LINCOLN, Neb. (Nebraska Examiner) – A district court judge has ruled that a portion of a sentencing reform law passed by the State Legislature last year is unconstitutional.
But the author of the bill, State Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha, said Thursday that there’s still time in the 2024 session to remedy the problem.
The law, Legislative Bill 50, was part of an effort by Wayne to provide more incentives for inmates to engage in rehabilitation programming and perhaps get released on parole earlier. The larger goal was to reduce the state’s chronic prison overcrowding and perhaps avoid the need to build a second new prison, besides one already planned in Lincoln.
LB 50 was a wide-ranging bill that included clauses to allow “geriatric parole” under some circumstances, for inmates 75 years of age or older, and allowed for a “streamlined,” early parole process, granting additional “good time” for well -behaved inmates who participate in rehabilitation programming.
Some of the provisions of LB 50 came out of a review of the state’s prison overcrowding issues led by the nonprofit Crime and Justice Institute. Nebraska’s prisons last year held nearly 1,900 more inmates than they were designed to house.
In October, the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office filed a lawsuit challenging LB 50 arguing that it was unconstitutional in two ways: It allowed the Legislature rather than the State Board of Pardons to commute or reduce a prison sentence, and it applied retroactively to inmates already serving criminal sentences.
In a 20-page ruling issued March 8, Lancaster County District Judge Susan Strong agreed that a portion of the law was unconstitutional, in that it retroactively provided extra “good time” reductions in sentences to parolees.
The ruling did not, however, strike down the provisions of LB 50 for inmates after the bill was passed.
Wayne said that the ruling only applied to one form of parole “good time” and that he is working on a fix that could be adopted before the 2024 legislative session ends on April 18.
Nebraska Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: [email protected]. Follow the Nebraska Examiner on Facebook and Twitter.
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