Martin v. BD. OF PROBATION AND PAROLE

• Decision Date: 30 December 2003
• Citation: 840 A.2d 299,576 Pa. 588
• Parties: James T. MARTIN, Appellant v. PENNSYLVANIA BOARD OF PROBATION AND PAROLE, Appellee.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

840 A.2d 299

576 Pa. 588

James T. MARTIN, Appellant v. PENNSYLVANIA BOARD OF PROBATION AND PAROLE, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued May 14, 2003.

Decided December 30, 2003.

David R. Crowley, Bellefonte, for James T. Martin.

Peter Rosalsky, Philadelphia, for Defender Association of Philadelphia.

Tara Leigh Patterson, Robert Campolongo, Harrisburg, for Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole.

Before CASTILLE, NIGRO, NEWMAN, SAYLOR, EAKIN, LAMB, JJ.

OPINION

Justice NEWMAN.

James T. Martin (Appellant) appeals from an Order of the Commonwealth Court affirming an Order of the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole (Board) denying him administrative relief from the recalculation of his maximum term expiration date based upon his recommitment as a technical and convicted parole violator. Appellant contends that he was not accorded credit to his original sentence for one year, one month, and nineteen days of pre-trial confinement.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On January 30, 1985, Appellant was sentenced to a two-and-one-half to ten-year term of imprisonment, with an effective date of June 20, 1984, based upon his guilty plea to a charge of robbery, 18 Pa.C.S. § 3701. Appellant's maximum term of incarceration was calculated to expire on June 20, 1994. He was released on parole in 1987, and continued on parole despite being charged with driving under the influence (DUI), 75 Pa.C.S. § 3731(a)(1), and reckless driving, 75 Pa. C.S. § 3736(a), in 1990, with a subsequent conviction for disorderly conduct, 18 Pa. C.S. § 5503(a), in 1993. The Board declared him delinquent in June of 1994, and revoked his parole as a convicted parole violator on August 22, 1996, based upon his conviction for a violation of the Uniform Firearms Act.¹ His new expiration date for parole was recalculated as June 17, 2002. On March 8, 1999, Appellant was reparoled.

On May 30, 2000, Appellant was arrested and charged with, inter alia, two counts of DUI and the Board lodged a detainer on the same day. He was unable to post bail and, on July 19, 2001, Appellant was convicted of the charges and sentenced to forty-eight hours time served, with a one-year period of probation, to be served consecutively to the robbery sentence that he was already serving.

A panel revocation hearing was held on September 11, 2001, and, by Order dated November 6, 2001, Appellant was recommitted as a convicted parole violator to serve six months backtime. His parole violation maximum date was then recalculated as October 28, 2004. On December 4, 2001, Appellant filed a timely petition for administrative relief in which he claimed that the Board erred in calculating his parole violation maximum date by failing to give him credit for all of the time that he had served pursuant to the Board warrant. In particular, Appellant averred that, because the new sentence imposed was forty-eight hours time served, with a consecutive one-year probationary period, his original sentence should have been credited for the remaining time spent in custody from June 1, 2000 to July 19, 2001. That is, Appellant requested allocation of all excess custody time that could not be credited toward the sentence he received for his most recent DUI conviction (48 hours) and during which period the Board also detained him.

In a letter mailed January 2, 2002, the Board refused to credit Appellant's original sentence with the one year, one month, and nineteen days of Appellant's pre-trial confinement in excess of the sentence imposed.² Appellant then filed a Petition for Review with the Commonwealth Court.

A majority of the Commonwealth Court affirmed in an unpublished Opinion based on a line of precedent established by that court in Rodriques v. Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole, 44 Pa.Cmwlth. 68, 403 A.2d 184 (1979), and culminating in Smarr v. Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole, 748 A.2d 799 (Pa.Cmwlth. 2000). The court primarily relied upon its decision in Berry v. Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole, 756 A.2d 135 (Pa. Cmwlth.2000). Judge Smith-Ribner dissented, explaining that she felt that Smarr was wrongly decided and that Appellant should receive credit for the excess time spent in custody on his original sentence. We granted allowance of appeal to examine the application of our decision in Gaito v. Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole, 488 Pa. 397, 412 A.2d 568 (1980), to a case in which the length of pre-trial confinement exceeds the sentence imposed for the new crimes.

