sentence “has . . . been imposed” upon that defendant
as a matter of historical fact. 132 Stat. 5222 (emphasis
added). But based on the text of § 403(b) and the nature of
vacatur, we conclude that a sentence has been imposed for
purposes of that provision if, and only if, the sentence is ex-
tant—i. e., has not been vacated.
A
To understand why this is so, focus frst on the language
Congress used. Most notably, the operative phrase is not
written in the past-perfect tense, excluding anyone upon
whom a sentence “had” been imposed. Rather, Congress
employed the present-perfect tense—thereby requiring eval-
uation of whether “a sentence . . . has . . . been imposed”
upon the defendant. § 403(b), 132 Stat. 5222 (emphasis
added). In this context, that distinction makes a difference.
See United States v. Wilson, 503 U. S. 329, 333 (1992) (“Con-
gress' use of a verb tense is signifcant in construing
statutes”).
The present-perfect tense can refer to either (1) “an act,
state, or condition that is now completed” or (2) “a past ac-
(holding that such an offender benefts from the Act if his sentence was
vacated prior to the Act's enactment date, but reserving judgment as to
postenactment vacatur).
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428 HEWITT
v. UNITED STATES
Opinion of the Court
tion that comes up to and touches the present.” The Chi-
cago
Manual of Style § 5.132, p. 268 (17th ed. 2017) (emphasis
added). But when used in either sense, the tense simultane-
ously “involves reference to both past and present.” R.
Huddleston & G. Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the
English Language 143 (2002). That is, while “the primary
focus is on the present,” the past maintains “ `current rele-
vance.' ” Ibid. (confrming that the present-perfect tense
addresses “a time-span beginning in the past and extending
up to now”).
5
Thus, one might employ the present-perfect
tense to describe situations “involv[ing] a specifc change of
state” that produces a “continuing result.” Id., at 145 (bold-
face deleted).
Here is an example. Suppose the U. S. Olympic Commit-
tee enacted a rule stating that athletes may call themselves
Olympic champions if a gold medal “has been awarded” to
them. Pursuant to that rule, a U. S. sprinter who took frst
place in the 2016 Summer Olympics' 100-meter fnals could
validly proclaim—today—that she is “an Olympic champion.”
The existence of her win as a historical event triggers the
rule's proper application, because it gives rise to the infer-
ence that the athlete remains an Olympic gold medalist at
present, thereby justifying her continued use of the “Olympic
champion” title. See ibid. (explaining that the relevant
“connection with the present” here would be “that the resul-
tant state still obtains now”).
5
A primary faw of the dissent's textual argument is its failure to ap-
preciate that, under either meaning of the present perfect, the event in
question must relate to now. In other words, while the dissent accurately
observes that the present-perfect tense can be used in one of two ways,
see post, at 443 (opinion of Alito, J.), it ignores that neither refers to
circumstances that are wholly in the past. What makes this the present-
perfect tense is that, in each of its manifestations, there exists a connec-
tion to the present. See Huddleston, Cambridge Grammar of the English
Language, at 143 (confrming that references “to times wholly before
now”—when the present “is explicitly or implicitly excluded”—are largely
“incompatible with the present perfect”).
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Opinion of the Court
But now imagine that the Olympic Committee stripped
th
is sprinter of her medal after discovering that she used
performance-enhancing drugs during the competition. Can
that athlete, under the rule, still call herself an Olympic
champion? The answer is no. Yes, she had been awarded
such a medal, but it was revoked; the fact that she stood on
the podium and was declared the winner in 2016 is inapposite
for pur poses of est abl ish i ng whether she qua l i fies for
Olympic-champion bragging rights under the rule today.
6
When used in this way, the present-perfect tense conveys
to a listener that the event in question continues to be true
or valid. The dissent counters that, for purposes of the
First Step Act, the relevant moment of analysis should not
be the present, but rather the statute's date of enactment.
See post, at 444. But that reframing is inconsistent with
normal understandings of the present-perfect tense, which
by defnition focuses on the present.
7
Today, if an event is
merely a relic of history because it was voided by a subse-
quent action, the past-perfect (not the present-perfect) tense
6
The dissent does not dispute that a sprinter who is divested of her gold
medal no longer qualifes as an “Olympic champion” under the hypothetical
rule. Nor does the dissent contest that, if the Committee wanted such a
disqualifed sprinter to be able to still claim the title, it could phrase the
rule in the past-perfect tense to accomplish that result (i. e., bestowing
the honorifc if a gold medal “had been awarded” to the athlete). The
dissent's primary response to this hypothetical is, instead, to zero in on
“[t]he obvious purpose of the hypothetical rule” and to explain that “the
meaning of language is heavily dependent on context.” Post, at 449, n. 3.
Part IV of this opinion fully addresses the context of § 403(b)'s language
and Congress's primary objectives for enacting that provision—both of
which support the Court's conclusion in these cases.
7
And, notably, there is a relevant connection to the present in the opera-
tion of § 403(b) despite that statute's express reference to the date of the
Act's enactment: the current occasion of the sentencing of the defendant
in question. Sentencing courts read statutes at the moment of their appli-
cation—which, here, would be the moment of resentencing, not the mo-
ment of enactment. From that proper vantage point, petitioners were
not subject to a sentence, as any previous sentence had been vacated.
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430 HEWITT
v. UNITED STATES
Opinion of the Court
would usually be the more appropriate verb choice. See B.
Gar
ner, Modern English Usage 1082 (5th ed. 2022) (explain-
ing that the past-perfect tense “represents an action as com-
pleted at some defnite time in the past—that is, before some
other past time referred to”); Chicago Manual of Style
§ 5.133, at 268 (confrming that the past perfect “refers to an
act, state, or condition that was completed before another
specifed or implicit past time or past action”). Our disquali-
fed sprinter could thus still boast of her Olympic-champion
status if the rule were, instead, that any athlete who
“had been awarded” a gold medal was entitled to use that
honorifc.
The fact that adjacent provisions of § 403 contain past-
tense verbs only strengthens the conclusion that § 403(b)'s
use of the present-perfect tense is meaningful. Cf. Barrett
v. United States, 423 U. S. 212, 217 (1976) (emphasizing when
Congress “used the present perfect tense . . . in contrast to
its use of the present tense” elsewhere in the statute). Sec-
tion 404(c), for example, utilizes the simple past tense to ad-
dress a defendant's prior sentencing. See 132 Stat. 5222
(“No court shall entertain a motion made under this section
to reduce a sentence if the sentence was previously imposed
or previously reduced in accordance with” the relevant
amendments (emphasis added)). The past tense also fea-
tures earlier in § 403(b) itself. See ibid. (covering “any of-
fense that was committed before the date of enactment of
[the] Act” (emphasis added)). But the verb tense at issue
here (“has been”) is conspicuously different—making only
clearer that a past sentence must have a relevant connection
to the present for purposes of the retroactivity provision.
Indeed, amicus and the dissent's historical-fact reading of
§ 403(b) calls so naturally for the past-perfect tense that ju-
rists who share this view often employ that tense by default.
The Fifth Circuit below, for instance, stated that “the First
Step Act applies to defendants for whom `a sentence . . . ha[d]
not been imposed' as of the enactment date.” 92 F. 4th, at

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as: 606 U. S. 419 (2025)
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Opinion of the Court
310 (alteration in original). Other courts have construed
§
403(b) similarly. See, e. g., United States v. Jackson, 995
F. 3d 522, 525 (CA6 2021) (noting that “as of December 21,
2018, a sentence had been imposed” upon the defendant, even
though it was later vacated). Congress of course “could
have phrased its requirement in language that looked to the
past . . . , but it did not choose this readily available option.”
Gwaltney of Smithfeld, Ltd. v. Chesapeake Bay Founda-
tion, Inc., 484 U. S. 49, 57 (1987). The natural inference,
then, is that Congress meant what it said, and, thus, that
§ 403(b) covers only past sentences with continued legal va-
lidity, not those that have been vacated.
