Opinion ID: 627271
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: 2d 1170 (Table) (Del. Jan. 24, 2007).

Text: Having exhausted his state remedies, Evans filed the underlying petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. The petition raised three claims: (1) the Delaware Supreme Court’s construction of state law in Evans II deprived Evans of good time credits earned in anticipation of early release, in violation of his due process rights; (2) the jury instructions given at trial were unlawful; 6 and (3) the prosecutor elicited perjured testimony. The case was transferred to this Court as a second or successive habeas petition. See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(A). We denied leave to file a second or successive petition insofar as Evans sought to assert claims of trial court error and prosecutorial misconduct. Insofar as he wished to assert a claim challenging the execution of his sentence, we concluded that such a claim would not constitute a second or successive petition and thus needed no authorization. We transferred the petition back to the District Court to consider Evans’s first claim. Evans maintained that the Delaware Supreme Court’s construction of § 4348 in Evans II unforeseeably withdrew from him the option of conditional release and the value of his accrued good time credits for accelerating conditional release. By unexpectedly interpreting the statute in this way and by applying the interpretation retroactively to his case, Evans argued, the court infringed his due process rights. The District Court disagreed and denied habeas relief. Evans sought a certificate of appealability from this Court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2253. We appointed counsel and granted a certificate of appealability only on the issue of “whether the Appellant’s Due Process rights were violated by the ret[ro]active application of the Delaware Supreme Court’s decision in Evans v. State, 872 A.2d 539, 558 (Del. 2005).”