Can Congress pass a law that sets an incarcerated person free?

Question

Imagine John Doe is incarcerated for a crime after exhausting all his appeals. Congress approves a bill, which is then signed into law, that, among a myriad of other things, sets John free.

Has this ever happened?: Is this possible (i.e. within the powers Congress has to put into law)?

The discussion of whether Congress would ever do that to release an incarcerated person or if a Presidential pardon would be the correct way to do it is beyond the legal scope of this question. Only if that is within the powers of a law.

Answer 1

Yes.

Assuming that the person is incarcerated under federal law, Congress can and has retroactively reduced sentences for federal crimes (sometimes resulting in a release from prison entirely) and indeed has done so rather recently.

And, at the federal government level, there is no prohibition on Congress passing "special legislation" that only affects select people. So called "private laws" that affect only one person or a small number of people are passed every year. The process for passing private laws is discussed here.

The Bill of Attainder clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits Congress from passing a law that declares someone to be guilty of a crime. But the converse, a law that vacates someone's prison sentence, is not barred by the Bill of Attainder clause.

Congress would not generally have the power to vacate a sentence imposed under a state or local law that was valid at the time, although the U.S. Supreme Court, on rare occasions, does so by finding a state law prison sentence to be unconstitutional. Similarly, it is well established that the Presidential pardon power does not extend to state and local government established crimes.

This distinction is very material.

As of 2019, about 1,255,689 people currently behind bars in the United States—or 87.7% out of a total of 1,430,805 prisoners—had been convicted in state court for violating state criminal laws, rather than in federal court for violating federal criminal laws.

The proportion of criminal cases brought in state court rather than federal court is higher than 87.7% because misdemeanor and petty offense prosecutions are disproportionately brought in state courts and most criminal prosecutions involve misdemeanors and petty offenses.

The number of trials conducted in each system is another way to illustrate the relative size of the two criminal justice systems. In Colorado, in 2002, there were approximately 40 criminal trials in federal court, and there were 1,898 criminal trials (excluding hundreds of quasi-criminal trials in juvenile cases, municipal cases and infraction cases) in state courts, so only about 2% of criminal trials took place in federal court. Most jury trials in the United States (roughly five out of six jury trials conducted in any U.S. Court) take place in criminal cases in state courts.

There might be some conceivable circumstances in which federal law could vacate a a particular state prison sentence (although probably not any circumstance present in Donald Trump's state court criminal cases), for example, as part of an international peace treaty, although I'm not aware of any precedents for cases where that has ever actually happened.

Obviously, of course, Congress can't set someone incarcerated by another country free just by passing a law that says that they should be released.

Answer 2

france

Yes, but it has never been done.

The constitution gives the Parliament authority to (emphasis mine):

[...] The determination of serious crimes and other major offences and the penalties they carry; criminal procedure; amnesty; the setting up of new categories of courts and the status of members of the Judiciary;

French constitution, article 34

When this prerogative has been used, it has always been used as a wide-ranging measure, targeting thousand of persons at a time, but nothing prevents it.

--

Two minor points:

• It could not be done in a law "amongst a myriad of other things". Riders are not allowed in French laws. They are found on a regular basis to be unconstitutional.

• The French president has a distinct right to pardon, with different consequences (amnesty - the crime never occurred, it is forbidden to mention it / pardon - the crime occurred, but the President decided you could skip part of, or the entire time in jail)

The President of the Republic is vested with the power to grant individual pardons

French constitution, article 17

Answer 3

united-kingdom

The UK Government has released thousands of prisoners early to reduce overcrowding.

Hansard Society reports:

How delegated legislation is being used to tackle the prisons crisis
Thousands of prisoners will be released on license early, once they have completed 40% rather than 50% of their sentence, if a Statutory Instrument is approved by the House of Commons today (25 July 2024). This is not the first time delegated legislation has been used to address the prison overcrowding crisis by implementing what are significant and contentious policy changes.

Answer 4

united-kingdom

Parliament can (in theory) legislate to do anything it wants - including quashing convictions.

And indeed, it did exactly this with the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024, whose first section reads:

Every conviction to which this Act applies is quashed on the coming into force of this Act.

This was a response to the British Post Office scandal, which saw several hundred people erroneously convicted. It was felt that the normal process of going through an appeals process for every case would take too long, and cause additional suffering for people who had already being through a terrible ordeal; hence the Government and Parliament acted through legislation instead.

There were concerns that Parliament was overstepping the mark by effectively acting in a judicial manner; but the Act was passed anyway.