Marsh v. Henderson
| Decision Date | 26 January 1968 |
| Citation | 424 S.W.2d 193,221 Tenn. 42,25 McCanless 42 |
| Parties | , 221 Tenn. 42 Bobby MARSH v. C. Murray HENDERSON, Warden Tennessee State Penitentiary. |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
Walter Baker Harris, Jackson, for plaintiff in error.
George F. McCanless, Atty. Gen., and Robert H. Roberts, Asst. Atty. Gen., Nashville, for the State.
OPINION
This is a habeas corpus petition, but it is unlike any other that we have had before this Court. After having an evidentiary hearing on this petition it was denied and an appeal has been seasonably perfected.
On April 12, 1954, the petitioner, Marsh, was arrested and charged with murder in the first degree in Madison County. In the early part of May of that year on a plea of present insanity he was committed to the Western State Hospital for hospitalization and was found insane to the extent that he could not distinguish right from wrong. He was returned to the Criminal Court of Madison County in July, 1954, and tried by a jury on the question of present insanity. The jury found him insane and incapable of advising his counsel and he was thereupon committed to the maximum security unit of Central State Hospital. On November 2, 1964, about ten years later, he was returned from Central State Hospital and on the recommendation of the District Attorney General after reading the reports from Central State the Court sent him to Western State Hospital again for a thirty-day period of hospitalization. Following this hospitalization he was returned to Central State until September 9, 1965, at which time he appeared before the Criminal Court of Madison County and entered a plea of guilty to murder in the second degree and was given a sentence of not more than twenty (20) years by the jury, the minimum sentence being ten (10) years. During this period of time the defendant was confined for a total period of eleven (11) years and five (5) months, practically all of which was in a State Mental Institution for the Criminally Insane.
After he plead guilty and was sentenced as set out above, he filed his petition for habeas corpus and claimed that under § 40--3102, T.C.A., he was entitled to receive credit for the time spent in State institutions on his sentence. It was on this claim that the trial judge denied his petition, because he didn't think that he had authority to grant such habeas corpus because the statute (§ 40--3102, T.C.A.) only provided that a defendant shall receive credit 'for the time he served in the jail, workhouse or penitentiary subsequent to any conviction arising out of the original offense for which he was tried.' The trial judge held that the petitioner here had not been serving a sentence in any of these institutions including being committed to jail, the workhouse or any imprisonment of the kind, and thus we have the question fairly presented to us as to whether or not under the terms of the statute (§ 40--3102, T.C.A.) the serving of time in a mental institution after being arrested for an offense is such imprisonment as to authorize this time served as a credit on any sentence which the defendant may subsequently receive.
The statute is mandatory. Stubbs v. State, 216 Tenn. 567, 393 S.W.2d 150, and any void or invalid prior sentences which one has served when he is tried a second time are and must be credited to the time he receives under the second trial. Stubbs v. State, supra. The Court may allow credit for time served in jail after trial and also allow credit for such time spent in jail pending arraignment and trial. Douglass v. State, 205 Tenn. 646, 330 S.W.2d 8.
The argument on behalf of the petitioner is that he was constrained of his liberty and held in a mental institution, and that under § 33--702, T.C.A., there is created the Maximum Security Unit in the Central State Hospital for the purpose of keeping and caring for mentally ill persons held under other than civil process such as may be committed to State institutions by the courts of criminal jurisdiction or transferred there by other courts. It is argued that this amounts to requiring the petitioner to spend time in jail or prison or confinement prior to the time that he was sentenced for the crime which he is alleged to have committed and thus when he is convicted of this crime he is entitled to credit for time spent in this mental institution.
On the other hand the State argues that the statute must be strictly construed so far as the mandatory provisions apply, and that this petitioner was not retained in an institution penal in nature but was confined in a medical facility operated by the State Department of Mental Health. It is argued he was held under authority of the mental health laws after having been adjudged insane and...
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