B
Background principles regarding the legal effect of vaca-
tur confrm that a sentence has been imposed for § 403(b)
purposes only so long as it remains valid. When interpret-
ing statutes, we “recogniz[e] that `Congress legislates
against the backdrop' of certain unexpressed presump-
tions.” Bond v. United States, 572 U. S. 844, 857 (2014)
(quoting EEOC v. Arabian American Oil Co., 499 U. S. 244,
248 (1991)). One such presumption is that vacated court or-
ders are void ab initio and thus lack any prospective legal
effect. See United States v. Ayres, 9 Wall. 608, 610 (1870)
(“[V]acating the former judgment . . . render[s] it null and
void, and the parties are left in the same situation as if no
trial had ever taken place in the cause”). By operation of
legal fction, the law acts as though the vacated order never
occurred.
A criminal defendant whose judgment of conviction has
been vacated, for example, is to be treated going forward
as though he were never convicted. See Fiswick v. United
States, 329 U. S. 211, 223 (1946) (confrming that one whose
conviction is vacated “stand[s] in the position of any [person]
who has been accused of a crime but not yet shown to have
committed it”). Thus, if Congress were to pass a stimulus
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provision that gives checks to any small-business owner who
“
has not been convicted of fraud,” an owner would not be
rendered ineligible on the basis of a fraud conviction that
was overturned on appeal. While the owner had been con-
victed of fraud, that judgment was invalidated and therefore
became legally inoperable. In other words, that vacated
conviction is subsequently treated as no conviction at all.
See North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U. S. 711, 721 (1969) (veri-
fying that vacatur causes a conviction to be “wholly nullifed
and the slate wiped clean”).
8
Section 403(b) refects this “common-sense” understanding
of background vacatur principles. Lewis v. United States,
445 U. S. 55, 61, n. 5 (1980). Just as defendants with vacated
prior felony convictions are not precluded from possessing
weapons under the federal felon-in-possession ban, § 403(b)
retroactivity does not exclude from its ambit those whose
prior sentences have been vacated. See ibid.; 18 U. S. C.
§ 922(g)(1); see also Pepper v. United States, 562 U. S. 476,
507 (2011) (explaining that vacatur of a criminal sentence
“wipe[s] the slate clean”).
8
The dissent erroneously suggests that, under our precedents, a vacated
sentence continues to exist as a historical fact and thus retains prospective
legal effect. See post, at 451–453. But the cases it cites do not support
that contention. In Lewis v. United States, 445 U. S. 55 (1980), for exam-
ple, we considered whether the invalidity of one's predicate felony convic-
tion precludes conviction as a felon in possession of a weapon under federal
law. Id., at 58. We concluded the federal conviction could stand when
the defendant's prior felony conviction had “never been overturned”—i. e.,
vacated—at the time he possessed the weapon. Id., at 57. But we dis-
missed as “extreme” arguments suggesting that a vacated conviction could
have such prospective legal effect. Id., at 61, n. 5 (confrming the “common-
sense” notion that “a disability based upon one's status as a convicted
felon” ceases as a matter of law as soon as “the conviction upon which that
status depends has been vacated”). Bravo-Fernandez v. United States,
580 U. S. 5 (2016), is similarly unhelpful. That case concerned issue pre-
clusion and jury fndings and does not stand for the proposition that a
vacated order itself retains continuing legal effect in the relevant sense.
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By authorizing retroactive application of the First Step
A
ct's more lenient penalties on any eligible offender upon
whom “a sentence . . . has not been imposed,” the text of
§ 403(b) indicates that only past sentences with continued va-
lidity preclude application of the Act's new penalties. A
judge would thus correctly conclude at resentencing that, if
an offender's past sentence has been vacated, a sentence “has
not been imposed” upon that offender for purposes of the
First Step Act; hence, the court can impose a new sentence
today.
IV
A
The context and enactment history of the First Step Act
and § 403(b) further demonstrate that Congress's choice of
the present-perfect tense was not accidental. Rather, Con-
gress was reacting to sustained criticism of the prior sen-
tencing scheme, and with § 403(b), it intended to execute a
clean break from the controversial and heavily contested
“stacking ” practice.
Sentencing judges had been among the harshest critics.
Before the First Step Act was enacted, more than one vet-
eran District Court Judge decried how the “stacking ” pun-
ishment for frst-time § 924(c) offenders was “grossly dispro-
portionate” and “shockingly harsh given the nature” of the
offenses and a defendant's “lack of criminal history.”
United States v. Washington, 301 F. Supp. 2d 1306, 1309 (MD
Ala. 2004) (lamenting the requirement of a 40-year term of
imprisonment for a 22-year-old frst-time offender, and re-
marking that it was “the worst and most unconscionable sen-
tence [the judge] ha[d] given in his 23 years on the federal
bench”).
9
Judges on the Federal Courts of Appeals also
9
See also, e. g., United States v. Holloway, 68 F. Supp. 3d 310, 312
(EDNY 2014) (noting that § 924(c) stacking “produce[d] sentences that
would be laughable if only there weren't real people on the receiving end
of them”); United States v. Angelos, 345 F. Supp. 2d 1227, 1244–1245, 1248
(Utah 2004) (assailing being required to give a 24-year-old who had pos-
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“join[ed] in the litany of criticisms directed towards”
§
924(c)'s penalty regime for requiring the imposition of sen-
tences that were “ `out of this world.' ” United States v.
Hunter, 770 F. 3d 740, 746–747 (CA8 2014) (Bright, J., concur-
ring); see also United States v. Hungerford, 465 F. 3d 1113,
1118–1119 (CA9 2006) (Reinhardt, J., concurring in judg-
ment) (deeming “irrational, inhumane, and absurd” the man-
datory 159-year sentence imposed upon “a 52 year-old men-
tally disturbed woman with no prior criminal record” who
had otherwise “led a spotless, law-abiding existence”);
United States v. Smith, 756 F. 3d 1179, 1181 (CA10 2014)
(Gorsuch, J.) (observing that it was “no fanciful possibility”
that § 924(c) stacking would lead to “prison term[s] of many
decades” that were “certain to outlast the defendant's life
and the lives of every person now walking the planet”).
Meanwhile, other institutional stakeholders raised simi-
larly pointed objections to Deal's stacking system. In its
annual report to Congress, the United States Sentencing
Commission criticized how § 924(c) stacking had “result[ed]
in excessively severe and unjust sentences,” particularly in
cases in which “the offense did not involve any physical harm
or threat of physical harm to a person.” U. S. Sentencing
Commission, Report to the Congress: Mandatory Minimum
Penalties in the Federal Criminal Justice System 359 (Oct.
2011). The United States Judicial Conference expressed
similar concerns.
10
sessed weapons while dealing small amounts of marijuana “more than dou-
bl[e]” the sentence recommended for crimes resulting in “actual violence
to victims,” such as “hijack[ing]” an airplane, “detonat[ing] a bomb in a
public place,” or committing “rap[e]” or “second-degree murde[r]”).
10
See, e. g., Hearing before the Over-Criminalization Task Force of 2014
of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 113th Cong., 2d Sess., 41 (2014)
(testimony of the Hon. Irene Keeley, U. S. District Judge, Judicial Confer-
ence of the U. S.) (explaining that § 924(c) stacking produced “particularly
egregious” sentences for frst-time offenders that ran “contrary to the in-
terests of justice” and “undermine[d] confdence” in its administration).
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The problem, as all seemed to recognize, was not that fed-
era
l law permitted judges to impose lengthy sentences with
respect to frst-time § 924(c) offenders—it was that the stat-
ute, as Deal had interpreted it, required it. District judges
could not adhere to the statutory command that they give
sentences that are “suffcient, but not greater than necessary,
to comply with the purposes” of punishment, 18 U. S. C.
§ 3553(a), if they were also required to sentence frst-time
offenders to § 924(c)'s unduly harsh mandatory minimum pen-
alties. Additionally problematic was the fact that, while
federal law requires sentencing judges to “avoid unwar-
ranted sentence disparities among defendants,” § 3553(a)(6),
the variation among prosecutors' charging practices meant
that § 924(c) stacking was a reality for only some frst-time
offenders.