DISCUSSION

When a Constitution was first adopted in this Commonwealth, parole as a penological expedient, was unknown to American jurists and "commutation" was employed as the means of reducing the length of a sentence. The commutation system resulted in the discharge of a prisoner without further supervision by state authorities.³ In Banks, this Court described the genesis of the parole system as follows:

The system of parole was introduced in America in the Elmira Reformatory, which was created in 1869 but not opened until 1876. It was first adopted in an American prison in 1884 in Ohio. It did not come into general use in the American prison system until the decade of the nineties. It made its initial entrance into Pennsylvania when the Huntingdon Reformatory was organized in 1887, and it was not adopted in our state penitentiaries until 1909 or in our county jails until 1911.

Banks, 28 A.2d at 899-900 n. 2. The objective of the parole system was to enable prisoners to "re-enter society through a gradual amelioration of their restraint and a substitution of controlled freedom for continued incarceration" under certain, proscribed conditions. Id. at 901. As we noted in Young v. Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole, 487 Pa. 428, 409 A.2d 843 (1979), the United States Supreme Court in Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 477, 92 S.Ct. 2593, 33 L.Ed.2d 484 (1972), made the following observations pertinent to our inquiry as to the purposes of parole:

During the past 60 years, the practice of releasing prisoners on parole before the end of their sentences had become an integral part of the penological system. Rather than being an ad hoc exercise of clemency, parole is an established variation on imprisonment of convicted criminals. Its purpose is to help individuals reintegrate into society as constructive individuals as soon as they are able, without being confined for the full terms of the sentence imposed. It also serves to alleviate the cost to society of keeping an individual in prison. The essence of parole is release from prison, before the completion of sentence, on the condition that the prisoner abide by certain rules during the balance of the sentence.

Young, 409 A.2d at 847 (footnote and internal citation omitted). "The effectiveness of parole as a penological device to assist in the reintegration of the offender into society as a useful member is dependent on the state's power to impose reasonable conditions" of parole and its concomitant responsibility to treat parole violators equitably. Id. The state must also consider the protection of the society into which it reintegrates an offender. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Brown, 240 Pa.Super. 190, 361 A.2d 846 (1976).

The question of whether and when credit for time served may be awarded by the Board against a prior sentence on the basis of pretrial detention related to a subsequent offense has developed primarily because of rules articulated in the decisional law. Although the General Assembly enacted statutory provisions relating to credit for time served, it has not addressed the permutations that arise when applying credit for time served in the parole revocation context. Thus, our inquiry begins with an examination of the penological framework, the appropriate statutes, and the existing case law that form the basis for Appellant's claim.

Generally, upon conviction of a crime carrying a sentence of two years or more ("state time" as opposed to "county time"), an individual comes under the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections, which maintains jurisdiction over the inmate while he is in prison. Pursuant to Pennsylvania law, the maximum term represents the sentence imposed for a criminal offense, with the minimum term merely setting the date after which a prisoner may be paroled. Commonwealth v. Daniel, 430 Pa. 642, 243 A.2d 400 (1968). When the minimum prison term expires, an inmate becomes eligible for parole and makes application to the Board, requesting a grant of parole. If parole is granted, or a term of probation⁴ has been imposed, the individual is removed from the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections and placed under the jurisdiction of the Board. If the individual violates parole or probation, the Board conducts hearings and may revoke probation and parole based upon any violations that transpired.

The distinction between sentences imposed by the judiciary upon convicted criminal defendants and backtime compelled by the Board upon parole violators is significant. A sentence can be defined as the judgment formally pronounced by the court upon a defendant who has been convicted in a new criminal prosecution and which imposes the term of punishment to be served. Rivenbark v. Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole, 509 Pa. 248, 501 A.2d 1110 (1985). By way of comparison, backtime is "that part of an existing judicially-imposed sentence which the Board directs a parolee to complete following a finding[,] after a civil administrative hearing[,] that the parolee violated the terms and conditions of parole," and before the parolee begins to serve the new sentence. Krantz v. Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole, 86 Pa.Cmwlth. 38, 483 A.2d 1044, 1047 (1984); see also McCaskill v. Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole, 158 Pa.Cmwlth. 450, 631 A.2d 1092 (1993), petition for allowance of appeal denied, 537 Pa. 655, 644 A.2d 739 (1994). Therefore, service of backtime relates to...