Woods v. Mo. Dep't of Corr.
| Decision Date | 08 January 2019 |
| Docket Number | WD81266 |
| Parties | DIMETRIOUS WOODS, Respondent, v. MISSOURI DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Appellant. |
| Court | Missouri Court of Appeals |
Appeal from the Circuit Court of Cole County, Missouri
The Honorable Daniel R. Green, Judge
Before Division Two: Alok Ahuja, Presiding Judge, and Thomas H. Newton and Mark D. Pfeiffer, Judges
The Missouri Department of Corrections ("DOC") appeals the judgment of the Circuit Court of Cole County, Missouri ("circuit court"), granting Mr. Dimetrious Woods's ("Woods") motion for judgment on the pleadings in his declaratory judgment action. On appeal, the DOC claims the circuit court erred in granting the motion because the amendments to the criminal statutes governing Woods's offense do not apply retroactively to his sentence pursuant to section 1.160, RSMo 2016. We reverse; however, given that the issue presented in this case is of general interest and importance and is likely to recur repeatedly, we exercise our discretion pursuant to Rule 83.02 to order transfer of this case to the Missouri Supreme Court.1
Factual and Procedural Background
Following a traffic stop in May of 2006, Woods and a co-defendant were charged with the offense of drug trafficking in the second degree in violation of section 195.223, RSMo Cum. Supp. 2005. At the time of Woods's offense, section 195.223, titled "Trafficking drugs, second degree - penalty[,]" provided various manners of committing second-degree drug trafficking and for each stated what class of crime that manner constituted (e.g., class A or B felony).
Woods's case proceeded to a bench trial in October of 2007, and Woods was found guilty as charged. Finding that Woods was a prior drug offender pursuant to section 195.295.3, RSMo 2000, the court sentenced Woods to twenty-five years' imprisonment without eligibility for parole. At the time of Woods's sentencing, section 195.295, titled "Prior and persistent offenders - trafficking drugs, second degree, imprisonment for[,]" provided the mandatory term of imprisonment for repeat offenders convicted under each subdivision of section 195.223. Section 195.295.3 required that Woods "shall be sentenced to the authorized term of imprisonment for a class A felony, which term shall be served without probation or parole[.]" Woods's prior offender, second-degree drug trafficking sentence was ordered to run consecutively to a four-year sentence Woods received in an unrelated case.
Effective January 1, 2017, the Missouri Legislature, via Senate Bill 491, enacted the Revised Criminal Code of 2017. For drug trafficking offenses, the Code retained the substance of the offenses, but changed the quantity thresholds and made significant changes to sentencing,substantially reducing punishments for drug offenses generally and eliminating sentences without probation or parole for prior and persistent drug offenders. Section 195.223, defining second-degree drug trafficking and its elements and classifications, was transferred to section 579.068, and section 195.295, providing the mandatory term of imprisonment for prior and persistent drug offenders convicted under section 195.223, was repealed.
In May of 2017, Woods filed a petition for declaratory judgment arguing the repeal of section 195.295 applied retroactively, and that accordingly, he should be deemed eligible for parole on his twenty-five-year sentence. Both parties filed motions for judgment on the pleadings, and the circuit court granted Woods's motion, entering its judgment holding that, pursuant to State ex rel. Nixon v. Russell, 129 S.W.3d 867 (Mo. banc 2004), and Irvin v. Kempker, 152 S.W.3d 358 (Mo. App. W.D. 2004), section 195.295 is not applicable in determining Woods's parole eligibility and ordering the Department of Corrections to apply the existing laws in determining Woods's parole eligibility. Woods received a hearing and was paroled on March 23, 2018. The Department of Corrections timely appeals.
Standard of Review
Appellate review of the circuit court's grant of a motion for judgment on the pleadings is de novo. Fields v. Mo. Bd. of Prob. & Parole, 559 S.W.3d 12, 15 (Mo. App. W.D. 2018); Barrett v. Greitens, 542 S.W.3d 370, 375 (Mo. App. W.D. 2017).
Analysis
In its sole point on appeal, the DOC challenges the circuit court's determination that retroactively applied "existing laws concerning [Woods's] parole eligibility" to make Woods immediately eligible for parole, rather than section 195.295, which governed Woods's sentence at the time of sentencing and was later repealed effective January 1, 2017. The DOC asserts thatthe circuit court's decision incorrectly altered Woods's final sentence in violation of section 1.160.
