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Alabama Supreme Court hears dispute over interplay of Habitual Felony Offender Act and pharmacy-robbery parole rule
Summary
In oral arguments in Ex parte Antonio Spencer, attorneys disputed whether the Habitual Felony Offender Act required trial courts to choose parole eligibility for life sentences or whether the pharmacy-robbery statute bars parole for certain life terms; the court took the case under submission and a justice was recused.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The Alabama Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments in Ex parte Antonio Spencer over whether the Habitual Felony Offender Act (HFOA) left trial judges free to decide whether a life sentence should include parole eligibility or whether the pharmacy-robbery statute bars parole in some life sentences.
Chris Young Peter, counsel for petitioner Antonio Spencer, told the court the trial judge failed to exercise the discretion the HFOA requires when imposing life. "The trial court did not exercise the mandatory discretion that is required under the Habitual Offender Act," Young Peter argued, urging reversal and resentencing.
Young Peter said there was no dispute the HFOA applied but that the pharmacy-robbery penalty statute’s subsection (a) — which sets a 10-to-99-year baseline and states such a sentence is "not parole…
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