Johnson v. State

In 1984, Ronnie Drew Johnson pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, aggravated robbery, theft of property, and felon in possession of a firearm. In another case, he pleaded guilty to robbery. His aggregate sentence for all of these offenses is forty years in the Department of Correction. Johnson had also been convicted of aggravated robbery in 1977.

In 1998, Johnson filed a petition for declaratory judgment and a writ of mandamus, alleging that the Department of Correction was using an invalid prior conviction to compute his parole eligibility. Specifically, Johnson alleged that his 1977…