Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 26, 1995 TAG: 9504260093
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The court, by a 7-2 vote in a California case Tuesday, ruled that such changes do not amount to after-the-fact punishment for prisoners who committed their crimes when parole hearings were more frequent.
The decision means those California inmates convicted of killing more than once are entitled, after their initial request for parole is denied, to a new hearing once every three years, not once a year.
California in 1981 extended from one to three years the period between prison hearings for multiple killers behind bars.
Other states, including Illinois, Michigan, New Hampshire and South Carolina, have taken similar steps regarding the availability of parole hearings.
That change ``creates only the most speculative and attenuated risk of increasing the measure of punishment attached to the covered crimes,'' Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court.
He said the change in state law applied ``only to a class of prisoners for whom the likelihood of release on parole is quite remote.'' It was not clear whether the ruling could apply as well to all other inmates serving long prison terms.
Justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter dissented.
Accusing the court of building its ruling on numerous assumptions, Stevens said, ``To engage in such pure speculation while condemning [the] assertion of increased punishment as speculative seems to me not only unpersuasive but actually perverse.''
He said the ruling ``will almost inevitably delay the grant of parole in some cases.''
Past Supreme Court decisions had supplied three examples of prohibited retroactive changes in criminal law:
Laws making crimes out of acts that were legal when done.
Laws depriving people charged with crimes of defenses available when the alleged crimes occurred.
Laws allowing greater punishment for crimes than the punishment that existed when those crimes were committed.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had invoked the ban on greater punishment when it ruled last year that convicted killer Jose Ramon Morales is entitled to annual hearings.
by CNB