The other state which followed the minority rule now advanced by this court is Tennessee. State ex rel. Brinkley v. Wright, 193 Tenn. 26, 241 S.W.2d 859 (1951); Hensley v. State, 166 Tenn. 551, 64 S.W.2d 13 (1933); Landers v. State, 157 Tenn. 648, 11 S.W.2d 968 (1928). The determinate construction of an indeterminate sentencing status was likewise not acceptable to the Tennessee legislature, and the law has since been changed so that a sentencing differential between the maximum and minimum is required.

We in this State have over the years held that under such circumstances such a verdict is not void because the jury in using the word "minimum" after they find him guilty arrived at the minimum as fixed by the statute. This Court in Hensley v. State, 166 Tenn. 551, 553, 64 S.W.2d 13, 14, wherein the defendant was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and the judy fixed his punishment at not less than one year, nor more than two years "in the penitentiary" held that the minimum punishment for this offense by statute was two years and rejected the insistence that the judgment on this verdict was invalid but corrected the judgment "so as to fix the punishment, both maximum and minimum, at two years in the penitentiary." This same construction was put on our indeterminate sentence statute in Landers v. State, 157 Tenn. 648, 11 S.W.2d 868.

Then, of course, after the minimum period is served (less "good time") the defendant may be considered for parole. Once the jury has fixed the maximum punishment, any attempt by the jury to fix the minimum period is treated as mere surplusage, even though the minimum thus fixed is below the statutory minimum for the crime involved. Hensley v. State, 166 Tenn. 551, 64 S.W.2d 13. There have been over the years various verdicts of the kind in unreported cases wherein when the jury fixes the maximum it has been held that this is all that is required. The jury may fix the maximum term at the minimum as provided by statute.

Moreover, this Court seems heretofore to have so construed our indeterminate sentence statute, although the question here made was not expressly made in the two cases to which reference will now be made. In Hensley v. State, 166 Tenn. 551, 553, 64 S.W.2d 13, 14, defendant was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and the jury fixed his punishment at "not less than one year, nor more than two years" in the penitentiary. The minimum punishment for voluntary manslaughter is two years, Code Section 10775.

Code, section 11766. It is the duty of the jury to fix only the maximum punishment, and where this is done, the sentence becomes an indeterminate sentence, and this court will disclose the minimum term. Hensley v. State, 166 Tenn. 551, 64 S.W.2d 13; Pope v. State, 149 Tenn. 176, 258 S.W. 775. A prisoner does not have the absolute right to parole upon the expiration of the minimum sentence fixed by statute for the offense for which he stands convicted.