Lawyers for two prison inmates told the Missouri Supreme Court this week their clients should be released from prison now that they successfully completed a state-run one-year treatment program - even though a different law says they must stay in prison at least two years.
Lawmakers in 1994 required the state Corrections department to create and operate "an intensive long-term program for the treatment of chronic nonviolent offenders with serious substance abuse addictions" who haven't been convicted of a dangerous felony.
The "institutional drug or alcohol treatment" program is to be at least 12 months long, but not longer than 24 months.
And that law - modified in 1998 and 2003 - says "execution of the offender's term of incarceration shall be suspended pending completion of said program."
Assistant Attorney General Catherine Coulter told the judges the department has a one-size fits-all program that is only 12 months long.
But lawmakers more recently passed a mandate that a "chronic offender" can't be eligible for parole or probation until a minimum of two years imprisonment has been served.
That law has several different definitions for "chronic offender," including someone "who has pleaded guilty to or has been found guilty of four or more intoxication-related traffic offenses" or who has "pleaded guilty to or has been found guilty of two or more intoxication-related traffic offenses and, in addition," any combination of involuntary manslaughter, second-degree murder (where the underlying felony is an intoxication-related traffic offense), second-degree assault or second-degree assault of a law enforcement officer.
This week, lawyers for James Dean Hodges and Robert H. Mammen told the court once each man had completed the treatment program, he should have been released immediately.
"The purpose of the long-term treatment statute is not only to teach chronic offenders the principles of recovery, but to reward them with the opportunity to apply those principles ... in civilized society, outside the prison walls," Columbia attorney Bradley Lockenvitz - a former Osage County prosecutor - told the court in Hodges' case.
"Regardless of whether these statutes at issue are read in harmony or in conflict, the purpose of the long-term treatment statute is undone if the offender is not released on probation at the conclusion of treatment - if he, otherwise, qualifies for probation," Lockenvitz said.
And Public Defender Samuel Buffaloe, representing Mammen, told the high court a case already decided by an appeals court said "when a defendant is sentenced to a long-term treatment program and successfully completes that program, the circuit court's authority is expressly limited to two alternative actions. The circuit court either must release the defendant on probation or execute the defendant's sentence, if the court determines that probation is not appropriate.
"And the state has shown no language to contradict that."
But, Coulter argued the Corrections department's understanding is "only chronic DWI offenders have this two-year mandatory minimum they must serve."
She reminded the court being labeled as a "chronic offender" is "the most serious category of intoxicated-related offenders that we have, currently. (They) have had four, or more, traffic violations" and should not "get a windfall because the court is wanting them to receive treatment."
Coulter also noted "long-term treatment really is a sentencing option that the court has available (for) our chronic offenders ... continuing to drink and drive and get themselves in these situations.
"No other program that I'm aware of would allow chronic DWI offenders to have the possibility of probation," she added. "Yes, that probation may not happen for two years, but that's because the General Assembly has said they have to serve two years imprisonment."