When the penalty for an offense is prescribed by one law and altered by a subsequent law, the penalty of such second law shall not be inflicted for a breach of the law committed before the second took effect, but the offender shall be punished under the law in force when the offense was committed.
A.R.S. § 1-246
Penalty altered by subsequent law; effect
Applied in 7 court decisions — leading case State v. Rodriguez (1987)
Most recently applied in 70 Arizona Cases Digest 10 - State v. Wagner (May 2022)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Arizona State Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Arizona statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.