Jones v. State, 88-167

• Decision Date: 21 March 1989
• Docket Number: No. 88-167,88-167
• Parties: Charles Boyd JONES, Appellant (Defendant), v. The STATE of Wyoming, Appellee (Plaintiff).
• Court: Wyoming Supreme Court

Page 368

771 P.2d 368

Charles Boyd JONES, Appellant (Defendant), v. The STATE of Wyoming, Appellee (Plaintiff).

No. 88-167.

Supreme Court of Wyoming.

March 21, 1989.

Leonard D. Munker, State Public Defender, Steven E. Weerts, Senior Asst. Public Defender, and Michael J. French, Student Intern, WPDP, for appellant.

Joseph B. Meyer, Atty. Gen., John W. Renneisen, Deputy Atty. Gen., Karen A. Byrne, Senior Asst. Atty. Gen., and Paul S. Rehurek, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.

Before CARDINE, C.J., and THOMAS, URBIGKIT, MACY and GOLDEN, JJ.

URBIGKIT, Justice.

Appellant Charles Boyd Jones, in two stated issues, presents the propriety of a sentence which effectively gave him a minimum sentence that is longer than his maximum sentence as to whether:

[A] sentencing judge is constitutionally required to give an indigent defendant full credit against both his minimum and maximum sentences for time served in presentence confinement.

[T]he district court erred in concluding that it lacked discretion to credit Appellant's minimum sentence with the time spent in presentencing incarceration.

The State, as appellee, added a third issue asking if:

[T]he sentencing court lacked jurisdiction to credit appellant's sentence with time in excess of that actually spent in presentence confinement?

On July 22, 1987, a jury found appellant guilty of aggravated assault, an offense which occurred on October 8, 1986. Appellant was then additionally adjudged to be a habitual criminal under W.S. 6-10-201(b)(i). ¹ Accordingly, on May 5, 1988, the trial court sentenced appellant to the Wyoming State Penitentiary for a term of ten to eleven years and seven months, fined him $1,000, required reimbursement for the public defender attorney's fee, and imposed the $50 victim's compensation surcharge. ²

Noting that appellant, due to his indigence, had been unable to post bond and had therefore remained incarcerated for one year, four months and ten days prior to sentence imposition, the trial court did credit served time against the sentence term. However, the trial court struggled with uncertainty of whether, in light of the statutorily mandated sentencing range for habitual criminals, it could apply such credits to the minimum term of ten years. Thus, the trial court doubled the credit for time served prior to sentencing and applied that credit of thirty-three months against the maximum term. The final result was an incongruous sentence with a minimum term of ten years and a maximum term of eight years and ten months.

W.S. 7-13-201 ³ pertains to indeterminate sentencing and provides:

Except where a term of life is required by law, or as otherwise provided by W.S. 7-13-101, when a person is sentenced for the commission of a felony, the court imposing the sentence shall not fix a definite term of imprisonment but shall establish a maximum and minimum term within the limits authorized for the statute violated. The maximum term shall not be greater than the maximum provided by law for the statute violated, and the minimum term shall not be less than the minimum provided by law for the statute violated, nor greater than ninety Initially, the minimum and maximum terms of the imposed sentence did not exceed the limits required by Wyoming's habitual criminal statute; however, it is obvious that the ten year minimum sentence is greater than ninety percent of the maximum sentence of eight years and ten months. The trial court, by effectively redesignating the actual minimum term as the maximum term, has impermissibly violated the substantial public policy underlying the state's indeterminate sentencing statute.

percent (90%) of the maximum term imposed. [Emphasis added.]

The legislature added the "ninety percent clause" to the final sentence of W.S. 7-13-201 in response to decisions of this court in Brown v. State, 736 P.2d 1110 (Wyo.1987) and Duffy v. State, 730 P.2d 754 (Wyo.1986). In both of those cases, the trial courts had imposed sentences with negligible differences between the minimum and maximum terms. Such manipulation of the statute as it existed prior to amendment deprived the parole authorities of a valuable tool with which to perform the duties designated to them by the legislature. By requiring a more substantial difference between the minimum and maximum terms of a sentence, the legislature returned to the parole authorities the ability to encourage the reformation of prisoners and the ability to more effectively manage the size of the prison population through the award of good time and special good time credits against sentences. Essentially, the legislature sought to prevent a situation of an exemplary behaved prisoner serving close to his maximum sentence before he was eligible for parole. ⁴ Duffy, 730 P.2d at 761-83 (Urbigkit, J. dissenting).

