Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 330

529US1

Unit: $U40

[10-04-01 09:23:11] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 244 (2000)

255

Opinion of the Court

the discretion it had from the outset. Given respondent’s
criminal history, including his escape from prison and the
commission of a second murder, it is difﬁcult to see how the
Board increased the risk of his serving a longer time when
it decided that its parole review should be exercised after an
8-year, not a 3-year, interval. Yet if such a risk develops,
respondent may, upon a showing of either “a change in [his]
circumstance[s]” or the Board’s receipt of “new information,”
seek an earlier review before the 8-year interval runs its
course.

We do not accept the Court of Appeals’ supposition that
Rule 475–3–.05(2) “seems certain” to result in some prison-
ers serving extended periods of incarceration. 164 F. 3d, at
595. The standard announced in Morales requires a more
rigorous analysis of the level of risk created by the change
in law. Cf. 514 U. S., at 506–507, n. 3 (“After Collins, the
focus of the ex post facto inquiry is not on whether a legis-
lative change produces some ambiguous sort of ‘disadvan-
tage’ . . . but on whether any such change . . . increases the
penalty by which a crime is punishable”). When the rule
does not by its own terms show a signiﬁcant risk, the re-
spondent must demonstrate, by evidence drawn from the
rule’s practical implementation by the agency charged with
exercising discretion, that its retroactive application will re-
sult in a longer period of incarceration than under the earlier
rule. The litigation in Morales concerned a statute cover-
ing inmates convicted of more than one homicide and pro-
ceeded on the assumption that there were no relevant differ-
ences between inmates for purposes of discerning whether
retroactive application of the amended California law vio-
lated the Ex Post Facto Clause.
In the case before us, re-
spondent must show that as applied to his own sentence the
law created a signiﬁcant risk of increasing his punishment.
This remains the issue in the case, though the general opera-
tion of the Georgia parole system may produce relevant evi-
dence and inform further analysis on the point.