People determined to be "chronic offenders" under Missouri law must spend at least two years in prison before they can be released on parole, a unanimous Missouri Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.
The identical rulings came in two cases the seven-judge court heard just last Wednesday, from two different prison inmates who argued they were entitled to early releases because they had completed an in-prison treatment program successfully.
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."
In last week's hearing, lawyers for James Dean Hodges and Robert H. Mammen told the court that once each man had completed the treatment program, he should have been released immediately, because of that language.
But the state argued last week, and the Supreme Court agreed Tuesday, that the law requiring chronic offenders to stay in prison at least two years was written into a newer law - passed in 2005 - and lawmakers could have tied the two passages together if they had chosen to.
Judge Richard Teitelman wrote for the unanimous court: "By providing that no chronic offender can be released on probation or parole before serving two years imprisonment, section 577.023.6(4) specifically accommodates those situations in which a chronic offender successfully completes the program and is eligible for "probationary release' pursuant to section 217.362.3.
"The statutes are consistent and do not conflict."
Both men had cited two appeals court rulings that seemed to support their early-release arguments.
But, Teitelman wrote that argument "is misplaced because ... neither case ... dealt with the interplay between" the two sections.
The court faced a tight time-frame to issue its opinion.
Hodges is to be released on parole on June 8, after getting credit for serving 20 days in jail before entering the Corrections system.
And Mammen is scheduled for parole on June 24.