In Lynce v. Mathis, 519 U.S. 433 (1997), the Supreme Court reviewed whether the cancellation of previously awarded provisional credits for certain classes of offenders violated the ex post facto clause of the federal constitution. Id. at 435. The defendant in Lynce pled nolo contendere to a charge of attempted murder and was released from prison early based on his accumulation of various kinds of early release credits, including provisional credits. Id. at 435-36. Shortly after the defendant was released, the Attorney General of Florida issued an opinion that interpreted the 1992 amendment to the provisional credit statute as retroactively cancelling all provisional credits for inmates convicted of attempted murder. Id. at 436, 438-39. The defendant was returned to DOC custody, and he challenged the retroactive cancellation of his provisional credits based on the ex post facto clause. Id. at 436. The State contended that no ex post facto violation occurred because the credits were awarded as part of an administrative process implemented to reduce prison overcrowding. Id. at 439. However, the Supreme Court stated that the subjective motivation of the Legislature in enacting the statute was not the relevant inquiry for an ex post facto analysis. Id. at 442. Rather, courts must ask whether the new statute disadvantaged the defendant by increasing his or her term of incarceration. Id. Because the amendment to the statute resulted in the defendant spending more time in prison, the Supreme Court held that retroactive application of the 1992 amendment violated the ex post facto clause. Id. at 446-47. The Supreme Court indicated that while the inmate in that case had committed his offense before either the Administrative Gain Time or the Provisional Credits statutes had gone into effect, that fact did not matter because the first overcrowding statute (the 1983 Emergency Gain Time statute) was in effect, and he was eligible under that statute. See 944.598(c), Fla. Stat. (1983). The Court concluded that the Emergency Gain Time statute, the Administrative Gain Time statute and the Provisional Credits statute were essentially the same thing, at least for purposes of ex post facto analysis. The Court stated: "The changes in the series of statutes authorizing the award of overcrowding gain-time, do not affect petitioner's core ex post facto claim. Petitioner could have accumulated gain-time under the emergency gain-time provision in much the same manner as he did under the provisional credits statute." Lynce, 519 U.S. at 449, 117 S.Ct. 891. Lynce has changed the nature of the ex post facto inquiry. Now, in addition to an examination of benefits available at the time of the offense, one must also examine subsequent time frames to see if a benefit which was previously possible, yet speculative, has now become more certain. See Lynce v. Mathis, 519 U.S. at 444-45. In Lynce's case, while the award of overcrowding credits was speculative at the time of the offense, after credits were actually awarded and he was released, they were no longer speculative. Id. at 446 (concluding that "unlike in Morales, the actual course of events makes it unnecessary to speculate"). In Lynce, the United States Supreme Court specifically raised the possibility that the cancellation of some Provisional Credits may not have violated the Ex Post Facto Clause. "If the prison population did not exceed 98% of capacity between 1988 and 1992," the Court stated, "and if petitioner received provisional credits during those years, there is force to the argument that the cancellation of that portion of the credits did not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause." Lynce, 519 U.S. at 449. In sum, petitioner Lynce argued that, like regular gain time, prison overcrowding credits could constitute part of an inmate's sentence because a "prisoner's eligibility for reduced imprisonment is a significant factor entering into both the defendant's decision to plea bargain and the judge's calculation of the sentence to be imposed." The State argued that with prison overcrowding credits, the above-mentioned reliance argument was not present because at the time of the plea bargain and sentencing, the petitioner could not have reasonably expected to receive any such credits given that the State could have alleviated the prison overcrowding problem by other means by the time the inmate reached prison. Accordingly, the State argued, unlike regular gain time, the existence or amount of prison overcrowding is always speculative. The United States Supreme Court found this argument unpersuasive in Lynce's case because "the actual course of events [made] it unnecessary to speculate about what might have happened." Lynce, 519 U.S. at 446. Stated another way, in Lynce, no one had to "speculate" about whether the contingency of the relevant prison overcrowding threshold might be reached during Lynce's incarceration so as to allow for such awards because it was reached during Lynce's incarceration, and he was awarded a specific number of Provisional Credits. The Court, therefore, made clear that, for ex post facto purposes, there is no difference between regular gain time and prison overcrowding gain time.