GREENWOOD, Mississippi — A Mississippi Court of Appeals panel on Monday affirmed the dismissal of a post-conviction motion by a Bolivar County man convicted of child sex crimes, ruling state law bars him from parole eligibility.
Kendrick Quintarius Gates pleaded guilty in Bolivar County Circuit Court in November 2020 to enticing a child to meet for sexual purposes, enticing a child to produce sexual imagery and sexual battery. Court records state Gates was 31 at the time of the offenses and the victim was 12. He was sentenced to 40 years in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections on the most serious count, with 15 years suspended, to run concurrently with sentences on the remaining counts.
Gates filed a motion for post-conviction collateral relief in November 2023, arguing he was being wrongfully denied parole. The circuit court dismissed the motion as filed after a three-year deadline for post-conviction challenges following a guilty plea and addressed the merits, finding state law prohibited parole for his convictions.
The Court of Appeals, finding the timeliness question close, addressed the merits and rejected Gates’s arguments that the prison mailbox rule made his filing timely and that denial of parole violated his rights under the due process and equal protection clauses. Judge Kenny Lawrence, writing for the court, cited Mississippi code prohibiting parole for sex offenses and wrote, “We are required to follow our Legislature’s enactments.” The opinion was joined by Chief Judge Virginia Carlton Barnes and five other judges; three additional judges concurred in part and in the result. The ruling was affirmed Monday.
