Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 335

529US1

Unit: $U40

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260

GARNER v. JONES

Souter, J., dissenting

Justice Souter, with whom Justice Stevens and

Justice Ginsburg join, dissenting.

I think the Court of Appeals made no error here and so
respectfully dissent from the reversal. A change in parole
policy violates the Ex Post Facto Clause if it creates a “suf-
ﬁcient,” California Dept. of Corrections v. Morales, 514
U. S. 499, 509 (1995), or substantial risk that the class af-
fected by the change will serve longer sentences as a result.1
To determine the likelihood that the change at issue here
will lengthen sentences, we need to look at the terms of the
new Rule, and then at the possibility that the terms are miti-
gated by a practice of making exceptions.

Before the board changed its reconsideration Rule, a pris-
oner would receive a second consideration for parole by year
10, whereas now the second consideration must occur only
by year 15; those who would receive a third consideration
at year 13 will now have no certain consideration until year
23, and so on. An example of the effect of the longer inter-
vals between mandatory review can be seen by considering
the average term served under the old Rule.
In 1992, a
member of the Georgia Legislature stated that the average
life-sentenced inmate served 12 years before parole. See
Spotts, Sentence and Punishment: Provide for the Imposition
of Life Sentence Without Parole, 10 Ga. St. U. L. Rev. 183,
183, and n. 4 (1993). Some prisoners must have been pa-

1 In the ﬁrst instance, at least, our cases have traditionally evaluated the
effect of the change on the class subject to the new rule, rather than
focusing solely on the individual challenging the change, Weaver v. Gra-
ham, 450 U. S. 24, 33 (1981).
It can be difﬁcult, if not impossible, for one
person to prove that a change in penal policy has increased the quantum
of punishment beyond what he would previously have received, since a
sentencing decision is often a mix of rules and discretion. See Lindsey v.
Washington, 301 U. S. 397, 401 (1937). At the same time, when one looks
at the affected class it can be quite clear that punishment has increased
overall. That is proof enough that the new Rule applied retroactively
violates the Ex Post Facto Clause and, as an invalid rule, should not be
applied to anyone within the class.