The Supreme Court Addresses the Temporal Reach of Virginia’s 2021 Sentencing Reform Legislation and Clarifies When New Statutory Limits on Suspended Sentences Apply to Existing Cases
Johnson-Bey v. Commonwealth, Record No. 230619 (Va. Nov. 27, 2024)
Since the Supreme Court of Virginia’s regular Thursday opinion day falls on Thanksgiving, it issues a published opinion and order today. The opinion, discussed in this post, addresses the temporal reach of Virginia’s 2021 sentencing reform legislation and clarifies when new statutory limits on suspended sentences apply to existing cases.
Facts. In 2003, Stanley Edward Johnson-Bey was convicted of a drug offense and given a suspended sentence subject to two conditions: that he be on “good behavior for an indeterminate period,” and that he successfully submit to the “supervision of a Probation Officer for an indeterminate period.” Over the next 17 years, Johnson-Bey violated his probation five times. Each time, the court revoked and suspended portions of his sentence.
The last revocation was based on a criminal conviction in December 2021 for a crime committed in October 2022 and for a failure to meet with his probation officer in 2021. At a revocation hearing in May 2022, Johnson-Bey argued that a July 1, 2021 amendment to Code § 19.2-306 stripped the circuit court of jurisdiction to enter a revocation order. That statute, as well as Code § 19.2-303.1, were amended and reenacted in 2021 to limit suspended sentences to the statutory maximum period. But the circuit court found that the statute did not operate retroactively, and the Court of Appeals agreed. Johnson-Bey appealed to the Supreme Court.
Issue: Whether the 2021 amendments to Code §§ 19.2-303.1 and 19.2-306 apply to Johnson-Bey’s 2003 suspended sentence and prevent enforcement of his 2022 probation violation.
Holding: No. Those amendments operate prospectively, not retroactively.
Notes: The Supreme Court started with the fundamental principle that retroactive legislation is deeply disfavored, and the presumption against retroactivity is even stronger when a statute is amended and reenacted, versus simply being amended. Code § 1-238 states that a reenacted statute will operate prospectively unless the legislation “expressly provides that such changes are effective retroactively on a specified date.” The 2021 amendments contained no such language.
Johnson-Bey also argued that the court had no jurisdiction to enter the 2022 even if the amendments were applied prospectively because (1) they “withdrew the trial court’s jurisdiction” and (2) even if it could review his case, it would be required to apply the new limitations since it implicates procedural instead of substantive interests. The Supreme Court disagreed with these arguments as well, viewing them as “little more than a retroactivity theory by another name” and finding that Johnson-Bey was still trying to attach “new legal consequences” to past events. If the amendments were applied as Johnson-Bey suggested, they would excise the conditions that he be on good behavior and submit to the supervision of a probation officer from his 2003 sentencing order. In sum, the amendments could not be construed as either purely prospective or procedural to achieve the same result.
Notably, the Court left open the question of whether a revocation order entered after the effective date of the 2021 statutory amendments can carry forward an indeterminate period of suspension decreed in previous sentencing orders.