Cite as: 519 U. S. 433 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
The bulk of our ex post facto jurisprudence has involved claims that a law has inflicted "a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed." Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386, 390 (1798) (emphasis deleted).13 We have
explained that such laws implicate the central concerns of the Ex Post Facto Clause: "the lack of fair notice and governmental restraint when the legislature increases punishment beyond what was prescribed when the crime was consummated." Weaver v. Graham, 450 U. S. 24, 30 (1981).
To fall within the ex post facto prohibition, a law must be retrospective—that is, "it must apply to events occurring before its enactment"—and it "must disadvantage the offender affected by it," id., at 29, by altering the definition of criminal conduct or increasing the punishment for the crime, see Collins v. Youngblood, 497 U. S. 37, 50 (1990). In this case the operation of the 1992 statute to effect the cancellation of overcrowding credits and the consequent reincarceration of petitioner was clearly retrospective. The narrow issue that we must decide is thus whether those consequences disadvantaged petitioner by increasing his punishment.
In arguing that the cancellation of overcrowding credits inflicts greater punishment, petitioner relies primarily on our decision in Weaver v. Graham, in which we considered whether retroactively decreasing the amount of gain-time awarded for an inmate's good behavior violated the Ex Post Facto Clause. In that case the petitioner had pleaded guilty
13 This case falls in the third of the four categories of ex post facto laws described by Justice Chase: "1st. Every law that makes an action done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action. 2d. Every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was, when committed. 3d. Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed. 4th. Every law that alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives less, or different, testimony, than the law required at the time of the commission of the offence, in order to convict the offender." Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall., at 390 (emphasis deleted).
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