Opinion ID: 3015194
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: New Law or Policy

Text: Mickens-Thomas concluded that the “practical effect” of the 11 1996 Amendments was to create a more “a more stringent standard of review,” particularly for the parole of violent offenders. 321 F.3d at 385 (quoting Myers, 712 A.2d at 799). However, shortly before Mickens-Thomas was filed, a plurality of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that while the language concerning ‘protecting the safety of the public’ and ‘assist[ing] in the fair administration of justice’ was added to § 331.1 in 1996, these concepts are nothing new to the parole process and have always been underlying concerns. Both versions of § 311.1 leave the decision regarding the grant of parole within the discretion of the Board; the fact that some language was added in 1996, which clarified the policy underlying the parole process, does nothing that increase Winklespecht’s punishment. Winklespecht, 813 A.2d at 692 (alteration in original). Therefore, Winklespecht concluded that the 1996 Amendments to the Parole Act “[do] not create a substantial risk that parole would be denied any more frequently than under the previous wording” and thus held that the retrospective application of the 1996 Amendments does not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. Id. at 691-92. The Commonwealth argues that, after Winklespecht, it was clear that the 1996 Amendments did not establish a new law or policy. Without a change in law or policy, the Commonwealth claims that the first prong of the ex post facto inquiry is not satisfied. Thus, the Commonwealth asserts that the applicability of Mickens-Thomas is limited to those parole decisions made under the Parole Board’s pre-Winklespecht understanding of the 1996 Amendments. Mickens-Thomas did not consider the impact of Winklespecht because Winklespecht was handed down in December 2002—after Thomas’ 1996, 1998, and 2000 denials of parole. In contrast, the Parole Board has twice denied Richardson parole after Winklespecht, in decisions that were ostensibly informed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s holding that there was no substantive change in policy wrought by the 1996 Amendments. Thus, the Commonwealth claims that Mickens12 Thomas does not control and that no Ex Post Facto violation has occurred. The Commonwealth, however, ignores subsequent Pennsylvania Supreme Court decisions that undermine its interpretation of Winklespecht. In Finnegan v. Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole, 838 A.2d 684, 688 (Pa. 2003), a majority of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reaffirmed that the considerations of public safety and administration of justice “have always been underlying concerns” of the Act and that the new language merely “clarified the policy underlying the parole process.” Still, given the disparities between Mickens-Thomas and Finnegan, doubts remained about whether the use of the amended Parole Act violated the Ex Post Facto Clause. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court again addressed the issue in Hall v. Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole, 851 A.2d 859 (Pa. 2004). This time a plurality of the Court reaffirmed that the use of the 1996 amended criteria does not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. Chief Justice Cappy dissented in Hall, claiming that the majority had improperly disregarded the U.S. Supreme Court precedents of Garner, 529 U.S. 244, and Morales, 514 U.S. 499, which both established that retroactive changes to parole regulations may violate the Ex Post Facto Clause if the practical effect of the change creates a significant risk of increased punishment. 851 A.2d at 865-69 (Cappy, C.J., dissenting). Chief Justice Cappy endorsed an “as applied” analysis of ex post facto challenges to the 1996 Amendments, seeing the inquiry as a “question of proof” whereby each prisoner must “demonstrate that a violation has occurred, and that he in fact faces a significant risk of an increase in punishment by application of the new policy.” Id. at 869. On February 24, 2005, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court made an about-face along the lines of Chief Justice Cappy’s dissent, and held in Cimaszewski, 868 A.2d at 426-27, that under the U.S. Supreme Court decisions of Morales and Garner, “retroactive changes in the law governing parole may violate the ex post facto clause.” Cimaszewski dispelled any suggestion that Winklespecht had interpreted the 1996 amendments as making no substantive change in the criteria for parole. Cimaszewski also quoted Garner for the proposition that “[w]hen the rule does not by its own terms show a significant risk” of increased 13 incarceration, a petitioner must prove that the rule’s “practical implementation . . . will result in a longer period of incarceration than under the earlier rule.” 868 A.2d at 427 (quoting Garner, 529 U.S. at 255). It added that this is a “fact-intensive inquiry” to be conducted “on an individual basis.” Id. This approach parallels that taken by our Court in Mickens-Thomas. Under Cimaszewski, in order to establish an ex post facto violation, the petitioner must provide “the requisite evidence that he faces a significant risk of an increase in punishment” by showing that “under the pre-1996 Parole Act, the Board would likely have paroled the inmate.” Id. Cimaszewski held it was not sufficient for a petitioner merely to rely on the same statistics cited in Mickens-Thomas, because the petitioner must establish the effect of the amendments “when applied to him.”4 Id. at 428. We therefore conclude that the State’s reliance on Winklespecht is undermined by Cimaszewski, which acknowledged that the practical effect of the amendment may be that it increases an individual prisoner’s sentence. Given this conclusion in Cimaszewski, and informed by our own precedent in MickensThomas, we hold that the first prong of the ex post facto inquiry is satisfied.