Case Summary - Ex parte Armando Cortez Arce

The impressive thing about this published opinion is that it's just so concise. It's a real challenge to summarize such a spare opinion, but I'll try.

In April 1987 Armando Arce was convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to ten years in prison. While serving that sentence, he picked up a possession of a deadly weapon in a penal insitution conviction that stacked four years on top of his sexual assault conviction. In 1996 he was released on mandatory supervision. In 1998 his parole was revoked. In 1999 he was released again, but this time he successfully served the remaining period of his release.

Of course, in 1997 the Legislature passed a law that retroactively required Arce to register as a sex offender for his 1987 sexual assault. He was convicted of the offense of failure to register as a sex offender. Arce filed a writ of habeas corpus to argue that he'd already discharged his sexual assault sentence in 1996 when he was released on mandatory supervision. Thus, his sexual assault conviction was done so he was never required to register so he couldn't have been convicted of failure to register as a sex offender.

The Court of Criminal Appeals disagreed. Presiding Judge Keller, writing for the majority explained that the 1997 statute requiring sex offender registration applied retroactively only to those offenses where the defendant was incarcerated or subject to supervision on the effective date of the statute. Unfortunately for Arce, when he was convicted of the sexual assault offense consecutive sentences were added together and treated as one sentence so long as one of the sentences began before September 1987. Remember Arce was convicted of sexual assault in April 1987. What a bite in the ass.

The Court held that Arce had been granted mandatory supervision because both of his stacked sentences had been treated as a single sentence. Had they been treated as separate sentences he would not have gotten out on mandatory supervision in 1996 and he would still have been incarcerated (completing his first ten-year sentence) when the amendment to the sex offender registration statute became effective. Moreover, when his parole was revoked he forfeited all the time he spent on release under the law in effect at the time. So whichever way you looked at it, he still hadn't discharged his sexual assault conviction before the 1997 amendment to the sex offender registration statute became effective.

Judges Price, Johnson, and Cochran concurred without an opinion. Here's a link to the Court of Criminal Appeals case information. Because this was a habeas corpus case, there was no underlying opinion.