Episode description

Welcome to Supreme Court Opinions. In this episode, you’ll hear the Court’s opinion in Pulsifer v United States.

In this case, the court considered this issue: Must a defendant show he does not meet any of the criteria listed in 18U-S-C § 3553(f) to qualify for a sentence lower than the statutory minimum?

The case was decided on March 15, 2024.

The Supreme Court held that a defendant must satisfy individually each of the three conditions of the “safety valve” provision of 18U-S-C §3553(f)(1) to be eligible for sentencing relief. Justice Elena Kagan authored the 6-3 majority opinion of the Court.

The Court acknowledged that each party offered a grammatically permissible reading of Paragraph (f)(1). However, the text and context of that paragraph, as read against the Guidelines more generally, support the Government’s reading. Pulsifer’s reading—that a defendant is eligible as long as he does not have all three characteristics in combination—would render part (A) superfluous, since a defendant with a 3-point offense under (B) and a 2-point violent offense under (C) would always have more than 4 criminal history points under (A). Additionally, Pulsifer's reading would allow relief for some defendants with more serious criminal histories while denying it to those with less serious records, contrary to the provision’s purpose of sorting defendants based on the seriousness of their prior offenses. Finally, the rule of lenity does not apply because there is no genuine ambiguity in the statutory language because, while there are two grammatically permissible readings, the context supports only one of those readings. Thus, Pulsifer was ineligible for safety valve relief because he had two prior 3-point offenses.

Justice Neil Gorsuch authored a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined, arguing that the majority for engaged in “implicit distribution,” reading words into and out of the statute to manufacture a superfluity problem that does not actually exist. Justice Gorsuch further argued that the majority elevated unexpressed congressional purposes over the statutory text and dismissed variations in Congress’s use of ‘and” and “or” as sloppy mistakes, even though Congress expressly distributed phrases elsewhere in the statute when it wanted to.

The opinion is presented here in its entirety, but with citations omitted. If you appreciate this episode, please subscribe. Thank you.