Zack Cozar v. State of Mississippi

Summary

The Supreme Court of Mississippi held that sentencing Zachary Cozart under an amended manslaughter statute that increased the potential sentence from twenty to thirty years violated the Ex Post Facto Clause. The court concluded that the erroneous sentence constituted plain error affecting substantial rights, reversed the sentence, and remanded for resentencing under the statute in effect when the offense occurred.

Holdings

1. Cozart's failure to object did not preclude appellate review because the sentence imposed under the later-enacted statute was illegal, implicated a fundamental right, and was not shown to have been a knowingly chosen ameliorative sentencing option.
2. Sentencing Cozart to thirty years under the amended version of Mississippi Code Section 97-3-25 violated the Ex Post Facto Clause because the amendment increased the maximum punishment for conduct committed when the prior statute authorized no more than twenty years.
3. The sentencing error was plain error because it was an obvious legal error that affected Cozart's substantial rights and seriously affected the fairness and integrity of the judicial proceedings.

Questions Presented

1. Whether imposing a thirty-year sentence under the 2013 amended manslaughter statute for an offense committed in 2010 violated the federal and state Ex Post Facto Clauses.
2. Whether Cozart's failure to object to the manslaughter instruction or sentence waived review of the sentencing error.
3. Whether the sentencing error constituted plain error affecting Cozart's substantial and fundamental rights.

Disposition

reversed_and_remanded