Two weeks later, has there been any significant and noteworthy Blewett blowback?

As first discussed in this post and further here and here, a split panel of the Sixth Circuit two weeks ago handed down a significant (and questionable) ruling in US v. Blewett declaring that the reduced mandatory minimum crack sentences set out in the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 must be applied even to those offenders sentenced before the Act's effective date.  This ruling means that still-imprisoned crack defendants sentenced in the two decades before the FSA can now seek a reduction in their mandatory minimum sentences under the FSA's new terms, at least if they were originally sentenced in the Sixth Circuit.

Right after the ruling there was reasonable and justified speculation that the federal prosecutors would quickly move for the full Sixth Circuit to review and reverse the Blewett decision en banc.  Indeed, I expected that we a petition for rehearing en banc would be filed within a matter of days.  But here it is nearly two weeks later, and I am still awaiting any report of a DOJ en banc filing in response to Blewett.  I believe it is still likely that such a petition will be coming down the pike very soon, but the delay so far now has me wondering and speculating as to whether the feds might just decide to seek summary reversal of Blewett in the US Supreme Court rather than just fight this consequential fight in the Sixth Circuit.

Meanwhile, though I predicted in this post that there could be hundreds, if not thousand, of Blewett claims brought by incarcerated federal crack offenders convicted within the Sixth Circuit, as of this writing I have not seen any reports or evidence of significant efforts by significant numbers of defendants to get some relief from Blewett.  I did find, thanks to Westlaw, a notable ruling by Judge Tarnow in the Eastern District of Michigan granting relief to a defendant based on Blewett in US v. Frost, No. 08–20537–4, 2013 WL 2250768 (ED Mich May 22, 2013), noting that Cecil Frost only now can get resentenced "because the Sixth Circuit Court's ruling in Blewett cures [the] unjust outcome" that precluded his resentencing because he had been sentenced before the effective date of the FSA.

It is hard to assess at this stage whether Frost represents the tip of a large Blewett-resentencing ice berg, or instead that Frost is a rare case involving a defendant and a district judge eager and able to operationalize Blewett quickly.  The question in the title of this post is an effort to seek help from practioners and others to figure out whether and how Blewett blowback might be brewing.

Related posts on Blewett:

• On (wrong?) constitutional grounds, split Sixth Circuit panel gives full retroactive effect to new FSA crack sentences
• "Crackheaded Ruling by Sixth Circuit"
• How quickly can and will (hundreds of) imprisoned crack defendants file "Blewett claims"?