Opinion ID: 429493
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Gravamen of Roth's Complaint

Text: 15 Roth's attack on the Parole Commission is two-fold. First, he contends that the Commission violated the ex post facto clause by aggregating his two sentences. He claims that before August 1, 1980, the date the new guidelines were promulgated, the Commission would have paroled him in 40 to 52 months. Therefore, he believes he should not have to serve 68 months (minus 9 for superior achievement) before getting out. 16 Second, he argues that the Commission penalized him for the 1975 Chicago fraud conviction despite his having already paid his debt to society--that is, after he had served the entire 3-year sentence he received for violating his parole in the Chicago fraud case. Roth says that the Commission may not parole him from an expired sentence. He concedes that the Commission may--and it did--consider the Chicago offense to determine whether he was a good parole risk (his salient factor score), but insists that the Commission may not consider the Chicago offense to determine the opprobriousness of the harm he did in the Denver case, for which he is still paying his debt to society (the offense severity score). Roth submits that the Commission improperly penalized him twice for the Chicago offense when it calculated his presumptive date of release on parole.