SCOTUS grants cert on two(!) federal sentence reduction issues

The Supreme Court this afternoon issued his new order list which adds seven new cases to its merits docket. Two of the new cases involve (narrow) related federal sentencing issues concerning the application of 18 USC § 3582(c)(2).  Here are the case pages and issues via SCOTUSblog:

Hughes v. United States

Issue: Whether, under Freeman v. United States, a petitioner is eligible for a sentence reduction pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2) based on a retroactive amendment to the Sentencing Guidelines, when the petitioner was sentenced after entering into a binding Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(c)(1)(C) plea agreement that required a specific sentence not expressly tied to the guidelines.

Koons v. United States

Issues: Whether a defendant who is subject to a statutory mandatory minimum sentence, but who substantially assisted the government and received a sentence below the mandatory minimum pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3553(e), is eligible for a further sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2), when the Sentencing Commission retroactively lowers the advisory sentencing guidelines range that would have applied in the absence of the statutory mandatory minimum.

As long-time readers should know, I am not a big fan of undue finality concerns in the sentencing context (see paper here), so my first instinct is to root for SCOTUS to take an expansive view of the reach and application of 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2). But I will need to dig into the particulars of these cases before being ready to make any predictions about where the Justices may want to go with them.  But, as long-time readers should also know, a cert grant on TWO sentencing cases makes me a happy camper no matter what may follow.