The effect of the repeal of a penal statute is expressly governed by section 1.160, RSMo 2016. This section reads:
No offense committed and no fine, penalty or forfeiture incurred, or prosecution commenced or pending previous to or at the time when any statutory provision is repealed or amended, shall be affected by the repeal or amendment, but the trial and punishment of all such offenses, and the recovery of the fines, penalties or forfeitures shall be had, in all respects, as if the provision had not been repealed or amended, except that all such proceedings shall be conducted according to existing procedural laws.
Because the purpose of section 1.160 is "to fix the penalties under the criminal statutes as of the date the offense was committed," the general rule is that "even if a statute dealing with sentencing, imprisonment, or probation is subsequently amended, the offender does not receive the benefit of the amendment." Prapotnik v. Crowe, 55 S.W.3d 914, 918 (Mo. App. W.D. 2001); Fields, 559 S.W.3d at 17.
Woods asserted below, and the circuit court agreed, that State ex rel. Nixon v. Russell, 129 S.W.3d 867 (Mo. banc 2004), requires us to conclude that the repeal of section 195.295 did not affect the "penalty" or "punishment" imposed for his recidivist drug offense. Instead, according to Woods and accepted by the circuit court, because the repeal of section 195.295 merely repealed a recidivist offender's ineligibility for probation or parole, Russell holds that section 1.160 is not implicated. We disagree.
In Russell, a new statute, section 558.016.8, was enacted, which allowed offenders convicted of nonviolent class C or D felonies with no prior prison commitments to petition the trial court to serve the remainder of the sentence on probation, parole, or other court-approved sentence. Id. at 870. The issue was whether section 1.160 prohibited the new statute from beingapplied retroactively to offenders sentenced before the new statute's effective date. Id. Russell noted that "section 1.160 . . . applies to retroactive applications of substantive laws governing offenses." Id. Russell concluded that the new statute could be applied retroactively notwithstanding section 1.160 because "application of section 558.016.8 [would] not shorten [the offender's] sentence, nor does it alter the law creating the offense" as it is "a new statutory provision [] [that] does not repeal or amend any previously existing statute." Id. (). With respect to the first aspect of its holding, that is, Russell's reference to whether the new statute shortened the offender's sentence, the Supreme Court observed that "[t]he granting of parole does not reduce the sentence imposed." Id. Instead, application of the statute merely "change[d] the location or circumstances under which the sentence is served." Id. at 870-71.
Woods and the circuit court read this part of Russell's holding, in isolation, to require retroactive application of any repealed or amended statute eliminating probation or parole ineligibility, or creating probation or parole eligibility where it did not previously exist. This reading oversimplifies the entire holding of Russell and ignores Russell's corollary holding that statutes "alter[ing] the law creating the offense" cannot be retroactively applied, even if they address parole eligibility. Id. at 870. Plainly, in Woods's case, the "law" creating his offense (the commission of second-degree drug trafficking by a prior offender) and defining the required punishment for his offense is the collective reading of sections 195.223.3(2), 195.275.1(1), and 195.295.3. The punishment imposed for Woods's offense was mandated by statute—a term of years within that authorized for a class A felony to be served without eligibility for probation or parole. Parole ineligibility was thus a factor in the imposition of sentence within the range authorized for a class A felony. We held exactly that very recently in Fields, 559 S.W.3d at 19,where we found that if "the statute defining the offense precludes parole eligibility for a mandatory period of time, 'it is implicit in the terms of the sentence' and, thus, affects the prosecution." (quoting Warden, Lewisburg Penitentiary v. Marrero, 417 U.S. 653, 658 (1974)). "[B]ecause it [cannot] be seriously argued that sentencing decisions are made without regard to the period of time a defendant must spend in prison before becoming eligible for parole, or that such decisions would not be drastically affected by a substantial change in the proportion of the sentence required to be served before becoming eligible, parole eligibility can be properly viewed as being determined—and deliberately so—by the sentence of the [trial] judge." Warden, Lewisburg Penitentiary, 417 U.S. at 658.
Consequently, Russell is limited to the scenario where a "new" statute creates parole eligibility without altering the law governing an offense.2 This reading of Russell is wholly consistent with the Supreme Court's subsequent precedent, Jones v. Fife, 207 S.W.3d 614 (Mo. banc 2006), and Dudley v. Agneil, 207 S.W.3d 617 (Mo. banc 2006). In both cases, our Supreme Court discussed the rationale of Russell, and concluded that section 1.160 will not bar...
To continue reading
Request your trial