Sentencing; Compassionate release; 18 USC § 3582(c)(1)(A); The sentencing factors in § 3553(a); Legal standard for evaluating factor § 3553(a)(6) (disparities with other defendants); Whether judges are to act like “parole boards” in assessing compassionate-release cases; Consideration of the material changes in COVID-19 conditions

[This appeal was from the ED-MI.] The court reversed the district court’s grant of compassionate release to defendant-Bass, holding that it abused its discretion where its decision was based on legal errors, and remanded for reevaluation based on current facts and circumstances. Bass was serving two life sentences for murder. He moved for compassionate release in 2020 on the basis that, as a morbidly obese 51-year-old African American male, he had a heightened risk from COVID 19. The district court granted him immediate release, citing the CDC guidelines as they then existed, and its determination that he was unlikely to reoffend. A divided panel previously granted the government’s motion for an emergency stay. In this merits appeal, the court found that the district court’s “analysis of the compassionate release factors rested upon two errors of law.” The first involved its use of the incorrect legal standard in evaluating factor § 3553(a)(6), the need to avoid unwarranted disparities with other defendants. It erred by comparing Bass’s sentence with that of a codefendant – “this factor concerns national disparities between defendants with similar criminal histories convicted of similar criminal conduct[.]” It also erred in concluding that, “by passing the compassionate release statute, Congress had simply transferred the discretionary power to grant parole from the Parole Commission to district courts. That is incorrect. . . . By analogizing its role to that of a parole board, the district court framed the legal question in a manner that Congress had expressly condemned when it shifted away from the rehabilitation focus of criminal sentencing. [It] erred by conflating the old parole system with the new compassionate release framework . . . .” The court further noted that, given the serious nature of Bass’s crimes, serving 22 years of his sentence did not seem proportionate, and found it “troubling” the district court concluded that the seriousness of his crimes was “outweighed by the rehabilitation and other mitigating factors . . . .” Additionally, the district court appeared to give “little weight” to the possibility the public could be endangered by his release. On remand, the district court is to reconsider whether “extraordinary and compelling” reasons exist given new developments in the rate of infections at the prison facility and the availability of the COVID-19 vaccine (which he had refused).