ARKANSAS SUPREME COURT

NOT DESIGNATED FOR PUBLICATION

PER CURIAM

May 17, 2001

BENJAMIN WILLIAMS

Appellant

v.

LARRY NORRIS, Director,

Arkansas Department of Correction

Appellee

00-37

APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF LEE COUNTY, NO. CIV-97-80, HONORABLE L. T. SIMES II, JUDGE

AFFIRMED

The appellant, Benjamin Williams, appeals from the Lee County Circuit Court's denial of his petition for a writ of mandamus and declaratory relief. Appellant argues that the Arkansas Department of Correction should be ordered to calculate his parole-eligibility date in the same manner as before the issuance of an Attorney General's Opinion in December of 1993. The circuit court, finding that the computation of appellant's parole-eligibility date after the Attorney General's opinion was consistent with the law, granted summary judgment to the appellee and denied the petition. We affirm.

Attorney General opinion No. 93-349 stated that the Department of Correction had erroneously calculated the parole-eligibility date of inmates with consecutive sentences and provided an explanation of the proper manner to calculate parole eligibility based on Arkansas Code Annotated §§ 16-93-601-16-93-609 (Repl. 1997). Appellant was one of the inmates for whom the Department of Correction had issued an erroneous parole-eligibility date of 1998. After receivingthe Attorney General's opinion, the Department of Correction recalculated appellant's parole-eligibility date as 2005.

Appellant contended below that application of the doctrines of waiver, estoppel, and laches precluded the recalculation of his parole-eligibility date, and that the recalculation constituted an Ex Post Facto violation. Appellant disputes the State's assertion that our decision in Morris v. State, 333 Ark. 466, 970 S.W.2d 210 (1998), controls his case. In doing so, he has abandoned each of the arguments he raised below except for one; appellant's surviving argument is that application of the doctrine of equitable estoppel precludes the Department of Correction from recalculating his parole-eligibility date to his detriment. We disagree.

Appellant is correct that the application of the doctrine of estoppel was not at issue in Morris. We agree with the State, however, that our decision in Morris is nonetheless controlling. As we stated in Morris, the determination of parole eligibility is the prerogative of the Department of Correction. Id. at 468, 970 S.W.2d 211. When the Department of Correction recomputes an erroneously calculated parole-eligibility date for a defendant serving multiple sentences, there is no Ex Post Facto violation unless the recomputation was pursuant to legislation passed after the defendant's original sentence. Id. (citing Gilmer v. Massey, 303 Ark. 634, 799 S.W.2d 526 (1990)). The Eighth Circuit has held that the doctrine of laches does not apply in a situation where correction officials discover and quickly correct an error in the computation of a defendant's parole eligibility. Id. (citing Cox v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, 643 F.2d 534 (8^th Cir. 1981)). And, we concluded in Morris that the Department of Correction was not precluded from correctly calculating a parole-eligibility date through an application of the waiver doctrine. Id.

Estoppel, like waiver and laches, is an equitable remedy that provides no basis for the writ of mandamus and declaratory relief sought by appellant. Appellant has not lost the opportunity tobe released from parole, rather, his parole-eligibility date has been corrected to conform with a proper interpretation of the law. Therefore, we affirm the circuit court's conclusion that appellant is not entitled to have his parole-eligibility date calculated incorrectly, even if recalculation of the date increases the amount of time appellant must serve before becoming eligible for parole.

Affirmed.