Hillaire Sears has gone from a murder convict facing a lifetime sentence in 2002, to a parolee who had been convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter for the killing of Rodwell Neal in 2001.
Now, 18 years later, Sears is back in court fighting for his freedom after he says his parole was arbitrarily revoked by the prison. His attorney Leslie Mendez has taken up his constitutional motion which she argued today in the Supreme Court before Justice Michelle Arana. Mendez explained the constitutional motion when arguments finished today:
Leslie Mendez - Attorney, Hilaire Sears
"The constitutional claim really challenges certain actions by prison guards in detaining him at the prison while he was working at the prison on parole. So, they detained him without an official decision being made to revoke his parole. This happened for 55 days. And then they revoked his parole. The other part of the claim is also challenging constitutionally the decision to revoke his parole. Basically, what we're saying the procedural fairness mandated that before you revoke his parole, you were supposed to give him an opportunity be heard before revoking his parole and this was never done. We also say that the cases the jurisprudence show that when you are revoking parole or when you are granting parole, the main consideration is whether or not he poses a threat to public safety, this was not done. What happened was this was a mechanical approach to the breach of the condition of the parole. What term of the parole did he violate - I believe it was a condition that he not use drugs, and in this case there was a test that showed that to public safety."
Justice Arana has reserved judgement.
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