A freed man faces life back in prison after a Supreme Court ruling on the First Step Act

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two years after his release from prison, Patrick Dewayne Smith spends Sundays with his family in a modest brick church with a white steeple in rural Tennessee. He goes to ball games to cheer for nieces and nephews he had never met. After serving 13 years for a nonviolent drug conviction, he is trying to rebuild his life.

Now Smith could be sent back to prison for the rest of it. A federal judge released him in 2024 under rules adopted after Congress passed the First Step Act, a landmark criminal justice law during President Donald Trump’s first term. But the Supreme Court ruled in May that people sentenced under older, harsher laws cannot rely on the disparity between their sentences and current penalties to seek early compassionate release.

“Every time I get a call, I’m hoping it’s some good news. Or, you know, at least not no bad news,” said Smith, a tall, soft-spoken 47-year-old whose beard is now flecked with gray. Smith is among about a dozen people nationwide who could be returned to prison because of the ruling, according to FAMM, a sentencing reform group formerly Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

Without clemency from the White House, the group says, second chances could disappear for those people. The First Step Act opened a path to freedom The First Step Act was the most significant rewrite of federal sentencing laws in a generation. Among other changes, it reduced some lengthy mandatory minimum sentences, particularly for nonviolent drug crimes.

Trump said the law would “make our communities safer and give former inmates a second chance at life after they have served their time.” The law was championed by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser who had a personal connection to the issue: Kushner’s his father had spent time in federal prison when Kushner was younger. Thousands of people have been released from prison in the years since the law was passed, but some recent Supreme Court rulings have made it harder for other people already serving long sentences to argue for their release. For Smith and others like him, competing interpretations have created a high-stakes legal limbo.

“They’re doing everything that they should be doing. They’re reestablishing relationships with families. They’re volunteering in their communities.