Delevieleuse v. Manson

• Decision Date: 16 June 1981
• Citation: 184 Conn. 434,439 A.2d 1055
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: Mark M. DELEVIELEUSE v. John R. MANSON, Commissioner of Correction.

Page 1055

439 A.2d 1055

184 Conn. 434

Mark M. DELEVIELEUSE v. John R. MANSON, Commissioner of Correction.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued March 6, 1981.

Decided June 16, 1981.

Jon C. Blue, New Haven, for appellant (plaintiff).

Stephen J. O'Neill, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom, on the brief, was Carl R. Ajello, Atty. Gen., for appellee (defendant).

Before BOGDANSKI, C.J., and PETERS, ARTHUR H. HEALEY, PARSKEY and ARMENTANO, JJ.

BOGDANSKI, Chief Justice.

As a result of court proceedings for seven larceny counts, the plaintiff spent fifty-six days in presentence custody under a mittimus containing one docket number. Each of the seven counts related to one of seven stolen checks. The plaintiff wrongfully took the seven checks on a single occasion and subsequently cashed each one separately, forging the payor's name and keeping the proceeds of each transaction. On August 17, 1979, he pleaded guilty to all seven counts and received a six-month sentence on each count. The court ordered that the first five sentences run consecutively to one another and that the sixth and seventh sentences run concurrently with the first five. Thus, the total effective sentence was thirty months.

For the fifty-six days of presentence custody, the defendant credited the plaintiff with having served fifty-six days of his total effective sentence. In doing so, the defendant followed the advice of the attorney general and allocated jail time credit once for each docket number contained in the mittimus. Complaining that he had not received the full credit required by General Statutes § 18-97, ¹ the plaintiff applied for a writ of habeas corpus. He asserted that General Statutes § 18-97 entitles inmates to credit toward each of their separate sentences for the entire time in presentence custody. The Superior Court interpreted the statute to forbid any multiple credit and rendered judgment for the defendant. From that judgment the plaintiff has appealed.

The plaintiff has finished serving his sentence. Although this is not a class action, the parties have stipulated that the issue before us affects approximately 200 inmates and both parties join in requesting this court to decide the issue.

" 'It is a well-settled general rule that the existence of an actual controversy is an essential requisite to appellate jurisdiction; it is not the province of appellate courts to decide moot questions, disconnected from the granting of actual relief or from the determination of which no practical relief can follow.' Reynolds v. Vroom, 130 Conn. 512, 515, 36 A.2d 22; Phaneuf v. Commissioner of Motor Vehicles, 166 Conn. 449, 452, 352 A.2d 291; Harkins v. Driscoll, 165 Conn. 407, 409, 334 A.2d 901; Roy v. Mulcahy, 161 Conn. 324, 328, 288 A.2d 64; Maltbie, Conn.App.Proc. § 21. In the absence of an actual and existing controversy for us to adjudicate ... the courts of this state may not be used as a vehicle to obtain judicial opinions upon points of law; Reply of the Judges, 33 Conn. 586; and where the question presented is purely academic, we must refuse to entertain the appeal. Young v. Tynan, 148 Conn. 456, 459, 172 A.2d 190." Connecticut Foundry Co. v. International Ladies Garment Workers Union, 177 Conn. 17, 19, 411 A.2d 1 (1979). See Manor Development Corporation v. Conservation Commission, 180 Conn. 692, 696, 433 A.2d 999 (1980).

In Liistro v. Robinson, 170 Conn. 116, 365 A.2d 109 (1976), and Taylor v. Robinson, 171 Conn. 691, 372 A.2d 102 (1976), we reached the merits of claims that inmates were entitled to bail pending the outcome of parole proceedings and that the Uniform Administrative Procedure Act; General Statutes §§ 4-166 through 4-189; applied to parole release hearings, even though the plaintiffs had been granted parole before we considered the appeals. Those cases could afford practical relief because the issues involved (1) were capable of repetition, yet evading review; (2) affected an ongoing program of the state's penal system; and (3) could very well affect the plaintiffs should they be convicted in the future. Taylor v. Robinson, supra, 694-95, 372 A.2d 102. We also noted that (4) the public importance of the questions made it desirable to decide the points. Id., 694, 372 A.2d 102, citing Winnick v. Reilly, 100 Conn. 291, 296, 123 A. 440 (1924). Those four considerations control the present appeal. ²

General Statutes § 18-97 provides: "Any person receiving ... a sentence to a correctional institution or a community correctional center shall receive credits towards ... any portion of such sentence as to which execution is not suspended for any days spent in custody under a mittimus as a result of any court proceeding for the offense or acts for which such ... sentence is imposed." The purpose of § 18-97 "is to give recognition to the period of presentence time served and to permit the prisoner, in effect, to commence serving his sentence from the time he was compelled to remain in custody due to a mittimus." Holmquist v. Manson, 168 Conn. 389, 393-94, 362 A.2d 971 (1975).