TIME OFF THE MINIMUM SENTENCE

Appellant argues that the trial court is required by his indigence and the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution to credit his mandatory minimum sentence with the presentence time served. We have repeatedly held that an indigent only has a constitutional right to have the maximum term of his sentence reduced by presentence time served. This reduction mandatorily occurs when the sum of presentence incarceration and post-sentence imprisonment exceeds the maximum term allowable by the statute under which the individual was sentenced. Heier v. State, 727 P.2d 707, 709-10 (Wyo.1986); Munden v. State, 698 P.2d 621, 627 (Wyo.1985); Jones v. State, 602 P.2d 378 (Wyo.1979).

Appellant points out other courts have held that the denial of credit for presentence time served subjects an indigent to a different and more severe treatment than that suffered by a non-indigent, thereby violating his constitutional right to equal protection under the law. See Johnson v. Prast, 548 F.2d 699, 702 (7th Cir.1977); King v. Wyrick, 516 F.2d 321, 323 (8th Cir.1975); State v. Phelan, 100 Wash.2d 508, 671 P.2d 1212, 1215 (1983), applying intermediate level of scrutiny to denial of credit against discretionary minimum terms; Martin v. Leverette, 161 W.Va. 547, 244 S.E.2d 39, 42 (1978), anchoring the right to the Equal Protection Clause of the West Virginia Constitution; and Annotation, Right to Credit for Time Spent in Custody Prior to Trial or Sentence, 77 A.L.R.3d 182 (1977). In dicta, we have implicitly expressed some agreement with this view. ⁵

Trial courts have a broad discretion to determine the appropriate length and conditions of imprisonment in a variety of situations. We recognize that within the statutory limits, trial courts may give consideration to a wide range of factors relevant to their sentencing decisions, and that few of those factors are capable of precise quantification when translated into the final imposition of the term for incarceration. This court refrains from disturbing sentencing decisions absent a clear abuse of discretion. Munden, 698 P.2d at 626; Jones, 602 P.2d at 380; Williams v. Illinois, 399 U.S. 235, 241-43, 90 S.Ct. 2018, 2022-23, 26 L.Ed.2d 586 (1970).

When an indigent is incarcerated for a period, including the presentence time, which exceeds the maximum penalty for his offense, it is unquestionable that he has been punished more severely than one who could afford to obtain presentence release. The sentencing court in such an instance, by violating a defendant's right to equal protection, has clearly abused its discretion. Matthews v. Dees, 579 F.2d 929, 931 (5th Cir.1978). However, when a sentence is within the statutory range, it is difficult to say which factors formed the basis for the sentencing court's decision to determine whether credit was actually given for time served.

There is division among the appellate courts that have encountered this difficulty as to whether they should presume that sentencing courts adhered to their constitutional duties and granted such credit. Godbold v. Wilson, 518 F.Supp. 1265, 1267 n. 5 (D.Colo.1981). Appellant urges us to follow the lead of those courts who refuse to grant that presumption on review. ⁶ We find no mandated advantage in selection of this application. For example, the court in Godbold, pursuant to a federal habeas corpus petition, declared that sentencing courts would be required to explicitly credit defendants with presentence time served when that incarceration occurred solely because of indigence. Absent an express reference to the credit in the sentencing orders, that court indicated it would find such sentences unconstitutional. That court freely admitted, however, that the sentencing court could, through the legitimate exercise of its discretionary power, merely increase sentences so as to avoid the intended effect of the decision. Id. at 1269.

We anticipate that trial courts adhere to constitutionally limiting criteria and apply the presumption of compliance on an appeal challenging length of sentence. In constitutional perspective, the sentencing court was required separately to credit presentence time served to the minimum term of appellant's sentence. This is the mandatory, not discretional issue of confinement credit application.

JURISDICTION TO CREDIT AGAINST MINIMUM SENTENCE

The record suggests that the trial court wished to fashion a sentence which would reduce the length of appellant's incarceration. Uncertain as to whether it had authority to credit presentence time served against a mandatory minimum sentence, the trial court attempted to avoid this jurisdictional problem by emplacing the ungainly sentence now presented. In order that the trial court may exercise the full range of its sentencing authority on remand, we clarify.

This court has frequently held that, although it is not constitutionally required that the minimum term of a sentence be explicitly reduced for presentence incarceration, the power to do so dwells firmly within the discretion of the trial court. Harley v. State, 737 P.2d 750, 756 (Wyo.1987); Heier, 727 P.2d at 710....