Appeals court affirms release for inmate who represented himself in challenging parole violation outcome

The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed that a state prison inmate who served a lengthy murder sentence was entitled to immediate release after successfully challenging a legal change that paused his release from parole.

Curtis Jones represented himself in arguing that a 2023 parole law amendment could not retroactively pause his parole sentence for a 1995 murder conviction while the defendant served time in a separate case.

Jones’ time on parole was extended due to that pause, and he self-reported a parole violation near the end of that term. The violation put him back in prison to serve the remainder of his murder sentence.

In 1996, an Allen County court sentenced Jones to 65 years for the murder of a man in 1995. While he was incarcerated, a Madison County court convicted him of battery in a different case and sentenced him to four years, served consecutively after his murder conviction, according to court documents.

Jones was discharged to a two-year parole term for his murder sentence in 2022. As he began serving parole, he also started serving his four-year battery sentence, court documents state.

While Jones was serving that time, the state’s parole statute was modified in 2023 to add that time served while in jail or prison does not count toward time served on parole.

The Indiana Department of Correction applied the amendment to Jones’ sentence, pausing his murder sentence parole until he completed his battery sentence, according to court documents.

With the pause, Jones’ expected parole release was delayed to June 2025.

About a month before that release, Jones was arrested for a parole violation after self-reporting unauthorized out-of-state travel.

He was then ordered to serve the balance of his murder sentence after the state pursued revocation of his parole for that conviction.

Shortly after, Jones, representing himself pro se, petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus. He argued that the 2023 amendment to Indiana’s parole law shouldn’t have been applied retroactively to him.

That meant that the parole for his murder sentence shouldn’t have been paused, and he should’ve been released from parole before he traveled out of state in May 2025, according to court documents.

Summary judgment was granted to Jones after the Miami Circuit Court agreed. The trial court ordered his immediate release from prison.

Miami Correctional Facility Warden Brian English appealed to the Indiana Court of Appeals, which also ruled in favor of Jones.

In an opinion written by Judge Stephen Scheele, the appellate court stated that the 2023 amendment didn’t apply to Jones’ case. Instead, the sentencing law that was in effect when Jones was sentenced for murder applies, court documents state.

Judges Melissa May and Rudolph Pyle concurred.

The case is Brian English v. Curtis Jones, 26A-MI-479.