Wyoming Lifers Required to Maintain Savings Account
Wyoming Lifers Required to Maintain Savings Account
The Wyoming Supreme Court has held that prisoners serving life sentences must still maintain mandatory savings accounts even though they have "little hope of ever leaving the prison system."
In 1992, Kenneth Dale Nicodemus pled guilty to two counts of first degree murder and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences. In 2010, the Wyoming legislature enacted into law a bill which required prisoners to contribute 10% of their earnings into a personal savings account. The account, which is intended for a prisoner to use upon his release, is capped at $1,000. Once the account reaches that amount, the prisoner is no longer required to have the 10% deducted from his incoming funds. Prisoners sentenced to death or life without the possibility of parole are exempt from the savings account requirement.
Nicodemus filed suit, arguing that his due process rights were being violated because his two consecutive life sentences amounted to a life sentence with no chance of parole, and because his chance for release was remote at best, the purpose of the savings account statute was defeated.
The Wyoming Supreme Court held it was bound by the plain language of the statute, and that because Nicodemus was not sentenced to life without parole, he was required to maintain a savings account. The Court also said that Nicodemus was eligible for executive clemency and, although an unlikely possibility, "we are compelled to conclude…that the legislature intended for the Department of Corrections to maintain a fund for that remote contingency." See: Nicodemus v. Lampert, 2014 WY 135 (Wyo. 2014).
Related legal case
Nicodemus v. Lampert
| Year | 2014 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 2014 WY 135 (Wyo. 2014) |
| Level | State Supreme Court |