Ankeney v. Raemisch

• Decision Date: 16 March 2015
• Docket Number: Supreme Court Case No. 13SA336
• Citation: 344 P.3d 847,2015 CO 14
• Parties: Randal ANKENEY, Petitioner–Appellee v. Rick RAEMISCH, Executive Director of Colorado Department of Corrections, and Rae Timme, Warden of the Fremont Correctional Facility, Respondents–Appellants.
• Court: Colorado Supreme Court

344 P.3d 847

2015 CO 14

Randal ANKENEY, Petitioner–Appellee

v.Rick RAEMISCH, Executive Director of Colorado Department of Corrections, and Rae Timme, Warden of the Fremont Correctional Facility, Respondents–Appellants.

Supreme Court Case No. 13SA336

Supreme Court of Colorado.

March 16, 2015

Attorneys for Petitioner–Appellee: Killmer, Lane & Newman, LLP, David A. Lane, Danielle C. Jefferis, Denver, Colorado

Attorneys for Respondents–Appellants: Cynthia H. Coffman, Attorney General, James X. Quinn, First Assistant Attorney General, Denver, Colorado

En Banc

Opinion

JUSTICE COATS delivered the Opinion of the Court.

¶ 1 The Department of Corrections appealed directly to this court from an order of the district court granting Ankeney habeas corpus relief. Complying with a remand order of the court of appeals from an earlier appeal, the district court interpreted various statutory provisions regarding good time and earned time credit to require Ankeney's release from prison, almost three years before the date calculated by the department. Crediting the time during which Ankeney remained unlawfully incarcerated, according to this interpretation, against his subsequent, statutorily mandated period of parole, the district court also found him to have completed his parole term, and it therefore ordered his immediate release from parole supervision.

¶ 2 Because the lower courts erroneously concluded that for inmates convicted of crimes committed after July 1, 1993, good time credits awardable by section 17–22.5–301, C.R.S. (2014), are to be applied against an inmate's mandatory release date rather than merely to determine his parole eligibility; and because a proper application of the statutory deductions from his sentence to which Ankeney is entitled demonstrates that he has not completed service of his required term of parole, the judgment of the district court is reversed.

I.

¶ 3 Randal Ankeney was convicted of, among other things, class four felony child abuse, for which he was sentenced on January 4, 2008 to a prison term of eight years plus three years of statutorily mandated parole.¹ Accounting for his presentence confinement, the Department of Corrections set his mandatory release date at October 19, 2015. Although he became eligible for parole according to the department's calculations in 2010, he was denied parole by the State Board of Parole.

¶ 4 On January 27, 2012, almost four years before the date upon which the department initially calculated his release from prison to be required, Ankeney filed a pleading in the district court combining a petition for a writ of habeas corpus and a complaint for relief in the nature of mandamus. His pleading sought an order compelling the recalculation of his mandatory release date and, based on that recalculation, his immediate release from the custody of the department. In this pleading Ankeney asserted that he was statutorily entitled to good time and earned time credits beyond the credits allowed by the department and, importantly, that all of the good time and earned time credits to which he claimed entitlement should have been applied not only to determine the date on which he would become eligible to be considered for parole, but also to the calculation of his mandatory release from prison. According to his own calculations, his release from prison to begin serving his three-year term of parole became mandatory on November 19, 2011. The district court agreed with the department's statutory interpretation, denied habeas relief, and dismissed the complaint for relief in the nature of mandamus.

¶ 5 On direct appeal from that order, the intermediate appellate court reversed and remanded for reconsideration of Ankeney's claims for both mandamus and habeas relief.² Relying entirely on prior pronouncements of this court, the appellate court reasoned that under a “discretionary parole scheme,” good and earned time credits merely go to establishing a date for parole eligibility, but under a “mandatory parole scheme,” good and earned time credits actually go toward establishing the date upon which a prisoner must be released on parole. Further finding that Ankeney, because he was serving a sentence for a felony committed after 1993, was subject to a “mandatory parole scheme,” the appellate court concluded that he had a clear right to have good time credits awardable under section 17–22.5–301, C.R.S. (2014), and “education earned time credits” apply toward establishing the appropriate date for his mandatory release to parole.

