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NO RIZZ FOR RIZO
“Rizz,” for those readers who have just awakened from a 20-year nap, is a colloquial noun, used when describing possession of charisma. As a verb, rizz can be used to describe using charisma to attract someone, as to “rizz up” a person.
Abel Rizo, who has been doing 468 months for a conspiracy to rob drug dealers since 1997, had multiple 18 USC § 924(c) convictions, with the second one adding 240 months to the sentence.
His original sentence included concurrent 168-month terms for his drug convictions and concurrent 60-month terms for the Hobbs Act offenses. The firearm convictions, however, added consecutive terms of 60 months and 240 months, producing the aggregate 468-month sentence.
The 2018 First Step Act changed the treatment of multiple § 924(c) convictions obtained in one prosecution so that the second or subsequent counts in the same case carried the same minimums as the first one. Abel filed a motion for compassionate release under 18 USC 3582(c)(1)(A), arguing that he would only have gotten 60 months for the second 924, making his sentence disparately long under compassionate release Guideline 1B1.13(b)(6).
The district court agreed. It found that Rizo had served more than ten years and that the 15-year difference on the second firearm count constituted a gross disparity. It also found that he was no longer dangerous and that the factors in 18 USC 3553(a) favored relief favored cutting his aggregate sentence to 288 months. Rizo was released on December 6, 2024.
The government appealed, arguing that 1B1.13(b)(6) was beyond the Sentencing Commission’s authority to adopt. While the appeal was pending (and Able was at home), the Supreme Court decided Rutherford v. United States, which held that 1B1.13(b)(6) was unlawful (essentially buying the position that the government had raised on appeal of Abel’s release).
The 11th Circuit held that it could hear the government’s appeal because the sentence-reduction order was final and the government presented a cognizable claim that the reduced sentence violated federal law. On the merits, the court applied the Supreme Court’s intervening Rutherford decision to reverse the sentence reduction grant.
The District Court’s favorable findings that Abel was not dangerous and the § 3553(a) factors could not cure the loss of a legally permissible extraordinary and compelling reason. The dangerousness and sentencing factor considerations are basic requirements for a compassionate release, but no matter how favorable they may be to a defendant, they do not make up for the failure of the threshold statutory condition that an extraordinary and compelling reason exist for compassionate release.
The 11th did not need to reassess Rizo’s rehabilitation, weigh the seriousness of his offenses, or decide whether fifteen years was a sufficiently substantial disparity. Rutherford had already made the disparity basis of 1B1.13(b)(6) legally unavailable. The size of the disparity could not change that conclusion.
So two decades after the offense and two years of successful supervised release, it looks like Abel is going back to prison for another 15 years. To the extent that an opinion can have rizz, this one definitely does not.
United States v. Rizo, Case No 24-11349, 2026 U.S.App. LEXIS 32775 (11th Cir. October 27, 2026)
~ Thomas L. Root