NACDL - Salvagno v. Director, Federal Bureau of Prisons

Salvagno v. Director, Federal Bureau of Prisons

Brief for Amici Curiae Center on the Administration of Criminal Law, FAMM, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, in Support of Appellant and Reversal

Brief filed: 12/19/2018

Documents

Salvagno-v-Director,-Federal-Bureau-of-Prisons-amicus.pdf

Salvagno v. Director, Federal Bureau of Prisons

2nd Circuit Court of Appeals; Case No. 17-3997

Prior Decision

2017 WL 5159214 (D.Conn. Nov. 7, 2017

Argument(s)

The governing statute, properly construed, does not authorize BOP to refuse to file a sentencing reduction motion for reasons that Congress expressly assigned to a Court for consideration. BOP has routinely refused to recommend the filing of sentence reduction motions for plainly qualified candidates, with results that are not only unlawful but also tragic. District courts have jurisdiction and authority to require BOP to comply with the statutory scheme and file sentence reduction motions for qualified candidates, so that sentencing judges can decide whether, when and to what extent a sentence should be reduced for “extraordinary and compelling reasons.”