The plaintiff asserts that his thirty month effective sentence comprises five consecutive and two concurrent six month sentences and that he is entitled to fifty-six days of presentence custody credit on each sentence which goes to make up his total effective sentence. Each of the plaintiff's crimes was a larceny in the third degree, a class B misdemeanor; see General Statutes § 53a-124; for which the maximum sentence is a term of six months. General Statutes § 53a-36(2). A sentence of thirty months cannot be imposed for any one of the plaintiff's individual crimes. The plaintiff, therefore, received seven distinct and separate "sentences."

In interpreting "the language of a legislative enactment, '(w)e are confined to the intention which is expressed in the words which the legislature has used.' Baston v. Ricci, 174 Conn. 522, 528, 391 A.2d 161 (1978). ' "The intention of the legislature is found not in what it meant to say, but in the meaning of what it did say." Colli v. Real Estate Commission, 169 Conn. 445, 452, 364 A.2d 167 (1975).' " Luttrell v Luttrell, --- Conn. ---, ---, --- A.2d ---- (42 Conn. L.J., No. 48, pp. 3, 4) (1981); see Lukas v. New Haven, --- Conn. ---, ---, --- A.2d ---- (42 Conn. L.J., No. 46, pp. 25, 27) (1981). The legislature's repeated use of the unmodified singular noun "sentence" leads us to conclude that General Statutes § 18-97 requires that the plaintiff receive fifty-six days of jail time credit on each sentence.

We agree with the trial court that nothing in General Statutes § 18-97 supports the defendant's argument that the number of docket numbers assigned to the charges against an inmate controls the computation of jail time credit. The trial court's rule against multiple credit, however, overlooks Mancinone v. Warden, 162 Conn. 430, 294 A.2d 564 (1972), which interpreted General Statutes § 18-97 to compel the award of multiple jail time credit to inmates who were held simultaneously as both parole violators and under a mittimus issued for offenses committed while on parole. Although concurrent sentences had been imposed in Mancinone v. Warden, supra, we did not cite that factor as having any effect on our decision. Furthermore, General Statutes § 18-97 does not distinguish between consecutive and concurrent sentences.

General Statutes § 18-97 contrasts with the statute relating to multiple sentences, § 53a-37, which states: "When multiple sentences of imprisonment are imposed on a person at the same time, or when a person who is subject to any undischarged term of imprisonment imposed at a previous time by a court of this state is sentenced to an additional term of imprisonment, the sentence or sentences imposed by the court shall run either concurrently or consecutively with respect to each other and to the undischarged term or terms in such manner as the court directs at the time of sentence. The court shall state whether the respective maxima and minima shall run concurrently or consecutively with respect to each other, and shall state in conclusion the effective sentence imposed...." A careful reading of these statutes demonstrates that the terms "sentence" and "effective sentence" are technical terms which refer to different things. The use of the unmodified singular noun "sentence" in § 18-97 requires each day of presentence jail time to be credited against each individual sentence received in disposition of the charges on which the inmate was held under a mittimus. If the legislature had meant such presentence jail time to be credited only against the one "effective sentence" that the individual ultimately receives, it would have said so. In fact the legislature has chosen to make the "effective sentence" the standard by which "good time" ³ is computed. General Statutes § 18-7 provides that "(w)hen any prisoner is held under more than one conviction, the several terms of imprisonment imposed thereunder shall be construed as one continuous term for the purpose of estimating the amount of commutation which he may earn under the provisions of this section." The fact that the legislature explicitly chose to make the "effective sentence" the benchmark for "good time" under § 18-7 strengthens the usual inference that it did not omit the word "effective" from § 18-97 by inadvertence. ⁴

General Statutes § 18-97 required that the plaintiff receive a jail time credit of fifty-six days on each of his seven sentences. The credit on his two concurrent sentences applied concurrently. Therefore General Statutes § 18-97 requires the defendant to apply against the plaintiff's total effective sentence a credit of 280 days.

There is error, the judgment is set aside and the case is remanded with direction to credit the plaintiff on each sentence with jail time in accordance with this opinion.

In this opinion PETERS, PARSKEY and ARMENTANO, JJ., concurred.

ARTHUR H. HEALEY, Associate Justice (dissenting).

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