Miner v. Chater, 205-78
| Decision Date | 05 June 1979 |
| Docket Number | No. 205-78,205-78 |
| Citation | 403 A.2d 274,137 Vt. 330 |
| Parties | Earl D. MINER v. Michael CHATER, Superintendent, Rutland Regional Correctional Center. |
| Court | Vermont Supreme Court |
John J. Welch, Jr., Rutland, James L. Morse, Defender Gen., Montpelier, Nicholas L. Hadden, St. Albans, and Stephen W. Gould, Law Clerk (on brief), amicus curiae.
M. Jerome Diamond, Atty. Gen., and Susan R. Harritt, Asst. Atty. Gen., Montpelier, for defendant.
Before BARNEY, C. J., DALEY, BILLINGS, and HILL, JJ., and SMITH, J. (Retired), Specially Assigned.
This appeal from the superior court's denial of habeas corpus relief presents for our determination the validity of the Department of Correction's practice of denying an inmate all credit against his sentence for time spent on parole, in compliance with all conditions, where parole is subsequently revoked. Since we find this practice unlawful, we reverse.
On July 31, 1970, the appellant was sentenced to a term of zero to eight years following conviction upon his plea of guilty to the offense of second degree murder. A mittimus reflecting this sentence issued the same day, and the appellant began execution of his sentence. On April 28, 1971, the appellant was paroled pursuant to a parole agreement dated April 14, 1971.
The appellant remained on parole status for a period of more than six years, until July 7, 1977, when he was jailed on a parole revocation warrant charging him with having failed to lead an orderly and industrious life and to properly maintain and support his family, in violation of his conditions of parole. On July 14, the Board of Parole revoked the appellant's parole following hearing.
Pursuant to its uniform practice, the Department of Corrections (the Department) did not credit the appellant with any part of the more than six years he had successfully spent on parole, crediting against his maximum sentence of eight years only the time he had actually spent within the institution prior to his parole. The Department therefore established his release date, until which the Department could hold the appellant under his sentence, at a point well into the 1980s. Had the appellant been granted credit for the time spent in compliance with his conditions of parole, his release date, taking into account ninety days of good time credit accrued during the appellant's incarceration prior to parole, would have been April 29, 1978.
In March of 1978, the appellant brought a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, alleging that his parole was revoked without due process of law, in violation of his guarantee to equal protection of the laws, and in derogation of his right to effective assistance of counsel. The appellant also urged that his continued confinement was unlawful as it was based on the Department's denial of credit for parole time, which the appellant challenged as subjecting him to double jeopardy and multiple punishment prohibited by the Federal Constitution, and as being contrary to Vermont law. The matter was tried on May 1, 1978. The superior court subsequently issued findings of fact and conclusions of law, rejecting all challenges, and filed a judgment order on June 28, 1978, dismissing the petition.
The appellant does not renew on this appeal his challenges to the process by which his parole was revoked, but attacks the Department's denial of credit for his parole time anew on all grounds previously advanced. Since we consider Vermont law to be dispositive of the issue, we do not reach the appellant's constitutional claims.
Under our law, a person's sentence begins to run from the date on which he is received at the correctional facility for service of his sentence. 13 V.S.A. § 7031(b). The appellant's sentence began to run on July 31, 1970, when he was committed to the Windsor State Prison. Unless the running of his sentence was somehow suspended, the appellant was entitled to be released from all supervision of the Department under his sentence eight years later at the maximum. 28 V.S.A. §§ 506(b), 708(a).
No legislative or constitutional provision invests the Department of Corrections with authority to suspend the running of a sentence. The authority to suspend sentence must therefore be found to be a part of some inherent power in the Department, or to arise by implication from some other grant of authority. Under our frame of government, however, the Department has neither inherent authority to act within its sphere up to the point where it is controlled by some positive act of the Legislature, nor implied powers. This is because the Department of Corrections is neither the sovereign, nor the elected representative of the people, nor a body invested with powers under our constitution. It is an administrative entity, created by act of the Legislature, and, again by legislative act, invested with certain powers and charged with certain duties.
Although the Department has been granted a large measure of discretion in the exercise of its powers and in the discharge of its duties, the Legislature has made clear in Chapter 9 of 3 V.S.A. that the administrative departments may exercise only those powers expressly conferred. Section 203 of Title 3 provides:
Authority limited
The commissioner or board at the head of each department herein specified shall exercise only the powers and perform the duties imposed by law on such department.
Within the same chapter, 3 V.S.A. § 212(4) specifies the Department of Corrections as an administrative department "through . . . which the governor, under the constitution, shall exercise such functions as are by law assigned to (it) . . . ." Thus the Legislature has established that authority in an administrative department cannot arise through implication. An explicit grant of authority is required. The law is unambiguous and absolute on its face.
Even were it otherwise, this is the last sort of case in which we would recognize authority in an administrative arm of government in the absence of an explicit grant, for the power of the state is being brought to bear on an individual to keep him incarcerated against his claim that the body wielding it lacks authority to do so. The power to deprive...
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...it through behavior that was a gross deviation from that of a law-abiding person in defendant's situation. See Pickett , 137 Vt. at 339, 403 A.2d at 274.B. Unanimity-of-Jurors¶ 25. Defendant argues that his conviction of disorderly conduct for engaging in fighting behavior must be reversed ......
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Vitale, In re
...to those granted by the Legislature. In re Agency of Administration, 141 Vt. 68, 75, 444 A.2d 1349, 1352 (1982); Miner v. Chater, 137 Vt. 330, 333, 403 A.2d 274, 276 (1979); New Hampshire-Vermont Physician Service v. Commissioner, Dept. of Banking & Ins., 132 Vt. 592, 596, 326 A.2d 163, 166......
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State v. Cameron, 97-046.
...trial court had not signed the mittimus before January 23, and thus execution of the sentence had not begun. See Miner v. Chater, 137 Vt. 330, 331, 403 A.2d 274, 275 (1979) (noting that appellant began execution of his sentence following issuance of mittimus). Accordingly, the court was fre......