SMU Law Review
Abstract
This Article challenges a persistent assumption about the relationship between so-called “second look” laws and sentencing disparities. Courts, the United States Sentencing Commission, and scholars tend to assume that increasing judicial discretion to reduce previously imposed sentences on an individualized basis results in increased sentencing disparities. But this assumption is based on a limited focus on disparities caused by judges and fails to account for disparities caused by other institutional actors, especially prosecutors.
This Article examines the relationship between disparities and second-look laws by focusing on one such law: the federal reduction in sentence (RIS) statute, commonly referred to as federal “compassionate release.” The Article draws on a rich literature about the multi-institutional nature of sentencing power and applies it as a lens with which to analyze federal district courts’ use of RIS in the six years after Congress revitalized the law in 2018. This analysis surfaces an overlooked result of federal district courts’ increased resentencing authority under RIS: Even though different judges varied significantly in their willingness to grant RIS relief, judges who did grant relief exerted downward pressure on a set of disparately long outcomes produced by other institutional actors. The case of RIS shows that, accounting for prosecutor- and legislature-caused disparities, individualized second looks can have an equalizing effect on sentencing outcomes. This analysis offers a potential path for the United States Sentencing Commission to broaden the RIS mechanism regardless of the results of a pending Supreme Court case, and it carries broader implications about the power—and limitations—of judicial second looks as levers of sentencing policy.
Recommended Citation
Joshua D. Weiss,
Second Looks for Sentencing Equality,
79
SMU L. Rev.
195
(2026)
