In the case of Harvey F. Garlotte v. Kirk Fordice, Governor of Mississippi in 1994, the U.S Supreme Court ruled that a state cannot retroactively apply changes to parole eligibility rules to prisoners who committed their offenses before those changes were enacted. The petitioner, Harvey F. Garlotte was convicted for crimes he committed prior to July 1, 1982 and sentenced under Mississippi's then-existing law which allowed inmates serving life sentences an opportunity for parole after ten years' imprisonment. However, while his sentence was pending appeal in 1987, Mississippi changed its laws making lifers ineligible for parole if they had been previously convicted of certain felonies - as was true with Garlotte's case. When he applied for parole after serving ten years on his life sentence (as per the old rule), it was denied based on this new legislation change from five years earlier. The court held that applying these new rules violated the Ex Post Facto Clause of Article I Section 10 of the Constitution because it imposed greater punishment than what existed at time when crime occurred by increasing penalty associated with crime itself retrospectively.

In the dissenting opinion for Harvey F. Garlotte v. Kirk Fordice, Justice Stevens argued that Mississippi's habitual offender law was being applied in a way that violated the Ex Post Facto Clause of the U.S. Constitution. He contended that when Garlotte committed his third offense, he did so with knowledge of only one prior conviction and thus could not have been aware he would be subject to enhanced punishment as a three-time offender under state law at the time of his crime. Therefore, applying this increased penalty retroactively constituted an ex post facto application of law according to Justice Stevens' interpretation.