Virginia Supreme Court orders man’s prison release after finding state improperly denied him credits for good behavior

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) – The Supreme Court of Virginia has again ruled against the state and ordered the release of a man who said he earned credits to be let out from prison early but was wrongfully denied by the Department of Corrections.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia filed a petition for the release of Jose Garcia Vasquez, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, arguing he earned enough sentence credits to be released around November 2022 but an “erroneous interpretation” of a law by the corrections department kept him in prison.

Under Virginia’s earned sentence credit program, incarcerated people can shorten their sentences with good behavior and rehabilitation programs. A law passed in 2020 increased how many credits some can earn, with restrictions for certain violent crimes.

But two weeks before it took effect in July 2022, lawmakers approved a budget change from Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) making those with mixed sentences – convictions for violent and nonviolent crimes – ineligible.

Virginia’s attorney general’s office argued that Garcia Vasquez’s conspiracy to commit murder conviction made him ineligible for the expanded sentence credits he said he earned because the General Assembly did not intend for such a “serious and dangerous” crime to be eligible.

The state argued this in a similar case also brought forward by the ACLU of Virginia involving a man named Steven Prease convicted of attempted aggravated murder.

In that case, the state’s Supreme Court ruled that Prease was eligible under the expanded sentence credit system and ordered his release because attempted aggravated murder was not listed in the law’s excluded crimes. The high court ruled the same in Garcia Vasquez’s case.

The Virginia Supreme Court’s opinion ordering Garcia Vasquez’s release states that the justices can’t consider what the General Assembly meant with the law, but what the law means.

“As we said nearly a century ago, ‘[i]t is our duty to interpret the statute as written and when this is done our responsibility ceases.’ We see things no differently today,” Virginia Supreme Court Justice D. Arthur Kelsey wrote in the court’s April 18 opinion.

Garcia Vasquez pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and a count of criminal gang participation. A grand jury initially indicted him for murder, but the trial court accepted a motion to amend it to allege only conspiracy to commit murder, per the court’s order.

The high court said this leads to “a simple exposition of the disputed text” of the expanded earned sentence credits law on if a conspiracy to commit murder falls under “any” violation of first and second-degree murder.

“They are separate crimes with separate elements,” the opinion reads. “Neither is a lesser-included offense of the other.  The jury instructions are different, the trial court’s review of the sufficiency of the evidence is different, and the statutory punishments are different.”

The Virginia Supreme Court’s opinion granted Garcia Vasquez’s petition and ordered that the state release him from the Haynesville Correctional Center.

The ACLU of Virginia’s senior supervising attorney, Vishal Agraharkar, said the organization is “thrilled” for Garcia Vasquez and looking forward to his release.

Agraharkar said that Garcia Vasquez talks with his daughter, a second grader, every day, but that he has never seen her outside of prison. He said the high court needs to issue a mandate with its opinion for Garcia Vasquez’s release.

The office of Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) expressed strong opposition to the decision.

“Criminals who act intending to murder an innocent Virginian shouldn’t be rewarded simply because they failed to complete their crime. Their violent intent is the same as convicted murders, and they should be treated as such,” Miyares’ spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita said in a statement.

“Although the Attorney General is disappointed in the ruling, he will not stop fighting to protect Virginia families and communities,” LaCivita continued.

“Virginia is safer because we give incarcerated people an incentive to rehabilitate themselves,” Agraharkar said in response. “So the department’s interpretation of the law, which the court has now disagreed with twice, does nothing to protect public safety.”

Garcia Vasquez has completed his GED, is enrolled in colleges and works 30 hours a week in a prison job, Agraharkar said.

“It’s the job of the attorney general and the Department of Corrections to apply the law as it is, not invent an interpretation of the law as they wish it to be,” Agraharkar told 8News. “It’s counterproductive to eliminate incentives for self-improvement in prison and the best way to promote public safety is to incentivize good habits.”

The ACLU of Virginia wanted the high court to extend its reasoning in Prease’s case to not just Garcia Vasquez’s but all other “inchoate offenses,” which primarily are those that include an attempt, conspiracy or solicitation of a crime. The Supreme Court of Virginia did not weigh in on this, however.

“As in Prease, we offer no commentary on the policy judgments baked into this statute as a whole or the disputed provision in particular,” the opinion reads. “It is not our place to do so.”

The high court noted that in Prease’s case, it unanimously held that the law allowed for those convicted of attempted aggravated murder to be eligible for expanded sentence credits but “denied such credits to criminals found guilty of solicitation of murder.”

Asked why the court didn’t rule more broadly, Agraharkar said that the justices typically rule on the case before them.

“But the reasoning in this opinion applies to many convictions, not just Mr. Garcia Vasquez’s,”  Agraharkar told 8News in a phone interview Thursday.

Agraharkar added that the ACLU of Virginia expects the ruling to apply to others in similar cases and hopes the corrections department “follows through on that.”

A spokesman for the Department of Corrections said the department was processing 8News’ request for comment for this story but did not provide one by the deadline.

A Democrat-led bill that picked up Republican votes in the House of Delegates would have ensured a person’s earned sentence credits eligibility would include any time incarcerated, and apply retroactively to people confined on July 1, 2025. Gov. Youngkin vetoed the bill.