Supreme Court Will Hear Dispute Over First Step Act Sentence Reductions

The Supreme Court agreed this week to consider whether three offenders dubbed the “Scarecrow Bandits” whose crimes predate a Trump-era criminal justice reform law, should benefit from the law’s lower mandatory minimum sentences. The nickname for the individuals originated with FBI agents who said during early robberies the offenders dressed in loose shirts and floppy hats. The First Step Act, a bipartisan measure approved by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump in 2018, reformed aspects of the criminal justice system, making it easier for the courts to reduce penalties for certain nonviolent offenders. The legal issue here is whether the sentence reductions prescribed by the statute apply to defendants who were sentenced before the law was created but later had their sentences vacated and were resentenced after the law came into force....