11
With sentencing judges routinely imposing what amounted
to mandatory life sentences on frst-time § 924(c) offenders,
in 2018, Congress eventually heeded the public outcry. An
“extraordinary political coalition” formed, as members of
11
The policies of U. S. Attorney's Offices diverged as to when—or
whether—they would bring multiple § 924(c) counts, a decision over which
judges lack any control. See id., at 45 (testimony of the Hon. Patti Saris,
Chair, U. S. Sentencing Commission). This produced disparate sentenc-
ing outcomes for similarly situated offenders across judicial districts. See
U. S. Sentencing Commission, Report to the Congress: Mandatory Mini-
mum Penalties in the Federal Criminal Justice System 361–362 (Oct. 2011)
(attributing the “geographic concentration” associated with § 924(c) sen-
tencing “to inconsistencies in the charging of multiple violations of section
924(c)”); see also In re Hernandez, 857 F. 3d 1162, 1169 (CA11 2017) (Mar-
tin, J., concurring in result) (fnding “troubling ” that the defendant “might
never have received this [stacked] sentence if he had been sentenced in
another part of the country”). In one case in which prosecutors stacked
additional § 924(c) counts after the defendant refused a plea offer, the Dis-
trict Judge specifcally lamented the “risk of massive sentencing disparity
between identically-situated offenders within the federal system,” because
other U. S. Attorney's Offces might not have proceeded in that same fash-
ion. United States v. Angelos, 345 F. Supp. 2d 1227, 1253–1254 (Utah
2004).
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Congress worked together to develop “a bipartisan sentenc-
i
ng and prison reform bill” to address § 924(c) stacking. 164
Cong. Rec. S7645 (Dec. 17, 2018) (statement of Sen. Durbin);
see also Brief for Sen. Richard J. Durbin et al. as Amici
Curiae 5–8 (Senators Brief ). The First Step Act was the
much-anticipated, much-heralded fruit of their labor—and
one that many in Congress hoped would yield immediate
benefts. See id., at 17.
12
B
It is noteworthy for present purposes that the statute
Congress crafted to depart from the much-maligned “stack-
ing ” sentencing regime did so in a two-part fashion. First,
§ 403(a) eliminated 25-year stacked sentences for frst-time
§ 924(c) offenders. Second, § 403(b) addressed the retroac-
tivity of the § 403(a) beneft in a “ `targeted way,' ” so as
to ensure that judges were no longer constrained to impose
25-year stacked sentences on frst-time § 924(c) offenders
moving forward. Id., at 15 (quoting 164 Cong. Rec., at
S7645 (statement of Sen. Durbin)).
That second part of Congress's response—the focus of the
cases before us today—was highly consequential. By dis-
placing the background rule that changes to sentencing stat-
utes apply only prospectively (to defendants who commit
their offenses after the law's effective date), Congress made
clear that the First Step Act's more lenient penalties were to
apply to some “ `pending ' ” cases, too—i. e., the new penalties
would be applicable to certain defendants who had com-
mitted their offenses before the First Step Act. Senators
Brief 15 (quoting § 403(b), 132 Stat. 5222). Per § 403(b), any
defendant who still needed to be sentenced as of the First
12
The dissent agrees that our job is to “interpret what Congress meant”
by the words in § 403(b). Post, at 443. Here, Congress's desire to change
the derided, draconian sentencing stacking scheme Deal had created could
not be clearer. Thus, far from “march[ing] in the parade of sentencing
reform,” post, at 441, we are merely observing the events and circumstances
that led Congress to take up the banner of sentencing reform itself.
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Step Act's effective date would receive the Act's more lenient
pena
lties. Thus, as a practical matter, judges would no
longer have to impose harsh “stacked” sentences upon frst-
time § 924(c) offenders.
Notably, because § 403(b) retroactivity was only partial, it
differed substantially from the full retroactivity Congress
employed with respect to other kinds of penalty changes it
instituted in the First Step Act. See, e. g., § 404(b), 132 Stat.
5222; Terry v. United States, 593 U. S. 486, 491 (2021) (ex-
plaining that Congress made the First Step Act's statutory
changes to the crack-cocaine minimums fully retroactive, and
thus “gave courts authority to reduce the sentences” of pre-
viously sentenced crack offenders, where applicable). Con-
gress certainly had the full-retroactivity option before it
when it crafted § 403; indeed, earlier versions of the Act
would have extended § 403(a) benefts to at least some
§ 924(c) offenders who were already sentenced. See, e. g.,
Sentencing Reform Act of 2015, H. R. 3713, 114th Cong., 2d
Sess., § 5(b)(2), pp. 14–16 (2016) (providing for reduced terms
of imprisonment in “certain past cases” (capitalization and
italics deleted)); Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of
2017, S. 1917, 115th Cong., 1st Sess., § 104(b)(2), pp. 13–15
(2017) (permitting “sentence reduction” for certain “past
cases” (capitalization deleted)). But authorizing the reopen-
ing of closed cases upends fnality and can also be administra-
tively burdensome. See Senators Brief 15 (noting that Con-
gress forwent full retroactivity to serve “judicial economy”
and “preserv[e] sentences that were actually valid and
fnal”). Section 403's partial retroactivity avoided these
problems, while still advancing Congress's aim of changing
how frst-time § 924(c) defendants are sentenced.
In short, § 403(b)—a middle-ground solution to the problem
of harsh “stacked” sentences for frst-time § 924(c) offend-
ers—refected a balance of Congress's policy objectives. By
leaving intact § 924(c) sentences that judges had already
imposed, Congress reinforced its interest in fnality and
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avoided burdening district courts with additional litigation.
But
it also substantially advanced its goal of returning a sig-
nifcant amount of sentencing discretion to district court
judges moving forward, by giving retroactive effect to the
Act's more lenient penalties for those frst-time § 924(c) of-
fenders who had yet to be sentenced.
V
The reading of § 403(b) that petitioners and the Govern-
ment promote thus coheres with the text, context, and his-
tory of that provision. Under this view, First Step Act sen-
tencing benefts apply to all frst-time § 924(c) offenders
sentenced after the Act's enactment date (whether it is an
initial sentencing or a resentencing). This means that
§ 403(b)'s retroactivity line falls between those past § 924(c)
offenders with fnal sentences that are still in effect, on the
one hand, and those who still need to be sentenced for their
§ 924(c) offense, on the other. The former are stuck with
their old sentences, for fnality reasons, while the latter are
eligible for First Step Act benefts at resentencing, since
they have to be sentenced regardless.
Under amicus and the dissent's reading, however, there
exists a further line of division within the group of offenders
who currently lack a sentence—separating those who have
been sentenced previously for the § 924(c) offense at issue
from those who have not. For individuals in the former
camp, per amicus and the dissent, a judge must return to
the superseded sentencing scheme and impose stacked 25-
year sentences when such defendants are resentenced.
Carving up the yet-to-be-sentenced group of offenders in
this way does not refect Congress's intent. See Senators
Brief 17 (a bipartisan group of Senators, explaining that
“[t]he considerations animating the First Step Act's enact-
ment undermine any suggestion that Congress intentionally
excluded from Section 403's reach pre-Act offenders whose
sentences are invalid as a matter of law”). Nor does it com-
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Opinion of Jackson, J.
port with the statutory scheme that Congress enacted, for
two
primary reasons.
First, the text and context of § 403(b) do not support differ-
entiating between § 924(c) offenders on the mere basis of the
historical fact of a past sentencing (as we explained in Part
III, supra), and, frankly, it is not clear what distinguishing
between previously sentenced and never-before-sentenced
offenders would accomplish. The prior imposition of a sen-
tence does not bear on fnality; if the offender currently lacks
a sentence, then a court will have to resentence the defend-
ant in any event. And though it would make sense to draw
the line as amicus and the dissent do if the prior imposition
of a sentence helped judges to more accurately identify seri-
ous frst-time § 924(c) offenders—potentially justifying the
harsh and outdated stacked penalties that the First Step Act
supplanted—nothing in the legislative record suggests this
is so. Stated simply: The distinction between previously
sentenced defendants and those who have never been sen-
tenced before seems to make no difference in terms of the
retroactivity aims of the statute.
By contrast, requiring judges to impose Deal-era stacked
§ 924(c) sentences at resentencings runs headlong into the
animating aims of the First Step Act. See Miller v. French,
530 U. S. 327, 341 (2000) (rejecting an interpretation that
would undermine the statute and run “plainly contrary to
Congress' intent in enacting ” it). Neither amicus nor the
dissent can explain why Congress would have wanted sen-
tencing judges, who are presently working to dole out pro-
portionate plenary sentences under the new regime, to have
to return to the draconian, pre-Act scheme for offenders who
just happen to be facing resentencing, as opposed to frst
sentencing. Requiring that kind of reversion prevents
judges from uniformly moving past Deal, which was the pri-
mary point of Congress's enactment of § 403.
