Opinion ID: 3015194
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Mickens-Thomas v. Vaughn

Text: In Mickens-Thomas v. Vaughn, 321 F.3d 374 (3d Cir. 2003), we considered whether the 1996 Amendments to the Pennsylvania Parole Act violated the Ex Post Facto Clause. The petitioner, Louis Mickens-Thomas (“Thomas”), was one of the unusual prisoners who received a commutation of his life sentence, which rendered him eligible for parole in 1996. Of the 266 prisoners whose life sentences had ever been commuted in Pennsylvania, Thomas was the only prisoner not to be granted parole. Thomas petitioned for habeas relief arguing that the Parole Board denied him parole based on the 1996 Amendments to the Parole Act in violation of the Ex Post Facto Clause. The Parole Board argued in Mickens-Thomas (as here) that “the 1996 amendments . . . did not change the Board’s standards for determining parole.” 321 F.3d at 384 (alteration in original). We disagreed and found that the “statute unequivocally has been interpreted by the Pennsylvania courts to express broad and general aspirations of Pennsylvania’s parole policy.” Id. (citing Stewart v. Pa. Bd. of Prob. & Parole, 714 A.2d 502, 508 (Pa. Commw. Ct. 1998)). We did not rely on the then-recently decided case of Winklespecht v. Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole, 813 A.2d 688 (Pa. 2002), because Winklespecht was decided “after the Board’s actions on Thomas’s parole” and therefore “came too late to alter the Board’s view of the statutory amendment on the outcome of this case.” 321 F.3d at 391 (emphasis in original). In Mickens-Thomas, we held that the question is “not 10 whether the statute on its face pertains to parole decisionmaking, but whether, in practice, the new language has altered the fundament for reviewing parole applications.” Id. at 384 (emphasis original). We concluded that there was “significant evidence” that the practical effect of the 1996 Amendments was to change the weight that public safety was given in the parole calculation. Id. at 387. Even though the Board had always used public safety as one consideration in parole determinations, we found that, after 1996, the Board gave public safety far greater weight. Id. at 385. This change particularly affected the chances of parole for violent offenders, who are subjected to “a more stringent standard of review” than under the pre-1996 scheme. Id. (quoting Myers v. Ridge, 712 A.2d 791, 799 (Pa. Commw. Ct. 1998)). Having found that the 1996 Amendments made a change in Pennsylvania parole policy as a general matter, we turned to Thomas’s specific case, and held that Thomas also met the second prong of the ex post facto analysis—that the change in policy adversely affected his parole decision. The panel found that “there is significant evidence that [the Board] acted upon policies that were established after Thomas’s crime and conviction,” mainly because of the Board’s reliance on public safety, in denying Thomas parole. Id. at 387. Central to this determination were the many pre-1996 factors that pointed toward a grant of parole, such as the Parole Guidelines score, the unanimous recommendation of the Department of Corrections, and, importantly, the fact that all 265 prisoners whose life sentences were commuted prior to 1996 had been paroled. Id. at 387-88. Given the foregoing analysis, we had no difficulty finding that the 1996 Amendments “substantially increased the period of incarceration” by reducing the possibility of Thomas’s release on parole. Id. at 392. We therefore held that “to retroactively apply changes in the parole laws made after conviction for a life sentence in Pennsylvania that adversely affect the release of prisoners whose sentences have been commuted, violates the Ex Post Facto Clause.” Id. at 393.