In California Dept. of Corrections v. Morales, 514 U.S. 499 (1995), a California law allowed the parole board, after holding an initial hearing, to defer subsequent parole suitability hearings up to three years for inmates convicted of multiple homicides, provided it found parole was not reasonably likely to occur sooner. (California Dept. of Corrections v. Morales, supra, 514 U.S. 499, 503.) Finding no retroactive increase in punishment, the high court emphasized that there had been no change in the applicable indeterminate term, in the formula for earning sentence reduction credits, or in the standards for determining either the initial date of parole eligibility or the prisoner's suitability for parole. (Id. at p. 507.) . . . At bottom, no ex post facto violation occurred because the risk of longer confinement was 'speculative and attenuated' (id. at p. 509), and because the prisoner's release date was essentially 'unaffected' by the postcrime change. (Id. at p. 513) In California Dept. of Corrections v. Morales, defendant was convicted of murder on two occasions. Under the law in place when defendant committed the second murder, he would have been entitled to parole hearings on an annual basis. However, the law was amended and the parole board was authorized to defer subsequent hearings for up to 3 years if the prisoner had been convicted of more than one instance of taking a life and the board "'finds that it is not reasonable to expect that parole would be granted at a hearing during the following years and states the bases for the finding.'" 514 U.S. at 503 (quoting Cal. Penal Code 3041.5(b)(2) West 1982). Morales argued this amendment constituted an ex post facto law in violation of the Constitution. 514 U.S. at 504. The United States Supreme Court held this statute did not increase the punishment for criminal acts by allowing for a longer period of time between parole hearings. 514 U.S. at 505. The Court stated: "The amendment creates only the most speculative and attenuated possibility of producing the prohibited effect of increasing the measure of punishment for covered crimes, and such conjectural effects are insufficient under any threshold we might establish under the Ex Post Facto Clause." 514 U.S. at 509. The Court held the statute did not violate the clause because: (1) it only applied to a small class of prisoners for whom the likelihood of parole was remote; (2) it did not affect the prisoner's initial parole eligibility determination, and it only affected subsequent parole hearings; (3) the board retained the authority to tailor the frequency of the hearings and could allow an expedited hearing if circumstances warranted. 514 U.S. at 510-11. In California Dep't of Corrections v. Morales, the U.S. Supreme Court held that application of a statutory amendment decreasing the frequency of parole suitability hearings under certain circumstances to prisoners convicted before the amendment did not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. In Morales, the statute at issue initially entitled a prisoner to subsequent suitability hearings on an annual basis after initially being found unsuitable for parole. The statute was amended to authorize the parole board to defer subsequent suitability hearings for up to three years if the prisoner has been convicted of "more than one offense which involves the taking of a life" and if the Board of Prison Terms "finds that it is not reasonable to expect that parole would be granted at a hearing during the following years and states the bases for the finding." (Morales, 514 U.S. at 503.) The prisoner in Morales argued that the amended statute as applied to him constituted an ex post facto law in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The prisoner argued that the statute as amended stiffened the standard of punishment for a crime already committed and that any legislative change that has any conceivable risk of affecting a prisoner's punishment is forbidden by the Ex Post Facto Clause. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the prisoner's arguments. The U.S. Supreme Court in Morales stated that the amendment did not lengthen a prisoner's sentence, did not change the substantive formula for securing any reductions to sentence ranges, did not affect the standards for fixing a prisoner's initial date of parole eligibility, and did not affect the standards for determining a prisoner's suitability for parole and setting a release date. The Court stated that the amendment only "introduced the possibility that after the initial parole hearing, the Board of Prison Terms would not have to hold another hearing the very next year, or the year after that, if it found no reasonable probability that the prisoner would be deemed suitable for parole in the interim period." 514 U.S. at 507. The Court noted that the focus of the amendment was "merely '"to relieve the Board of Prison Terms from the costly and time-consuming responsibility of scheduling parole hearings"' for prisoners who have no reasonable chance of being released." Id. The Court also noted that the amendment "simply 'alters the method to be followed' in fixing a parole release date under identical substantive standards." 514 U.S. at 508. The Court specifically rejected the prisoner's argument that the Ex Post Facto Clause forbids any legislative change that has any conceivable risk of affecting a prisoner's punishment.