Second, the reading of § 403(b) that we adopt today is
plainly more administrable than the one amicus and the dis-
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sent offer. Amicus argues that his interpretation is easy to
apply
, because a district judge only needs to know whether
a prior sentence had ever been imposed upon the defendant
for the relevant offense. But that knowledge is not
enough—the sentencing judge would still need to reference,
recall, and apply the superseded “stacking ” regime, if appli-
cable. And there is a much more straightforward way to
administer § 403(b): From the Act's enactment date onward,
sentencing judges impose the First Step Act's lessened man-
datory minimums for any frst-time § 924(c) offender—full
stop. This reading of § 403(b) requires no additional effort
on the part of the judge to track down a defendant's sentenc-
ing history or to confrm what mandatory minimums pre-
viously governed. And it allows district judges to treat all
frst-time § 924(c) defendants who appear before them for
sentencing in an equitable manner that minimizes sentencing
disparities, consistent with Congress's sentencing directives.
***
Under the interpretation of § 403(b) we adopt today, all
frst-time § 924(c) offenders who appear for sentencing after
the First Step Act's enactment date—including those whose
previous § 924(c) sentences have been vacated and who thus
need to be resentenced—are subject to the Act's revised pen-
alties. The Fifth Circuit's contrary reading of § 403(b) is
reversed, and its judgment in these cases is remanded for
further proceedings.
It is so ordered.
Justice Alito, with whom Justice Thomas, Justice
Kavanaugh, and Justice Barrett join, dissenting.
In the First Step Act of 2018, Congress reduced the
mandatory-minimum sentence for certain frearm offenses.
Like all changes to sentencing law, this amendment applies
prospectively. But Congress also thought it wise to apply
the amendment to “Pending Cases.” Of course, “Pending
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Alito, J., dissenting
Cases” does not mean “All Cases,” and Congress limited the
retroac
tive reach of the amendment to defendants for whom
“a sentence for the offense has not been imposed as of [the
Act's] date of enactment.” 132 Stat. 5222. In other words,
the amendment applies retroactively only if the defendant
had yet to be sentenced when Congress passed the Act in
2018. Petitioners, who were sentenced in 2010, do not come
close to meeting that test.
Today, the Court disfgures the Act in order to reach a
different result. Its interpretation relies on two necessary
premises. First, the Court insists that what Congress
really meant to say is that the amendment applies retroac-
tively unless “a legally valid sentence” is in force on the
Act's date of enactment. Second, to get around the fact that
petitioners did have “legally valid” sentences when the Act
was passed, the Court invents a novel “vacatur” principle.
The Court tells us that the 2022 vacatur of petitioners' sen-
tences rendered those sentences legal nullities from their in-
ception. The Court's interpretation thus unspools the Act's
carefully wound retroactivity command to mean that any de-
fendant whose sentence is vacated at any time and for any
reason may claim the beneft of the Act's reduced mandatory
minimum. But nothing in the text or broader context sup-
ports such a boundless interpretation. Indeed, the portions
of today's decision that command the votes of only three Jus-
tices give the game away. Animating the Court's atextual
interpretation is a thinly veiled desire to march in the parade
of sentencing reform. But our role is to interpret the stat-
ute before us, not overhaul criminal sentencing.
I
Sixteen years ago, a jury convicted petitioners Corey Duf-
fey, Tony Hewitt, and Jarvis Ross of multiple 18 U. S. C.
§ 924(c) offenses for use of a frearm in furtherance of a
crime of violence. At the time, frst-time § 924(c) offenders
like petitioners could receive, after a single trial, a 5-year

442 HEWITT
v. UNITED STATES
Alito, J., dissenting
mandatory-minimum sentence for an initial § 924(c) convic-
ti
on and a consecutive 25-year mandatory-minimum sentence
for each “second or subsequent” § 924(c) conviction. See
§§ 924(c)(1)(A)(i), (c)(1)(C), (c)(1)(D)(ii) (2012 ed.); Deal v.
United States, 508 U. S. 129, 137 (1993). In 2010, the Dis-
trict Court sentenced petitioners under this so-called stack-
ing procedure, and after a remand, the District Court re-
sentenced petiti oners i n 2012. D irec t rev iew of their
convictions and sentences was complete by 2015. See
United States v. Ross, 544 Fed. Appx. 544, 545 (CA5 2013)
(per curiam) (dismissing Duffey's appeal because it pre-
sented “no nonfrivolous issue for appellate review”); United
States v. Ross, 582 Fed. Appx. 528 (CA5 2014) (per curiam)
(affrming Hewitt's and Ross's sentences); Hewitt v. United
States, 574 U. S. 1201 (2015) (denying Hewitt's petition for a
writ of certiorari).
Petitioners' sentences had thus long been fnal when Con-
gress enacted the First Step Act on December 21, 2018.
The Act introduced a bevy of sentencing reforms, including
an amendment that eliminated the practice of § 924(c) sen-
tence stacking. See 132 Stat. 5221–5222. Although it had
previously considered applying this amendment to all § 924(c)
offenders (including those with fnal sentences), see S. 2123,
114th Cong., 1st Sess., § 104(b)(2) (2015) (reported by Com-
mittee), Congress settled on a far narrower retroactivity
command:
“Applicability to Pending Cases.—This section,
and the amendments made by this section, shall apply
to any offense that was committed before the date of
enactment of this Act, if a sentence for the offense has
not been imposed as of such date of enactment.” 132
Stat. 5222.
On the “date of enactment,” petitioners' 2012 sentences re-
mained in full force. As such, petitioners did not move to
reduce their sentences in the immediate aftermath of the
Act's passage.
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Alito, J., dissenting
But several strokes of good fortune soon came petitioners'
way
. The year after Congress passed the First Step Act,
we held in United States v. Davis, 588 U. S. 445, 448 (2019),
that § 924(c)'s residual clause is unconstitutionally vague.
Then, later that same year, the Fifth Circuit determined that
Davis should apply retroactively. See United States v.
Reece, 938 F. 3d 630, 635 (2019). Seeking to take advantage
of these fortuitous developments, petitioners successfully
moved to set aside some, though not all, of their § 924(c) con-
victions that were predicated on the residual clause. Al-
though the District Court could have vacated petitioners'
sentences for only those invalid § 924(c) counts, petitioners
caught yet another lucky break. The District Court opted
to vacate their entire sentences and ordered plenary resen-
tencing on the remaining counts. Petitioners now try to
push their luck even further, contending that the District
Court should apply the First Step Act's reduced mandatory
minimum for their remaining § 924(c) counts.
II
As all agree, petitioners' argument requires us to interpret
what Congress meant when it said “a sentence for the offense
has not been imposed as of [the Act's] date of enactment.”
What frst jumps out about this provision is that Congress
used the present-perfect tense in the phrase “has not been
imposed.” The present-perfect tense “denotes an act, state,
or condition that” is either (1) “now completed” or (2) “con-
tinues up to the present.” The Chicago Manual of Style
§ 5.132, p. 268 (17th ed. 2017).
Context often indicates whether a speaker is using the for-
mer sense of the present-perfect tense (e. g., “he has been
awarded a trophy”) or the latter sense of the present-perfect
tense (e. g., “he has trained for a trophy for the last three
years”). See B. Garner, The Chicago Guide to Grammar,
Usage, and Punctuation 97 (2016). Consider the following
example. Suppose I ask a man passing by a courthouse,
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444 HEWITT
v. UNITED STATES
Alito, J., dissenting
“Has a sentence been imposed on John Smith?” He could
respond
either, “Yes, on July 1” or “Yes, since July 1.” The
former response is perhaps the more natural one, and it as-
sumes I asked for the historical fact of Smith's sentencing in
the indefnite past. The latter response is correct (though
perhaps awkward), and it assumes I asked about the continu-
ing legal validity of Smith's sentence up to the present.
The First Step Act's “grammatical structure conceivably
leaves some room for either reading,” United States v. Uri-
arte, 975 F. 3d 596, 607 (CA7 2020) (en banc) (Barrett, J.,
dissenting), but petitioners lose either way. On one hand,
the phrase “a sentence . . . has . . . been imposed as of [the
Act's] date of enactment” could refer to the historical fact
that a district court imposed a sentence before the Act's pas-
sage, regardless of whether that sentence remains legally
valid in the future. This “historical-fact interpretation”
plainly forecloses relief for petitioners because, as no one dis-
putes, the District Court frst imposed their sentences well
before the Act's passage.
