Larry Gene Welch will remain an inmate at Missouri's Tipton Correctional Center, Cole County Circuit Judge Dan Green told lawyers Tuesday afternoon.
Green had scheduled a 1:30 p.m. hearing on Welch's motion to be released from prison early, because of a 2017 change in Missouri's criminal code.
Welch, now 66, is serving two 15-year sentences for involuntary manslaughter, following his guilty pleas for a 2007 collision that killed Jean Olsen, 45, and her son, Tobias, 17.
Olsen's husband, Eric Olsen, then 41, and daughter, Johanna, then 14, suffered serious injuries in the crash, which occurred shortly before noon on a clear Sunday morning on Route C in Russellville.
Welch also was sentenced to two five-year terms for assault - which were to run consecutively to the 15-year sentences, for a total of 20 years.
When he was sentenced by then-Circuit Judge Richard Callahan, state law required Welch serve at least 85 percent of those sentences.
But Welch's attorney, Jay Anielak - a former assistant prosecuting attorney - asked Green in July to release Welch now, because the new version of the law no longer includes that 85-percent minimum.
"The current law in the state of Missouri requires the Court to order (the Corrections Department) to retroactively allow (Welch) to be considered for parole," Anielak wrote.
But, Assistant Attorney General Andrew J. Crane countered, "Missouri law specifically precludes his argument because (state law says) 'no offense committed and no penalty or forfeiture incurred shall be affected by the (subsequent) repeal or amendment' of the statutory provision" in effect at the time of the offense.
Green met with the attorneys in his chambers Tuesday afternoon, then made a docket entry that read: "Parties argue motions for judgment on the pleadings; case taken under advisement pending mandate in Fields decision."
The Missouri Appeals Court's Western District in Kansas City ruled Aug. 28 on the Fields case.
It also originated from Green's court, where inmate Christopher Fields argued the 2017 criminal code changes meant he didn't have to serve 85 percent of the nine-year sentence he'd received for involuntary manslaughter - for killing a passenger in a vehicle his car hit on Dec. 30, 2012.
Green rejected that request, ruling last Feb. 26 that state law required Fields' punishment to be "determined by the law in effect at the time of the crime."
The appeals court ruling upheld that decision in a 10-page opinion, with Judge Karen King Mitchell writing for the court's three-judge panel: "Numerous decisions indicate that a mandatory-minimum-prison-term provision that bars parole eligibility for a definite period of time - like the one at issue here - is part of the penalty or punishment for that offense."
In Fields' case, the appeals court noted, the prosecutor agreed to a plea deal where other charges - including leaving the scene of the accident - were dropped in exchange for Fields' accepting a prison sentence.
Mitchell wrote: "Had the prosecutor believed that Fields might serve only one-third of the sentence imposed (as required by the general parole eligibility statute), rather than 85 percent (as required by the version of state law in effect at the time of Fields's offenses), the prosecutor may very well have refused to dismiss any charges or may have argued for a sentence closer to 15 years (the maximum available for a class B felony)."