The Bureau defined this to include a drug trafficking conviction which received a sentence increase due to the use of a weapon during the commission of that crime.

[2] Finding that underlying convictions that were "nonviolent" should be reconsidered for the program by the Bureau of Prisons, the District Court reasoned Lopez was a candidate for term reductions.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court, affirming the Eighth Circuit and finding Lopez ineligible for the program.

[3] Ginsburg argued that the statutory language provided the Director of the Bureau of Prisons the authority to make these sentence distinctions as the text used the word "may" consider rather than "shall".

[4] He concluded that the Bureau was free to make these distinctions, so long as it held to Congress's intent which he saw as aiding Lopez's arguments.