Austin v. State

WATHEN, Chief Justice.

Rodney Austin appeals from a judgment entered in the Superior Court (Lincoln County, Cole, J.) denying him post-conviction relief.1 He argued unsuccessfully before the Superior Court that the State was without authority to reinstate his life sentence to prison once that sentence had been discharged. Although the State generally is not prohibited from reinstating a criminal sentence that has been reduced unlawfully, there are temporal limits imposed by due process and notions of fundamental fairness on corrective actions. Because those limits were not considered by the…