1
On the other hand, “a sentence
. . . has . . . been imposed as of [the Act's] date of enactment”
could mean that a defendant was subject to a legally valid
sentence that continued to be in force on the Act's enactment
date. But again, petitioners did have legally valid sen-
tences “as of [the Act's] date of enactment,” so they lose
under this “legal-validity interpretation” of the Act too.
2
1
The Court dismisses the historical-fact interpretation out of hand be-
cause, as it understands English grammar, the present-perfect tense re-
quires “a connection to the present.” Ante, at 428, n. 5. But before pro-
nouncing new rules of grammar, the Court might frst consider consulting
the authorities it cites. See, e. g., R. Huddleston & G. Pullum, The Cam-
bridge Grammar of the English Language 144 (2002) (noting the “present
perfect allows for the inclusion, under restrictive conditions, of a past time
adjunct”). As these authorities suggest, the present-perfect tense allows
one to say, for example, “[h]e has got up at fve o'clock,” ibid. (emphasis
deleted), or “he has played golf before yesterday.”
2
The Act's requirement that a sentence “has . . . been imposed as of
[the Act's] date of enactment” provides an essential temporal benchmark
for both the historical-fact and the legal-validity interpretation. Remark-

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445
Alito, J., dissenting
Realizing the Act's use of the present-perfect tense alone
cannot
help petitioners, the Court invents a novel “vacatur”
principle to supercharge the legal-validity interpretation.
The Court tells us that the First Step Act incorporates the
background “presumption” that “vacated court orders are
void ab initio and thus lack any prospective legal effect.”
Ante, at 431. This revamped version of the legal-validity
interpretation means that “a sentence . . . has . . . been im-
posed as of [the Act's] date of enactment” if a defendant re-
ceives a legally valid sentence before the Act's passage and
that sentence is never, at any future time, vacated. Under
this view, the 2022 vacatur of petitioners' 2012 sentences im-
plies that, “[b]y operation of [a] legal fction,” their 2012 sen-
tences “never occurred” and so could not have been legally
valid as of the Act's enactment date. Ibid.
The Court's vacatur-infected legal-validity interpretation
thus rests on two necessary premises. First, the legal-
validity interpretation is superior to the historical-fact in-
terpretation. Second, the Act incorporates the “vacatur”
principle. If either premise falters, so does the Court's in-
terpretation. In my view, there is little doubt that both of
the necessary premises fail.
ably, however, the Court reads this requirement out of the Act entirely.
The Court insists that sentencing courts should “read” the First Step Act
at “the moment of resentencing,” without any reference to the Act's enact-
ment date. Ante, at 429, n. 7. But the Court is mistaken. It starts
on the right foot, acknowledging the “widely accepted modern legislative
drafting convention that a law should not be read to speak as of the date
of enactment.” Carr v. United States, 560 U. S. 438, 463 (2010) (Alito, J.,
dissenting). This “convention” provides that, “except in unusual circum-
stances,” “all laws . . . should be written in the present tense” to ensure
that a “ `legislative provision speaks as of any date on which it is read
(rather than as of when drafted, enacted, or put into effect).' ” Ibid.
(quoting Senate Offce of the Legislative Counsel, Legislative Drafting
Manual § 103(a), p. 4 (1997) (emphasis deleted)). But the First Step Act
is such an “unusual circumstanc[e]” in which Congress deviated from this
“convention.” The Act takes the unusual steps of referencing the date on
which it was “enacted” and employing the present-perfect tense, not the
ordinary present tense.
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III
A
T
o start, the most plausible reading of the retroactivity
provision is that “a sentence . . . has . . . been imposed” when,
as a matter of historical fact, a district court has sentenced
a defendant. Subsequent legal changes—such as the vaca-
tur of a previously imposed sentence—do not change the
purely historical fact that a defendant was, at a point in
time, actually sentenced. When the Act asks whether a sen-
tence “has . . . been imposed,” it refers to the unchanging
historical fact of sentencing and whether it occurred before
the “date of enactment.”
To see why, begin with the word “imposed.” A “sentence
is imposed” when there is a “pronouncement of judgment.”
Lott v. United States, 367 U. S. 421, 426 (1961); see Young v.
United States, 943 F. 3d 460, 463 (CADC 2019) (“[I]n ordi-
nary usage a sentence is `imposed' when the district court
pronounces it”). The Sentencing Reform Act treats the “im-
position” of a sentence as the moment when a district court
“state[s] in open court the reasons for . . . the particular sen-
tence.” 18 U. S. C. § 3553(c); Black's Law Dictionary 1470
(12th ed. 2024) (defning “pronounce” as “announce for-
mally”). The word “imposed” is thus most naturally under-
stood to refer to a concrete “action by a district court” that
occurs at a specifc point in time. Uriarte, 975 F. 3d, at 607
(Barrett, J., dissenting); see also United States v. Carpenter,
80 F. 4th 790, 791 (CA6 2023) (Kethledge, J., concurring
in denial of rehearing en banc) (“[T]he act of imposing a
sentence could not possibly `continue up to the present'—
because the imposition of a sentence occurs at a fxed point
in time”). A defendant may be sentenced, resentenced, and
resentenced again, and at each hearing a sentence is “im-
posed” even if some of those sentences are later set aside as
legally invalid.

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Our cases and other provisions of Title 18 confrm that the
word
“imposed” marks the historical point at which a sen-
tence is pronounced regardless of whether that sentence has
continuing legal validity. For example, in the midst of a dis-
cussion about plenary resentencing (a topic of particular rele-
vance to these cases), we once noted that “[i]n remanded
cases . . . trial courts have imposed a sentence on the remain-
ing counts longer than the sentence originally imposed on
those particular counts.” Greenlaw v. United States, 554
U. S. 237, 253 (2008) (emphasis added). In another case, a
joint opinion of the Court noted that the “death sentences
imposed for armed robbery, however, were vacated.” Gregg
v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 161–162 (1976) (opinion of Stewart,
Powell, and Stevens, JJ.) (emphasis added). In both in-
stances, our use of “imposed” signifed only that a court had,
at some point in time, pronounced a sentence. Our use of
“imposed” could not possibly be understood to refer to the
legal validity of those later-invalidated sentences. Further,
in other parts of Title 18, Congress uses “imposed” to signify
the historical fact of a sentence, not its continuing legal va-
lidity. See, e. g., § 3742(a)(2) (allowing a defendant to appeal
“an otherwise fnal sentence if the sentence . . . was imposed
as a result of an incorrect application of the sentencing
guidelines”); § 3742(f )(1) (empowering courts of appeals to
remand on a fnding that “the sentence was imposed in
violation of law”). I see no reason to think Congress in-
tended a different meaning of “imposed” in another provision
of Title 18.
Additional support for the historical-fact interpretation is
found in Congress's use of the phrase “a sentence.” The
word “a” is an “indefnite article” that “points to a nonspecifc
object, thing, or person that is not distinguished from the
other members of a class.” B. Garner, Modern English
Usage 1195 (5th ed. 2022) (Modern English Usage). “When
used as an indefnite article, `a' means `[s]ome undetermined
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or unspecifed particular.' ” McFadden v. United States, 576
U
. S. 186, 191 (2015) (quoting Webster's New International
Dictionary 1 (2d ed. 1954)). In that sense, Congress's use of
the indefnite article lends a broad construction to the word
“sentence,” as if to say “any sentence” ever imposed, includ-
ing a later-vacated sentence. In conjunction with the word
“imposed,” the phrase “a sentence” thus puts the statutory
focus on the existence of any kind of sentence pronounced in
the record, regardless of that sentence's present legal status.
Indeed, contrary to the Court's suggestion, the word “sen-
tence” does not ineluctably mean a “legally valid” sentence.
Our own cases prove the point because we have often found
it necessary to clarify whether a sentence is valid or invalid.
