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1972 Arkansas Attorney General Reports and Opinions 1 (1972)

handle is hein.sag/sagar0040 and id is 1 raw text is: OPICE OLV 00 00I January 3, 1972 Ronorable William I. Prewett Attorney at Law 423 North Washington El Dorado, Arkansas 71730 Dear Mr. Prewett: .This is in response to.your letter whereby you submitted the fllowing: The State Pardon and Paroles Board is faced with a statutory interpretation involving first offenders under the age of 21. As you are aware, Act 50 of the first Special Session of 1968, as amended by Acts 48 and 94 of the.Regular Session of 1969, provides for parole at any time for -first offenders under the age of 21. A question has been raised regarding a youthful first offender who was sentenced prior to the effective date of Act 50. The question on which we seek a legal opinion is as follows: Can a person under the age of 21, and who is a first offender, and who was sentenced prior to the effective'date'of Act 50 be paroledat any time? As Originally passed by the Legislature in 1968, Act 50 provided that individuals serving a term of years who wete sentenced before the ~6ffe'dtive'dit~dof the 7d CAbtiwd'I bfecomeeligible . . for parole after -having served 1/3 of the time.to which such sentence may have been commuted, and further provided that individuals sentenced after the effective date of the Act (March 1, 1968) were eligible for parole at any time unless there was established a minimum time to be served. This legis- lation made no distinction ds to ago or prior conviction. In an apparent reaction to what the Legislature considered as .too lenient a parole policy, Act 48 of 1969 placed the section in substantially its present form, requiring that 1/3 of the sentence, less good time allowances or commutation allowances, IAust be served before any person becomes eligible for parole.