In Hewitt v. United States, 606 U.S. ___, No. 23-1002 (2025), the Court addressed the First Step Act's retroactive application to section 924(c) convictions that previously would have been "stacked."
Before the First Step Act was enacted in 2018, federal judges were required to sentence certain first-time offenders convicted of violating 18 U. S. C. §924(c)—a law that criminalizes the possession of a firearm while committing other crimes—to “stacked” 25-year periods of incarceration. The First Step Act, 132 Stat. 5194, eliminated this harsh mandatory minimum penalty. Congress also made the Act’s more lenient penalties partially retroactive. Section 403(b) specifies 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 as of the Act’s enactment, but that sentence was subsequently 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.We granted certiorari to decide whether §403(b) of the First Step Act confers the benefit of the Act’s more lenient penalties to defendants facing post-Act resentencing following vacatur of their pre-Act sentence.The Fifth Circuit held, and amicus and the dissent contend, that §403(b) excludes any defendant who was sentenced 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 offense 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 extant—i.e., has not been vacated.
