In January 2016, the Department of Corrections changed its policy for sex offenders in prison who are found to have refused or been removed from sex offender treatment. For ten years the policy had been that sex offenders would get earned time up to the point where they were found to have been removed or refused treatment. The sanction would be that the accrual of earned time would stop at that point. Practical effect of this was that if you were kicked out of treatment six months before your discharge, your discharge would have about the same amount of time added to it. If it had been six months before discharge, it would become twelve months.
In January 2016, the Department of Corrections decided that if you refused or were removed from treatment, you would lose all of your earned time back to the point where you started serving your sentence. This meant if you were removed from treatment a month before discharge, you could have four or five years added to your discharge if that is how long you had already been in prison.
We have been challenging that in five cases across the state. The first ruling on this subject, however, happened in a case out of Jasper County where the client did not have an attorney. He persuaded the judge that the change in policy was a violation in ex post facto. The Department of Corrections was ordered to recalculate his discharge under the former method, which means he should immediately get out of prison.
The case is Wilkerson v. State, Jasper County PCCV120369. The state has appealed and has gotten a very temporary stay of the district court order, which has been resisted, and we should find out in the next week or so whether the Supreme Court will require people winning on this issue to remain in prison during the appeal. The appeal case number is 17-0948.