In United States v. Hernandez, No. 22-13311 (July 8, 2024) (Rosenbaum, Newsom, Luck), the Court affirmed Mr. Hernandez’s sentence for several 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) convictions, among other offenses on the same indictment.
Although Mr. Hernandez’s original sentence was pronounced before the First Step Act’s passage, it was judicially vacated after such passage. He therefore argued—and the government conceded—that the modified stacking rule under § 403(a) of the Act applied to his case.
A majority of the panel disagreed. Mr. Hernandez’s argument, it reasoned, depends on whether the vacated sentence qualifies as “a sentence” that “has been imposed as of [the] date of [the Act’s] enactment,” within the meaning of § 403(b) of the Act. It does, the majority held. This is so because the vacated sentence satisfies the dictionary definition of “sentence.” Meanwhile, Congress’s use of the indefinite “a” indicates that § 403(b) covers any type of “sentence”—even one that was subsequently vacated. Further, the phrase “has not been” refers to a completed act, and Eleventh Circuit precedent establishes that the verb “imposed,” as used in the criminal sentencing context, refers to the historical fact of pronouncement. So because the district court had pronounced a sentence for Mr. Hernandez before the Act’s enactment, and because “a sentence” was therefore “imposed as of [the] date of such enactment,” the majority held that § 403(a)’s modified stacking rule did not apply to Mr. Hernandez’s case.
Dissenting, Judge Rosenbaum determined that § 403(a)’s modified stacking rule applies to all sentencings that follow the Act's enactment.
