Opinion ID: 716188
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: deferral of parole review

Text: 24 Appellant's first substantive claim is that he has a right to annual parole hearings under the Board policy in effect from 1989 to 1992. He argues that a statute allowing the parole board to defer parole hearings violates the Ex Post Facto Clause as to inmates who had a right to annual hearings at the time of their convictions and/or sentencing. 25 In support of his contention, Appellant cites to three cases from other Circuits holding that any retrospective law making parole hearings less accessible would effectively increase the prisoner's sentence and therefore violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. In Rodriguez v. United States Parole Commission, 594 F.2d 170 (7th Cir.1979), the Seventh Circuit found an ex post facto violation where there was a change in the timing of parole reconsideration from initial reconsideration at the one-third point in the prisoner's sentence to reconsideration every eighteen months, where the prisoner was serving a two-year sentence. The Eleventh Circuit held in Akins v. Snow, 922 F.2d 1558 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, 501 U.S. 1260, 111 S.Ct. 2915, 115 L.Ed.2d 1079 (1991) that a parole board rule reducing the frequency of parole reconsideration hearings from annually to once every eight years after denial of parole violated the Ex Post Facto Clause with respect to inmates who, when their crimes were committed, were entitled to annual reconsideration hearings. And in Roller v. Cavanaugh, 984 F.2d 120 (4th Cir.1993), the Fourth Circuit held that a statutory amendment that retroactively reduced the frequency of parole reconsideration hearings for violent offenders from an annual to a biennial basis was an unconstitutional ex post facto law with respect to an inmate who, when his crimes were committed, was entitled to annual reconsideration hearings. 26 Appellant's argument is unconvincing. After the cases cited by Appellant were decided, the Supreme Court held that an amendment retroactively reducing the frequency of parole reconsideration hearings does not necessarily violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. In California Dept. of Corrections v. Morales, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 1597 (1995), the prisoner had been entitled, at the time of his conviction, to annual reconsideration hearings after parole was denied. The law was subsequently changed to allow the parole board to defer subsequent hearings for up to three years for a prisoner convicted of more than one offense involving the taking of a life. The Supreme Court held that the amended law's application to prisoners who committed their crimes before it was enacted did not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. 27 The Court, while declining to articulate a formula for identifying what legislative adjustments would be of sufficient moment to fall within the constitutional prohibition, set forth three factors it found dispositive in that case. First, the amendment applied only to a class of prisoners for whom the likelihood of release on parole was remote. Id. at 1603. Second, the amendment affected the timing only of reconsideration hearings; it had no effect on the date of any prisoner's initial parole suitability hearing. Id. at 1604. Third, the parole board retained the authority to tailor the frequency of subsequent suitability hearings to the particular circumstances of the individual prisoner. Id. On these facts, the Court found that the amendment created only a speculative and attenuated risk of increasing the measure of the petitioner's punishment, and therefore did not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. Id. at 1603. 28 Applying the factors identified by the Supreme Court to the facts of this case, it is evident that the amended Tennessee Board of Paroles' procedures do not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause as applied to Appellant. Appellant is a prisoner for whom the likelihood of release on parole is remote. It is undisputed that this is the fifth time to date Appellant has been found unsuitable for parole in his ten-year incarceration. The amended procedure can thus be seen as a means to relieve the [Board] from the costly and time-consuming responsibility of scheduling parole hearings for prisoners who have no chance of being released. Id. at 1604 (citation omitted). Petitioner does not allege that the timing of his initial parole suitability hearing was affected by the change in the law. And it appears from the record that the parole board tailored the frequency of subsequent suitability hearings to Appellant's particular circumstances. Furthermore, Appellant did not even have a right to annual reconsideration hearings at the time of his conviction. The Board's annual hearing policy was not instituted until 1989, five years after Appellant's conviction. Appellant does not have a constitutional right to annual reconsideration hearings. 29