Gary L. Mitchell v. Don Phillips

Summary

The Court affirmed dismissal of Mitchell’s declaratory-judgment petition, holding that his statutory parole ineligibility was part of the sentence imposed for his prior-offender drug-trafficking conviction. Applying the repeal retroactively would alter that final sentence, so the repeal could not make him parole eligible, although the circuit court incorrectly relied on the general savings statute as the reason. The opinion distinguishes decisions involving general parole statutes that did not form part of the applicable offense-penalty provisions.