¶ 6 The department chose not to petition this court for further review of that judgment after determining that Ankeney was entitled to be released to parole notwithstanding the court of appeals' judgment based solely on his accrual of earned time credits pursuant to section 17–22.5–405, C.R.S. (2014), which, unlike Ankeney's claim to good time and education earned time, the department did not dispute as applying toward Ankeney's mandatory release date. See § 17–22.5–402(2), C.R.S. (2014) (providing that the full term of an inmate's sentence shall be reduced by any earned time granted pursuant to section 17–22.5–405 ). Based on Ankeney's earned time credits, the department recalculated his mandatory release date as August 28, 2013 and released him from prison on that date to begin serving his three-year statutorily mandated period of parole.

¶ 7 After permitting Ankeney to amend his pleading to account for the fact that he had since been released to parole, the district court implemented what it understood to be the mandate of the court of appeals and found that Ankeney should have been released from prison to parole on October 28, 2010. Apparently assuming that the period during which he remained unlawfully incarcerated must be credited against his three-year parole period, the district court additionally found that he should have been released from parole no later than October 28, 2013. On November 18, 2013, specifically referencing the court of appeals' remand order, the district court therefore ordered the immediate termination of Ankeney's parole.³

¶ 8 In the absence of initial jurisdiction residing in the court of appeals in matters concerning writs of habeas corpus, see § 13–4–102(1)(e), C.R.S. (2014), the department appealed directly to this court, challenging the district court's determination of the date upon which Ankeney's release from prison was mandated by statute and its resulting order of immediate release.⁴

II.

¶ 9 As we have recounted in greater detail elsewhere, see, e.g., People v. Norton, 63 P.3d 339, 343 (Colo.2003) ; People v. Luther, 58 P.3d 1013, 1015 (Colo.2002) ; Martin v. People, 27 P.3d 846, 864–66 (Colo.2001) ; Thiret v. Kautzky, 792 P.2d 801, 803–05 (Colo.1990), the nature of criminal sentencing in this jurisdiction, including the treatment of parole supervision, has undergone several dramatic changes in philosophy since the late 1970s. Until 1979, criminal courts were required to sentence convicted felons to an indeterminate term with fixed minimum and maximum limits, leaving to the parole board tremendous discretion within that range to determine whether, when, and for how long to release an inmate to parole. In a sentencing scheme of that nature, parole effectively amounted to nothing more than an alternate method of serving a sentence to incarceration. Craig v. People, 986 P.2d 951, 958 n.3 (Colo.1999). In 1979, the legislature enacted what we have elsewhere referred to as a “determinate sentencing system,” in which a felony offender was sentenced to a specific term of years, with an additional statutorily mandated term of parole to be served upon discharge from incarceration.See Thiret, 792 P.2d at 803–04. As we held at the time, in that particular sentencing scheme the parole board lost all discretion concerning whether, when, and for how long to release an offender to parole: He could not be released before he became eligible; he had to be released upon becoming eligible; and his term of parole was set by statute rather than the parole board. See id.

¶ 10 Despite some relatively minor alterations, that sentencing system essentially remained in effect until mid–1985, when the legislature enacted what we have referred to as a “modified determinate sentencing system,” restoring discretion to the parole board to determine whether, when, and for how long to release an offender to parole, within a range extending from the date upon which the offender became eligible for parole until the date upon which he had fully discharged his sentence. See id. ; Renneke v. Kautzky, 782 P.2d 343, 346 (Colo.1989). Finally, in 1993, the legislature fundamentally altered the sentencing scheme once again, this time leaving discretion with the parole board to determine whether to release an offender to parole sometime before his release would have been required but imposing statutorily prescribed periods of parole for most classes of offenders, which parole terms became a separate component of the sentence, to be fully served whether the offender had already completed his full term of incarceration or not. See Norton, 63 P.3d at 343 ; see also § 18–1.3–401(1)(a)(V)(D), C.R.S. (2014) (“When an offender is released by the state board of parole or released because the offender's sentence was discharged pursuant to law, the mandatory period of parole shall be served by such offender.”).

¶ 11 Over a similar period, the legislature enacted substantial, although not always directly corresponding, changes to the statutes prescribing the calculation of both parole eligibility and ultimate discharge dates. For crimes committed before July 1, 1979, the statutory scheme provided for credit against an indeterminate sentence to account for good time, and what we came to refer to as “trusty time” and “meritorious time.” See §§ 17–22.5–201 to –203, C.R.S. (2014); Thiret, 792 P.2d at 804. For crimes committed on or after July 1, 1979, the statutory scheme provided for good...