Cite as: 503 U. S. 329 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
because the final clause of § 3585(b) allows a defendant to receive credit only for detention time "that has not been credited against another sentence." When the District Court imposed Wilson's 96-month sentence on November 29, 1989, Wilson had not yet received credit for his detention time from the Tennessee courts. However, by the time the Attorney General imprisoned Wilson on December 12, 1989, the Tennessee trial court had awarded Wilson 429 days of credit. As a result, Wilson could receive a larger credit if the statute permitted crediting at sentencing, and thus before the detention time had been credited against another sentence.
The United States argues that it is the Attorney General who computes the amount of the credit after the defendant begins his sentence and that the Court of Appeals erred in ordering the District Court to award credit to Wilson. Wilson counters that § 3585(b) authorizes the District Court to compute the amount of the credit at sentencing. We agree with the United States.
A
We do not accept Wilson's argument that § 3585(b) authorizes a district court to award credit at sentencing. Section 3585(b) indicates that a defendant may receive credit against a sentence that "was imposed." It also specifies that the amount of the credit depends on the time that the defendant "has spent" in official detention "prior to the date the sentence commences." Congress' use of a verb tense is signifi-cant in construing statutes. See, e. g., Otte v. United States, 419 U. S. 43, 49-50 (1974); Gwaltney of Smithfield, Ltd. v. Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Inc., 484 U. S. 49, 63-64, n. 4 (1987). By using these verbs in the past and present perfect tenses, Congress has indicated that computation of the credit must occur after the defendant begins his sentence. A district court, therefore, cannot apply § 3585(b) at sentencing.
Federal defendants do not always begin to serve their sentences immediately. In this case, the District Court sen-
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