See, e. g., Swarthout v. Cooke, 562 U. S. 216, 220 (2011) (per
curiam) (“There is no right under the Federal Constitution
to be conditionally released before the expiration of a valid
sentence” (emphasis added)); Pollard v. United States, 352
U. S. 354, 357, 360 (1957) (“The only sentence that was en-
tered at the 1952 hearing was the one of probation, admit-
tedly invalid because of petitioner's absence” (emphasis
added)); Richmond v. Lewis, 506 U. S. 40, 43 (1992) (“[P]eti-
tioner's conviction was found valid but his sentence invalid”
(emphasis added)); see also Uriarte, 975 F. 3d, at 607 (Bar-
rett, J., dissenting) (“That is why it is perfectly coherent to
describe the procedural posture of a case by saying, `a sen-
tence was imposed last year, but it has since been vacated
on appeal' ”). If Congress sought to narrow “a sentence” in
a specialized way to indicate a legally valid sentence, it could
have referred to “a fnal sentence,” “a legally valid sen-
tence,” or more prosaically, “the sentence.” Accord, United
States v. Hernandez, 107 F. 4th 965, 969 (CA11 2024).
Reading the retroactivity provision in context, the phrase
“a sentence has not been imposed” most straightforwardly
means that a district court has not, as a matter of historical
fact, sentenced a defendant for his § 924(c) offenses before
the Act's “date of enactment.” So how can the Court read

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the same text to refer to a presently valid sentence, rather
than
one that was historically “imposed” in the past? See
ante, at 431. Bizarrely, the Court's analysis begins and ends
with Congress's use of the present-perfect tense. Through
the use of a single hypothetical, which does not resemble the
structure of the provision actually before us, the Court
draws the conclusion that “the present-perfect tense conveys
to a listener that the event in question continues to be true
or valid.” Ante, at 429. But, as I have explained, the pres-
ent-perfect tense is, as a general matter, capable of support-
ing either the historical-fact or legal-validity interpretation.
The surrounding context and the specifc words Congress
employed indicate how the present-perfect tense may sup-
port one interpretation or the other. As to the actual words
in the retroactivity provision (“imposed,” “a sentence”), the
Court's textual analysis in Part III–A is silent.
3
The
3
The Court's legal-validity interpretation also rests on the mistaken
premise that the past-perfect tense best captures the historical-fact inter-
pretation. The Court claims “if an event is merely a relic of history be-
cause it was voided by a subsequent action, the past-perfect (not the
present-per fec t) tense wou ld usua l ly be the more appropr iate verb
choice.” Ante, at 429–430. I hope readers do not look to this Court as
an authority on English grammar because this broad pronouncement is
badly mistaken. As support for its grammatical rule, the Court offers a
hypothetical: suppose a U. S. Olympic Committee rule says that “athletes
may call themselves Olympic champions if a gold medal `has been awarded'
to them.” Ante, at 428. If the Olympic gold medalist is stripped of her
medal, however, the Court claims she can no longer call herself an “Olym-
pic champion” under the rule. To enable our athlete to still call herself
an Olympic champion based on her now-stripped medal, the Court tells us
“the past-perfect” tense would be “more appropriate” (e. g., “she had been
awarded such a medal”). Ante, at 429–430. That is highly debatable.
The only lesson taught by the Court's example is that the meaning of
language is heavily dependent on context. The obvious purpose of the
hypothetical rule is to restrict the class of individuals who are entitled to
the honor of calling themselves Olympic champions, and the Court pre-
sumes that the athlete in question lost her medal because she engaged in
improper conduct, e. g., taking performance-enhancing drugs. But sup-
pose the medal was taken away for an illegitimate reason. Some histori-

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Court's failure to defend the legal-validity interpretation is
thus
an independently fatal blow to its holding.
B
Assuming the Court had proved up the legal-validity in-
terpretation, it would still need to establish its “vacatur”
principle. That is, it would still need to prove not only that
the Act is concerned with a sentence's continuing legal valid-
ity up to the “date of enactment,” but also that the Act
hinges on the continuing validity of a sentence after the date
of enactment. The Court can prove as much only by invent-
ing a “legal fction” that a vacated sentence “never oc-
curred.” Ante, at 431. But one need only scratch the sur-
face of this purported “legal fction” to understand how
thoroughly unpersuasive it is.
As a preliminary matter, the Court's “vacatur” principle
does not exist. The Court assures us that there is a well-
established principle in the criminal law that “vacated court
orders are void ab initio and thus lack any prospective legal
effect.” Ibid. It derives this rule by over-reading a few
ans think that Jim Thorpe, a legendary Native American athlete who dom-
inated the 1912 Olympics, was stripped of his medals at least in part
because of racism. See B. Crawford, All American: The Rise and Fall of
Jim Thorpe 209–210 (2005); J. Elfers, The Tour To End All Tours: the
Story of Major League Baseball's 1913–1914 World Tour 18 (2003). That
was not completely undone until 2022, long after Thorpe died. See V.
Mather & T. Panja, Jim Thorpe Is Restored as Sole Winner of 1912 Olym-
pic Gold Medals, N. Y. Times, July 15, 2022. Suppose Thorpe had been
asked: “Have you ever been awarded an Olympic medal?” Would he have
been a liar if he answered “yes”? The Court seems to think so.
Indeed, the Court offers no answer to the argument that the present-
perfect tense may be properly used to refer to a past event that was later
undone. Instead, the Court promises readers that an answer will come
in Part IV of its opinion—i. e., the portions in which only three Justices
join. See ante, at 429, n. 6. But this promise goes unfulflled. Part IV
contains no deus ex machina to salvage the Court's interpretation; rather,
Part IV throws a celebration for the First Step Act, perhaps hoping read-
ers lose sight of the text behind all the confetti.

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creative turns of phrase in our cases. See ante, at 432 (cit-
i
ng North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U. S. 711, 721 (1969) (stat-
ing vacatur causes a conviction to be “ `wholly nullifed and
the slate wiped clean' ”); Pepper v. United States, 562 U. S.
476, 507 (2011) (noting vacatur “ `wipe[s] the slate clean' ”)).
But a more careful reading of our precedents and other pro-
visions in Title 18 indicates that vacatur does not erase the
historical fact of a previously imposed conviction or sentence.
Further, even if the “vacatur” principle exists, the Act's ret-
roactivity provision does not incorporate it.
1
Our precedents foreclose the Court's “vacatur” principle.
Take, for example, one of the cases the Court cites, Lewis v.
United States, 445 U. S. 55 (1980). See ante, at 432. There,
the defendant challenged his conviction under a federal stat-
ute prohibiting “ `[a]ny person who . . . has been convicted by
a court of the United States or of a State' ” from “ `receiv-
[ing], possess[ing], or transport[ing] . . . any frearm.' ” 445
U. S., at 56, and n. 1 (quoting 18 U. S. C. § 1202(a) (1970 ed.)).
The defendant argued that his predicate state conviction was
invalid because he lacked counsel and that, as such, he could
not be convicted as a felon in possession under the federal
statute. We assumed that the predicate state conviction
was subject to invalidation (i. e., vacatur), see 445 U. S., at
58, but we nevertheless upheld the felon-in-
possessi on convicti on. We reasoned that the statute's
“sweeping ” language, which is phrased in the present-
perfect tense just like the First Step Act, focused on “the
fact of a [predicate] felony conviction.” Id., at 60. At the
time of his federal offense, the defendant's state conviction
was extant and thus disabled him from frearm possession.
Congress made “[n]o exception” for “a person whose out-
standing [predicate] conviction ultimately might turn out to
be invalid for any reason.” Id., at 62. So a subsequent in-
validation of his state predicate conviction due to his lack
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of counsel would not render that conviction “invalid for all
pur
poses.” Id., at 67. Lewis thus powerfully refutes the
Court's vacatur principle. If vacatur of the defendant's
predicate conviction implied the conviction “never occurred,”
as the Court today insists, then his felon-in-possession con-
viction could not stand. Ante, at 431. But that is the very
argument Lewis foreclosed.
4
Although it supports the petitioners in this appeal, the
United States also concedes (albeit sheepishly in a footnote)
that the Court's “general background legal principle that va-
catur makes a sentence void from the start for all purposes”
is “incorrect.” Brief for United States 27, n. 4 (internal quo-
tation marks and alterations omitted). As it acknowledges,
lower courts routinely follow Lewis and uphold convictions
despite the later vacatur of predicate offenses. See, e. g.,
Burrell v. United States, 384 F. 3d 22, 27–28 (CA2 2004) (“[I]t
is the mere fact of [a prior] conviction at the time of the
charged possession, not the reliability of the conviction, that
establishes the § 922(g)(1) predicate” (internal quotation
marks omitted)); United States v. Roberson, 752 F. 3d 517,
522 (CA1 2014) (upholding a conviction for failure to register
as a sex offender even though the predicate sex offense was
later vacated).
