Missouri ex rel. Ryan Amorine vs. Honorable Kelly Wayne Parker
Annotate this CaseRyan Amorine sought a writ of prohibition to prevent the trial court from holding a probation revocation hearing after Amorine’s term of probation expired. On May 4, 2011, Amorine pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance and second-degree domestic assault. After accepting his guilty plea, the trial court suspended the imposition of sentence and placed Amorine on supervised probation for five years. The trial court also imposed special conditions upon Amorine, which included community service and paying court costs. In 2013, a probation violation report was filed alleging that Amorine failed to pay his court costs or report any community service hours. Amorine admitted the violation in an attachment to the probation violation report. A second probation violation report was filed in 2014, again alleging Amorine failed to pay his court costs or perform his community service hours. The trial court suspended Amorine’s probation and set the matter for a hearing. At the hearing, Amorine admitted to the violation. The court extended Amorine’s probation for an additional year. In early 2015, the Board of Probation and Parole filed a “Case Summary Report” and a “Field Violation Report.” Both documents informed the court that Amorine had an earned discharge date of July 13, 2015, and with continued supervision compliance, an optimal discharge date of April 1, 2015. Both reports also indicated that the only violation of Amorine’s probation was his failure to report any community service hours he performed and the failure to pay his court costs. However, the Field Violation Report recommended that the trial court revoke Amorine’s probation, place him on a new term of suspended execution of sentence probation, direct him to pay his court costs, and perform community service work. In 2015, the court issued an order suspending Amorine’s probation. The docket sheets reflected that the court continued and rescheduled the probation revocation hearing several times in 2015; both Amorine and the state appeared at every court date. By fall 2015, Amorine, his counsel, and the state all appeared for another probation revocation hearing, but the cause was passed again. The court continued to hold case reviews on December 15, 2015, and February 17, 2016, and scheduled the next case review for April 19, 2016. The Supreme Court concluded that the facts and circumstances in this case demonstrated "unequivocally" that it needed to exercise its discretion to issue a writ of prohibition to remedy an excess of authority. The Supreme Court concluded the trial court exceeded his authority in continuing Amorine’s probation revocation hearing indefinitely after Amorine should have been discharged. Therefore, the preliminary writ of prohibition was made permanent, and the trial court was directed to discharge Amorine from probation.
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