Arkansas Department of Corrections officials said Thursday they are confident they will be able to withstand any lawsuit brought against the agency after admitting to a seven-year mistake in interpreting Arkansas law that has affected the sentences of hundreds of inmates.
Secretary of the Department of Corrections Solomon Graves told a legislative committee last week the prison agency erroneously applied parole eligibility law and told prosecutors and defense attorneys incorrect information. The error led to nearly 300 inmates learning they will have to serve their entire sentence without parole, despite what they were told at the time of their plea agreements.
Graves said the department had to revoke parole and re-incarcerate two individuals with prior convictions for residential burglary in June, and remove the parole option for 290 inmates.
Graves said on average those affected by the mistake have had their release dates pushed back 9½ years. He said no offender affected by the correction received any more time on their sentence, and said the only thing that has changed is they have to serve out their entire sentence.
Corrections board member William "Dubs" Byers asked if this meant the department has lawsuits coming its way. Graves said he has heard of inquiries being made about the situation, but that he is confident the department has Supreme Court case law on its side.
"I have been told by the attorney general's office that inmates have reached out to file cases," he said.
Board Chairman Benny Magness said he was surprised the Department of Corrections hadn't heard from the American Civil Liberties Union, as well.
"It's because we have the law on our side," Graves said.
Graves said he understood why some people might view it as unfair, but that the state Supreme Court has established that when the department erroneously applies parole eligibility law, even through its own doing, it has a duty to correct that application.
"There are two ways to address this, and it's judicial intervention or legislative intervention," he said. "At this point we have two decades of case law on our side."
Graves requested an attorney general's opinion in January, asking for guidance on whether a residential burglary conviction should be considered a "violent felony offense" when calculating an offender's sentence if the crime was committed before the Criminal Justice Reform Act of 2015 was enacted.
The act, effective April 2015, requires that offenders convicted of violent felony offenses who have previously been found guilty of a violent felony must serve 100 percent of their sentence.
Graves said a mistake was made where residential burglary was not considered as a violent felony offense when calculating an offender's sentence. He said ongoing questions regarding the interpretation of law led the department to reach out to the attorney general's office.
Magness said the error on the department's part was not getting an attorney general's opinion shortly after the law initially passed in 2015.
"It was your call to do it now, and I am glad that you did," he said.
Graves said it came down to an issue of interpretation, and that changes have been made since then and the department will continue to implement more.
"Not only do we need to increase the support our legal division is giving, but we also need to have staff who have background in the application of our state criminal code, because that is a different beast to tax code or real estate law," he said.