Moreover, as the United States also acknowledges, Lewis's
log ic crosses into the constituti onal context. Consider
Bravo-Fernandez v. United States, 580 U. S. 5 (2016), in
which we considered the application of issue preclusion
4
In responding to Lewis, the Court accidentally fres on its own position.
The Court justifes Lewis's holding by explaining that “the defendant's
prior felony conviction had `never been overturned'—i. e., vacated—at the
time he possessed the weapon.” Ante, at 432, n. 8 (quoting Lewis v.
United States, 445 U. S. 55, 57 (1980)). But that is precisely the point.
Lewis afforded “prospective legal effect” to the defendant's vacated con-
viction by refusing to ignore the historical fact of his predicate conviction
even after the vacatur. I see no way to reconcile that reasoning with the
Court's rule that a vacated sentence never “retains prospective legal ef-
fect.” Ante, at 432, n. 8.
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under the Double Jeopardy Clause when a jury returns in-
consistent
verdicts. It is well established that if a jury con-
victs on one count but acquits on another count involving the
same conduct, the acquittal has no issue preclusive effect.
See id., at 13. Likewise, if a jury acquits on one count but
fails to reach agreement on another count, the acquittal has
such an effect. See id., at 13–14. In Bravo-Fernandez, a
jury convicted on one count but acquitted on others that
were claimed to involve the same conduct. The conviction,
however, was vacated due to “an unrelated legal error,” and
the defendant argued that the Court should treat the convic-
tion as if it had never occurred and that the acquittal had
issue preclusive effect barring reprosecution. Id., at 9. We
rejected this argument, holding that the conviction's later
invalidation did not “erase” its historical existence for the
purposes of issue preclusion because the vacatur did not
“bear on the factual determinations actually and necessarily
made by the jury.” Id., at 21 (internal quotation marks
omitted). Bravo-Fernandez thus treated the historical fact
of a later-vacated conviction as legally relevant, which is ir-
reconcilable with the Court's “vacatur” principle.
The only “ `unexpressed presumptio[n]' ” I can derive from
our cases and those from the courts of appeals is the opposite
of the one the Court advances today. Ante, at 431 (quoting
Bond v. United States, 572 U. S. 844, 857 (2014)).
2
Congress too has rejected the Court's “vacatur” principle.
In the Sentencing Reform Act, Congress “se[t] forth a special
. . . background principle” that is incompatible with the “va-
catur” rule invented today. Dorsey v. United States, 567
U. S. 260, 275 (2012) (emphasis deleted).
5
That is, after a
sentence is vacated, a district court during resentencing
5
In Dorsey, 567 U. S., at 275, we referred to 18 U. S. C. § 3553(a)(4)(A)(ii)
as establishing the relevant “background principle.” That provision in-
corporates by reference the anti-vacatur rule of § 3742(g).
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must apply the Sentencing Guidelines that “were in effect on
the
date of the previous sentencing of the defendant prior to
the appeal.” 18 U. S. C. § 3742(g)(1). The vacatur of an ini-
tial sentence thus does not “wipe the slate clean” in relation
to the Guidelines range. Contra, Pepper, 562 U. S., at 507.
Petitioners try to write off this provision as a deviation
from the background presumption that vacatur voids a sen-
tence ab initio. See Brief for Petitioner Hewitt 24; Brief for
Petitioner Duffey et al. 47. But § 3742(g)(1)'s anti-vacatur
rule cannot be described as a minor exception to an other-
wise widespread principle. The rule does not appear in
some “little-used backwater” of the Sentencing Reform Act.
West Virginia v. EPA, 597 U. S. 697, 730 (2022). Rather,
it is incorporated into the default procedures that apply
in every crimina l sentencing.
6
See §§ 3553(a)(4)(A)( ii),
(a)(5)(B).
In short, the Court's failure to “sho[w] that its own rule
. . . existed as a background matter when Congress enacted”
the First Step Act is fatal to its position. Coinbase, Inc.
v. Bielski, 599 U. S. 736, 753–754 (2023) (Jackson, J.,
dissenting).
3
Even assuming the “vacatur” principle is not a fgment of
the Court's imagination, it lacks any foothold in the Act's
text. “When called on to resolve a dispute over a statute's
meaning, this Court normally seeks to afford the law's terms
their ordinary meaning at the time Congress adopted them.”
Niz-Chavez v. Garland, 593 U. S. 155, 160 (2021). Of course,
we sometimes look to principles beyond the four corners of
6
The portion of the opinion in which only three Justices join expresses
concern that, under the historical-fact interpretation, district judges will
struggle “to reference, recall, and apply the superseded `stacking ' re-
gime.” Ante, at 440. But I have far more faith in district judges' ability
to enforce older sentencing regimes. Indeed, district judges' familiarity
with 18 U. S. C. § 3742(g), which routinely requires them to apply obsolete
Sentencing Guidelines in the present, is proof positive.
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a statute to understand the background against which Con-
gress
legislated. But we typically do so in discrete situa-
tions. For example, we look to background common-law
principles to fll in obvious gaps in statutes, such as a missing
mens rea element in a criminal statute. See, e. g., Staples
v. United States, 511 U. S. 600, 619 (1994) (mens rea); Agency
Holding Corp. v. Malley-Duff & Associates, Inc., 483 U. S.
143, 150 (1987) (statutes of limitations); Marx v. General Rev-
enue Corp., 568 U. S. 371, 382 (2013) (attorney's fees and
costs). Or we import extra-textual meaning when Congress
employs a “term of art that had an established meaning
under” a relevant “backdrop.” Stewart v. Dutra Constr. Co.,
543 U. S. 481, 487 (2005).
The First Step Act fts neither mold, and the Court makes
no effort in Part III–B to analyze how its “vacatur” principle
maps on to the text. The Court points to no obvious gap
in the Act's retroactivity provision that could be flled with
“recog ni zed” “ background pr i nciples of constr uc ti on. ”
Bond, 572 U. S., at 857. Nor does the Court suggest that
the utterly ordinary words in the Act's retroactivity provi-
sion carry some specialized meaning related to vacatur. “In
the absence of some strong contrary indication” of special-
ized meaning, we must “assume that the ordinary meaning ”
of words like “sentence,” which captures both extant and va-
cated sentences, “controls.” Monsalvo Velázquez v. Bondi,
604 U. S. 712, 751 (2025) (Alito, J., dissenting); see Part III–
A, supra.
C
The superiority of the historical-fact interpretation and
the nonexistence of the Court's “vacatur” principle are inde-
pendent reasons to reject the Court's holding. But even if
the matter were close, two more factors counsel against the
Court's rule.
First, the retroactivity provision's title—“Applicability
to Pending Cases”—advises against the Court's boundless
interpretation. “[T]he title of a statute and the heading of
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a section are tools available for the resolution of a doubt
about
the meaning of a statute.” Dubin v. United States,
599 U. S. 110, 120–121 (2023) (internal quotation marks omit-
ted); see also Yates v. United States, 574 U. S. 528, 552 (2015)
(Alito, J., concurring in judgment) (“Titles can be useful de-
vices to resolve doubt about the meaning of a statute” (inter-
nal quotation marks omitted)). Here, the phrase “Pending
Cases” suggests Congress was concerned with the fnite pop-
ulation of defendants who, on the date of the First Step Act's
enactment, lacked an initial sentence for § 924(c) offenses.
See Black's Law Dictionary, at 1366 (defning “pending ” as
“[r]emaining undecided; awaiting decision”); Modern English
Usage 813 (defning “pending ” as “awaiting an outcome”).
But the Court's “vacatur” principle would obliterate that
closed set and refashion the retroactivity provision as an
open-ended entitlement for any defendant convicted of multi-
ple § 924(c) offenses whose sentence is vacated at any time
and for any reason. That means, as the United States con-
cedes, the “universe” of “Pending Cases” would “increase,”
for example, “anytime this Court issues a decision that af-
fects the validity of 924(c) sentences.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 49.
