Split Sixth Circuit panel decides FIRST STEP Act's less severe 924(c) mandatory minimums are applicable to resentencing

In this post a full two years ago right after the enactment for the FIRST STEP Act, I flagged some issues regarding which "pipeline" defendants might be able to benefit from the Act's reduced sentencing terms.  (By "pipeline," I meant cases in which offense conduct took place before passage of the FIRST STEP Act, but a sentence was not fully finalized when the Act became law.)  In that post, I noted that Congress in the FIRST STEP Act had expressly provided that the reduced 924(c) mandatory minimums were to be applicable "if a sentence for the offense has not been imposed as of such date of enactment" of the Act.  And then I pondered in that post: "Imagine a defendant already sentenced earlier in 2018, but his sentence is reversed on some other ground and now he faces resentencing in 2019.  Can a defendant get the benefit of any new provisions of the FIRST STEP Act upon resentencing?"

A Sixth Circuit panel this past week spoke to these issues in US v. Henry, No. 19-2445 (6th Cir. Dec 18, 2020) (available here).  The panel split, with the majority eager to give broad application to the FIRST STEP Act's reduced sentencing terms.  The Henry court gives various justifications for its reading of the applicable provision of the Act, including its legislative history: "the legislative history of the First Step Act demonstrates Congress’s intent to remedy overly punitive mandatory-minimum sentences faced by defendants, including defendants resentenced after the Act’s enactment."  Judge Gibbons writing in dissent sees matters differently, explaining "Given the vast sentencing disparities depending on whether the First Step Act applies — 55 years versus 15 years in this case — it is unclear why Congress chose to extend the Act’s protection to a defendant sentenced on the date of enactment but not to a defendant sentenced just one day prior. But whatever the wisdom of that decision, 'Congress has . . . drawn a line in the sand.'"

I am very much in favor of the approach adopted by the majority here, which essentially recognizes that absent a clear "line in the sand" for limiting application of the newer, less severe sentencing terms, it makes sense to give those terms the broadest possible application.  As the dissent notes, a full 40 years of imprisonment is at issue in this matter.  As I see it, if Congress is not 100% clear that an extra four decades of time in a cage  must be imposed, courts ought not mandate its imposition.