In the

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 21-3196 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

v.

WILLIAM D. KING, 

Defendant-Appellant. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of Illinois.

No. 07-CR-20055 — Harold A. Baker, Judge. 

____________________ 

SUBMITTED JULY 7, 2022* — DECIDED JULY 11, 2022 

____________________ 

Before EASTERBROOK, WOOD, and KIRSCH, Circuit Judges. 

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. When deciding whether “extraordinary and compelling reasons”, 18 U.S.C. 

§3582(c)(1)(A)(i), justify a prisoner’s compassionate release, 

judges must not rely on non-retroactive statutory changes or 

new judicial decisions. That’s the holding of United States v. 

* The court granted the parties’ joint motion to waive oral argument.
2 No. 21-3196 

Thacker, 4 F.4th 569 (7th Cir. 2021), and United States v. Brock, 

No. 22-1148 (7th Cir. July 7, 2022). There’s nothing “extraordinary” about new statutes or caselaw, or a contention that 

the sentencing judge erred in applying the Guidelines; these

are the ordinary business of the legal system, and their consequences should be addressed by direct appeal or collateral review under 28 U.S.C. §2255. See United States v. Martin, 21 

F.4th 944 (7th Cir. 2021). 

William King, who was sentenced to 216 months’ imprisonment following his guilty plea to three heroin charges, contends that Concepcion v. United States, No. 20–1650 (U.S. June 

27, 2022), requires us to abandon these decisions and hold that 

anything at all—factual or legal, personal or systemic, routine 

or unique—may be treated as “extraordinary and compelling”. That would be hard to reconcile with the language of 

the statute. Routine is the opposite of extraordinary. 

The statute also says that applications must be assessed 

according to policy statements issued by the Sentencing Commission. 18 U.S.C. §3582(c)(1)(A) [hanging paragraph]. The 

Sentencing Commission has not updated those statements 

since the First Step Act of 2018, which allows prisoners to file 

their own requests without the support of the Bureau of Prisons. But we explained in United States v. Gunn, 980 F.3d 1178 

(7th Cir. 2020), that the older policy statements remain useful 

to guide district judges’ discretion. Those statements, found 

at U.S.S.G. §1B1.13 and Application Note 1, contemplate the 

release of prisoners afflicted by severe medical conditions or 

risks, experiencing a family emergency, or otherwise in unusual personal circumstances. They do not hint that the sort of 

legal developments routinely addressed by direct or collateral 

review qualify a person for compassionate release. 
No. 21-3196 3 

Concepcion does not alter that understanding. It held that, 

when substantive changes made by the First Step Act (principally reductions in the authorized ranges for crack-cocaine 

crimes) entitle a prisoner to be resentenced, the judge may 

consider everything that would have been pertinent at an 

original sentencing. We may assume that the same would be 

true if a district judge were to vacate a sentence on application 

for compassionate release and hold a full resentencing proceeding. But decisions such as Thacker concern the threshold 

question: whether the prisoner is entitled to a reduction under 

§3582(c)(1)(A). Concepcion mentioned the compassionate-release statute only to support the proposition that Congress 

knows how to limit which considerations may be used to reduce a sentence. Slip op. 10–11 & 13 n.5. That observation undermines rather than helps King’s position. 

The Supreme Court has encountered other threshold issues under the First Step Act without hinting that everything 

is up in the air. For example, Terry v. United States, 141 S. Ct. 

1858 (2021), holds that persons convicted of violating 21 

U.S.C. §841(b)(1)(C) are not eligible for resentencing. It did 

this as a majer of law, rather than adopting an “everyone’s 

eligible for any reason” approach of the kind that King favors. 

That the First Step Act did multiple things—lowering sentences for some cocaine crimes, enabling prisoners to seek 

compassionate release on their own motions, and more—does 

not mean that every decision about any aspect of the First Step 

Act applies to every potential question under that statute. The 

First Step Act did not create or modify the “extraordinary and 

compelling reasons” threshold for eligibility; it just added 

prisoners to the list of persons who may file motions. We take 

the Supreme Court at its word that Concepcion is about the 
4 No. 21-3196 

majers that district judges may consider when they resentence defendants. So understood, Concepcion is irrelevant to 

the threshold question whether any given prisoner has established an “extraordinary and compelling” reason for release. 

This brings us to King’s situation. He contends that United 

States v. Ruth, 966 F.3d 642 (7th Cir. 2020), furnishes an “extraordinary and compelling” reason for compassionate release. The district court disagreed and denied King’s application.

Ruth holds that an unusual feature in one Illinois statute 

defining the word “cocaine” means that a conviction under 

that state law does not count as a prior cocaine conviction for 

the purpose of certain federal recidivist enhancements. King 

could have made such an argument on appeal after his own 

sentencing but did not, nor did he file a collateral ajack based 

on the way Illinois defines cocaine. His effort to use Ruth as a 

door opener under the compassionate-release statute is foreclosed by Brock, which rejects the sort of argument that King 

advances. Because Brock is consistent with Concepcion, the district court’s judgment is 

AFFIRMED.