Court Opinion

ID: 9749993
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:11:01.906894+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:01.156450
License: Public Domain

*673McAULIFFE, Judge,
dissenting.
I join in Parts I through IV of the Court’s opinion. I do not agree with Part V, or with the result, and I therefore dissent.
Chapter 588 of the Acts of 1982, requiring gubernatorial approval for parole of a Patuxent inmate serving a life sentence did not “make[ ] more burdensome the punishment for a crime, after its commission.” Beazell v. Ohio, 269 U.S. 167, 169-170, 46 S.Ct. 68, 68-69, 70 L.Ed. 216 (1925). Rather, Ch. 588 had the effect of returning Sutton to the same position he was in at the time he committed the murders in 1974. At that time, and at the time of Sutton’s sentencing in 1975, a person sentenced to life imprisonment for murder could not be paroled without gubernatorial approval. Code (1957, 1978 Repl.Vol.), Art. 41, § 122(b).
Sutton did not gain a potential right to parole without gubernatorial approval until later in 1975 when, as a result of an entirely separate proceeding, he was adjudged a defective delinquent and was transferred to Patuxent Institution. Although the sentencing judge initiated the proceeding by ordering that Sutton be referred to Patuxent for evaluation, and he did so immediately after imposing sentence, the referral formed no part of the sentence. The referral was entirely discretionary. Code, (1957, 1976 Repl.Vol.) Art. 31B, § 6. The referral could have been made then, or at a later time, or not at all. Even after referral, Sutton might or might not have been determined to be a defective delinquent.
The possibility of a determination of defective delinquency status and transfer to Patuxent was not a part of the basic framework of imprisonment, parole, and good-time credits that existed at the time Sutton committed his crimes. It existed as a bare possibility that might occur at some time during a defendant’s imprisonment. Whether the change of status actually occurred depended in part on whether any of the persons designated by the statute requested an evaluation, the discretion of the trial judge, *674and whether the defendant would be found by a different court or jury to fit the definition of a defective delinquent.
Originally, the Constitutional prohibition against the passage of ex post facto laws condemned any statute that
“punishes as a crime an act previously committed, which was innocent when done; which makes more burdensome the punishment for a crime, after its commission, or which deprives one charged with crime of any defense available according to law at the time when the act was committed.....”
Beazell v. Ohio, supra, 269 U.S. at 169, 46 S.Ct. at 68. Because parole and good-time credits have become an integral part of the ordinary scheme of punishment by imprisonment, ex post facto protections have been extended to those areas. That extension, although a long stretch, has generally been viewed as being consistent with the basic concept of fairness that underlies the ex post facto clauses. This Court’s further stretch of these principles to embrace a benefit associated with a bare possibility, unconnected with the traditional framework of sentencing and parole, is unwarranted.