WEST virginia legislature
2022 regular session
Committee Substitute
for
Senate Bill 437
By Senators Trump, Lindsay, Stollings, Clements, and Romano
[Originating in the Committee on the Judiciary; reported on January 24, 2022]
A BILL to amend and reenact §62-12-18 of the Code of West Virginia, 1931, as amended, relating to granting early discharge to parolees after a minimum of one-year on parole; authorizing the Commissioner of the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation or his or her designee to request early discharge of a parolee; and providing that the chairperson of the parole board grant early discharge from parole for a parolee upon review of the request for early discharge rather than the decision being made by a panel of the parole board.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:
ARTICLE 12. PROBATION AND PAROLE.
§62-12-18. Period of parole; discharge.
The period of parole shall
be the maximum of any sentence, less deductions for good conduct and work as
provided by law, for which the paroled inmate, at the time of release, was subject
to imprisonment under his or her definite or indeterminate sentence, as the
case may be: Provided, That at any time after a parolee has been
on parole for a period minimum of one-year from the date of his
or her release, a panel of the board may the Commissioner of the
Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation, or his or her designee, may submit
a request to the chairperson of the parole board for a parolee’s early
discharge from parole along with appropriate documentation as to the parolee’s
good conduct while on parole. The chairperson may, after a review of the
request and submission from the commissioner, or his or her designee, when
in its his or her judgment, the ends of parole have been attained
and the best interests of the state and the parolee will be served thereby
by the early discharge, release the parolee from further supervision and
discharge him or her from parole: Provided, however, That no an
inmate sentenced to serve a life term of imprisonment and released on parole shall
may not be discharged from supervision and parole in a period less than
five years from the date of his or her release on parole.
No A parolee who has violated the terms of his or
her release on parole by confession to, or being convicted of, in any state of
the United States, the District of Columbia, or the territorial possessions of
the United States, the crime of treason, murder, aggravated robbery, first
degree sexual assault, second degree sexual assault, a sexual offense against a
minor, incest, or offenses with the same essential elements if known by other
terms in other jurisdictions shall may not be discharged from
parole. A parolee serving a sentence in any correctional facility of another
state or the United States may, unless incarcerated for one of the above
enumerated crimes, be discharged from parole while so serving his or her
sentence in said a correctional facility or be continued on parole
or returned to West Virginia as a parole violator, in the discretion of the parole
board.