If Congress intended the retroactivity provision to beneft
such an amorphous population that may forever grow in size,
I seriously doubt it would have labeled the Act's retroactiv-
ity provision with the phrase “Pending Cases.”
Second, the presumption against retroactivity further
weighs against the Court's unnecessarily broad interpreta-
tion. The Federal Saving Statute sets forth “an important
background principle of interpretation” that “a new criminal
statute that `repeal[s]' an older criminal statute shall not
change the penalties `incurred' under that older statute `un-
less the repealing Act shall so expressly provide.' ” Dorsey,
567 U. S., at 272, 274 (quoting 1 U. S. C. § 109). Accordingly,
Congress may give retroactive effect to new reductions in
criminal penalties, but it must do so with “plain import”
or “fair implication.” 567 U. S., at 275 (internal quotation

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marks omitted). Here, the First Step Act provides a clear
i
ntent to rebut the presumption against retroactivity as to
offenders for whom a sentence “has not been imposed.” Al-
though I believe the scope of that retroactivity command is
suffciently clear for the reasons I have already given, to the
extent there is any ambiguity about how far the Act's retro-
activity command should go, the presumption puts a thumb
on the scale against construing the retroactivity command to
its broadest extent as the Court does today.
IV
After the Court is through with the text and nonexistent
principles of vacatur, three Justices continue on for pages,
sparing no effort, to extol the “much-anticipated, much-
heralded” First Step Act. Ante, at 436. But what is the
point of all this lauding? Perhaps realizing the weakness of
their textual argument, the three Justices think it wise to
spruce up the opinion. They attempt to do so by asserting
that when a “ `bipartisan' ” “supermajority” of Congress
passes “landmark” legislation, it intends to go big, down to
the very last subsection (or here, application note to a sub-
section). Ante, at 424; ante, at 436 (opinion of Jackson, J.,
joined by Sotomayor and Kagan, JJ.). So I gather they
would have us broadly construe every atom of the “land-
mark” First Step Act in a way that furthers Congress's sup-
posedly grand ambition to turn the page on “harsh” sentenc-
ing practices. Ante, at 437.
There is no “landmark” canon of construction requiring
the Court to construe important legislation to its furthest
possible implication. “ `[N]o legislation pursues its purposes
at all costs.' ” American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Res-
taurant, 570 U. S. 228, 234 (2013) (quoting Rodriguez v.
United States, 480 U. S. 522, 525–526 (1987) (per curiam)).
Indeed, just last Term we rejected the same sort of “land-
mark” argument when interpreting a different provision of
the First Step Act. See Pulsifer v. United States, 601 U. S.
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v. UNITED STATES
Alito, J., dissenting
124, 151–152 (2024). Experience shows that more often than
not,
“landmark” legislation refects the necessary log-rolling
of the legislative process, which prizes political compromise
over statutory clarity. That reality cautions against the
precise move the Court makes today: an inference that Con-
gress hid in an “ancillary” and intentionally circumscribed
provision a retroactivity command that would “alter the fun-
damental details” of how § 924(c) sentencing should work for
all time. Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531
U. S. 457, 468 (2001).
The three-Justice opinion rattles off the public criticisms
that supposedly spurred Congress to reform the practice of
§ 924(c) sentence “stacking.” But this discussion is beside
the point. Nothing in this multi-page discussion sheds light
on how Members of Congress understood the retroactivity
provision before us.
Carried away with its enthusiasm for the changes effected
by the First Step Act, the three Justices bestow an entirely
undeserved windfall on the actual petitioners in these cases.
Due to the especially violent nature of their robberies,
7
peti-
tioners were convicted of more than a dozen § 924(c) offenses,
about half of which were not predicated on § 924(c)'s resid-
ual clause.
In 2019 we decided Davis and provided a basis to set aside
petitioners' § 924(c) convictions under the residual clause, but
Davis did nothing to disturb petitioners' other § 924(c) con-
7
Dubbed the “Scarecrow Bandits” due to their plaid-shirt and foppy-hat
disguises, petitioners and their confederates “violently robbed” a string of
banks in the Dallas-Fort Worth area around 2008. 2009 WL 2356156, *1
(ND Tex., July 30, 2009); see FBI, Scarecrow Bandit Leader Sentenced to
355 Years in Federal Prison on Bank Robbery and Firearms Convictions
(May 5, 2010). During the robberies, the Scarecrow Bandits held bank
employees and customers at gunpoint and physically assaulted them with
frearms and stun guns. See 2009 WL 2356156, *1. In total, the conspir-
acy stole more than $350,000 before authorities caught up with them. See
Brief for United States 7.
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as: 606 U. S. 419 (2025)
459
Alito, J., dissenting
victions and associated mandatory-minimum sentences. In
cases
“involv[ing] multicount indictments and a successful at-
tack by a defendant on some but not all of the counts of
conviction,” a court, “in such instances, may vacate the en-
tire sentence on all counts” and “reconfgure the sentencing
plan” in toto. Greenlaw, 554 U. S., at 253 (emphasis added).
8
But, as petitioners' counsel conceded, courts are under “no
obligation” to follow this convention and may instead choose
to vacate only those parts of the sentence related to an inter-
vening change in law. Tr. of Oral Arg. 15. Nor does this
strike me as a case in which full vacatur was warranted.
Section 924(c) convictions must run consecutively “with any
other term of imprisonment.” § 924(c)(1)(D)(ii). So § 924(c)
sentences are presumably easier to identify and extract from
a defendant's total term of imprisonment, often obviating the
need for a plenary resentencing. The likely unnecessary va-
catur of each petitioner's entire sentence was thus a stroke
of good fortune that opened the door to petitioners' First
Step Act claims.
9
The lower courts (correctly) rejected
8
The chief reason for vacating perfectly valid convictions in such cases is
to allow the sentencing court to consider whether the sentence previously
imposed on a valid count provides suffcient punishment for the defend-
ant's conduct. See Greenlaw, 554 U. S., at 253–254. Suppose a defendant
is convicted of two offenses, each with a 5-year mandatory minimum. The
sentencing judge, thinking that the appropriate punishment for the de-
fendant's criminal conduct is 10 years' imprisonment, imposes a 5-year
term of imprisonment on both counts and runs the counts consecutively.
If one of the counts of conviction is reversed and the case is remanded,
the sentencing judge may wish to enlarge the initial 5-year sentence on
the remaining count to 10 years' imprisonment. So the defendant “ulti-
mately may gain nothing from his limited success on appeal.” Id., at 254.
It is therefore ironic that the unnecessary vacatur of petitioners' valid
convictions has given them a beneft.
9
The District Court's willingness to vacate petitioners' entire sentences
appears to have been informed by the position of the United States, which
“agreed” with petitioners that the “sentences on all remaining counts
should be vacated.” Agreed Order in No. 3:08–cr–167 (ND Tex., Nov. 2,
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460 HEWITT
v. UNITED STATES
Alito, J., dissenting
those efforts, but petitioners have found a sympathetic audi-
ence
in this Court. The three Justices attribute today's out-
come to grand congressional design coming to fruition, but
in reality, petitioners' change in fortune can be attributed
only to the happenstance of legal developments with not the
faintest relationship to the First Step Act.
***
The Court ignores Congress's intention to afford only lim-
ited retroactive relief to certain offenders under the First
Step Act. Instead, the Court embraces an interpretation
that has no limiting principle and affords petitioners a wind-
fall. That is an indefensible result based on indefensible
reasoning. I cannot agree with the Court's decision, so I
must respectfully dissent.
2021), ECF Doc. 700, p. 2 (Ross); see Agreed Order in No. 3:08–cr–167
(June 14, 2021), ECF Doc. 672, p. 2 (Duffey); Agreed Order in No. 3:08–
cr–167 (Aug. 19, 2021), ECF Doc. 683, p. 2 (Hewitt).
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Reporter’s Note
The attached opinion has been revised to refect the usual publication
and citation style of the United States Reports. The revised pagination
makes available the offcial United States Reports citation in advance of
publication. The syllabus has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions
for the convenience of the reader and constitutes no part of the opinion of
the Court. A list of counsel who argued or fled briefs in this case, and
who were members of the bar of this Court at the time this case was
argued, has been inserted following the syllabus. Other revisions may
include adjustments to formatting, captions, citation form, and any errant
punctuation. The following additional edits were made:
Page 448, line 2: “Internal” is changed to “International”