State v. Beets
| Citation | 369 N.W.2d 382,124 Wis.2d 372 |
| Decision Date | 24 June 1985 |
| Docket Number | No. 84-1053-CR,84-1053-CR |
| Parties | STATE of Wisconsin, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Robert Darnell BEETS, Defendant-Appellant-Petitioner. * |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Wisconsin |
Michael Dwyer and Legal Assistance to Institutionalized Persons Program, Madison, for defendant-appellant-petitioner.
Marguerite M. Moeller, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom on the brief was Bronson C. La Follette, Atty. Gen., for plaintiff-respondent.
This is a review of an unpublished decision of the court of appeals which affirmed an order of the circuit court for Milwaukee county, Victor Manian, circuit judge, denying the motion of Robert Darnell Beets for additional days of credit toward the satisfaction of time served on a conviction for burglary.
The issue presented is whether a person who is on probation for an earlier crime (delivery of controlled substance), is apprehended for the commission of a new and separate crime (burglary), and then, after a period of custody on a probation violation hold, is revoked and is sentenced to state prison on the earlier drug crime is entitled to time credit on the burglary sentence for the days served under the prison sentence for the drug crime while awaiting trial and eventual sentencing on the second crime--the crime of burglary.
We conclude that Beets is not entitled to time credit on the burglary sentence for the period following the sentence on the drug charge. We therefore affirm, concluding that sec. 973.155(1), Stats. 1981-82, does not require that the credit be given. 1
Robert Darnell Beets, on June 26, 1982, was at liberty on probation resulting from his conviction on October 21, 1981, on two charges of delivering a controlled substance (drug charges). After May 5, 1982, he had failed to report to the probation authorities. On June 26, 1982, he was arrested for burglary and was taken into custody, initially only on that charge. Within a few days, he was also in custody on a probation hold resulting from the alleged violation of his probation on the earlier drug charges. On August 4, 1982, the probation was revoked. 2
Sentence of two concurrent three-year terms for the drug charges was imposed by the circuit court on September 10, 1982. For the period from his arrest in June to the date of sentencing on the drug charges, Beets was given a credit of seventy-eight days in partial satisfaction of the drug sentences. 3
Beets was confined to the state prison system from September 16, 1982, on the drug convictions. He was returned to the Milwaukee county circuit court on March 23, 1983, on the pending burglary charge, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to a three-year term in the state prison, with the term to run concurrently with the previously imposed drug sentences. Beets was granted seventy-eight days credit toward the satisfaction of this sentence--for the period from June 26, 1982, the date of arrest, to September 10, 1982, the day that Beets commenced his prison sentence on the drug charges. 4
Beets brought a postconviction motion asking for an amendment to his burglary sentence to grant additional time credit. He asserted that he was entitled to receive creditable time for the period subsequent to his sentencing on the drug charges while he was awaiting, in prison, a hearing on the pending charge of burglary. He asserts that he was entitled to one hundred ninety-two days of additional credit.
His motion was denied by Judge Manian, and that denial was affirmed in a summary order by the court of appeals on January 31, 1985.
We accepted the petition for review because it appeared to us that the court of appeals had not then settled upon a rationale by published decision for determining sentencing credit cases of this kind. We accelerated the case when it became apparent that, were we to hold that Beets was entitled to the additional claimed credit, he would, in the normal course of our dispositions, be likely to serve more time than permitted by law.
We conclude, however, that he was given the credit to which he was entitled by the statutes.
Beets' position was, and is, that sec. 973.155, Stats. 1981-82, requires the court to grant jail credit for "all days spent in custody in connection with the course of conduct for which sentence was imposed." He contended that, even after his sentence was imposed on the original drug charges, his custody remained at least partly "in connection with" the burglary, because the course of conduct leading to the probation revocation was the burglary and because, during this period, he was awaiting trial and sentencing on the burglary charge.
The trial court denied the motion, reasoning that, once sentence was imposed on September 10, 1982, for the drug convictions, the defendant was in custody serving that sentence, which was unrelated to the burglary charge.
Beets appealed to the court of appeals. The court of appeals affirmed the trial court in a summary order. The court of appeals explained its reasoning in one brief paragraph:
This case essentially requires this court to give meaning to the statutory language of sec. 973.155(1), Stats., "in connection with the course of conduct for which sentence was imposed."
The meaning of the statute is clear. It is simply that credit is to be given on the eventual sentence for all periods of custody: From arrest to trial, the trial itself, and from the date of conviction to sentence. The defendant argues the statute is to be given an additional and different meaning because of the language that credit must be given not only for the time that elapses from arrest to sentencing on a particular charge, but that additional credit is to be given for those same time periods if the confinement is related to the offense for which the offender is ultimately sentenced. Thus, the claim of Beets here is that he was properly given credit for the time he was in the county jail prior to his sentence for the drug offenses--one, awaiting sentencing on the drug charges, and, two, also awaiting trial on the burglary charge. He additionally claims that he should be given credit against the burglary sentence for the time spent in prison serving the drug sentences, because he was also in confinement for the additional reason he was awaiting trial on the burglary charge.
Beets considers it irrelevant that he was in prison as the result of a "sentence" for the drug charges. He reasons, apparently, that his confinement, though for a final sentence (drugs), was "related to an offense for which the offender is ultimately sentenced," because it was the burglary arrest that triggered the revocation of the probation.
True, he had not yet been tried for burglary and in one sense was "awaiting trial" on the burglary charge even though he was confined to prison on the drug charges. What then does his prior confinement on the drug charges have to do with his confinement awaiting trial? Is the confinement on the drug charges "in connection with the course of conduct for which sentence [for burglary] was imposed"?
In the first place, it would appear plain that the sentence on the drug charges was not related or connected to the burglary course of conduct. As we said in Flowers v. Department of Health & Social Services, 81 Wis.2d 376, 386, 260 N.W.2d 727 (1978), the element of punishment in parole revocation is attributable to the crime for which the parolee was originally convicted and sentenced.
We deem this statement equally applicable to probation. Accordingly, any days spent in confinement after the revocation of probation and the imposition of sentence arise out of, and are connected not with the burglary, but with the unrelated conduct which resulted in the drug convictions more than a year earlier. Thus, the offenses are not connected.
There is a temporal connection in this particular case, because it was the burglary arrest that triggered the probation hold on Beets. Thus, for a time, June 26 to September 10, there was a relationship--not between the offenses but between the causes of the initial confinement on two separate charges. 5 The burglary charge initiated the scrutiny into Beets' background that resulted in the probation hold, the revocation, and the ultimate concurrent drug sentences.
The period of time at issue is from Beets' sentence on the drug convictions to the time he was sentenced on the burglary charge. The court of appeals correctly disposed of the claim for credit for this period by simply holding that any connection which might have existed between custody for the drug offenses and the burglary was severed when the custody resulting from the probation hold was converted into a revocation and sentence. From that time on, Beets was in prison serving an imposed and unchallenged sentence; and whether he was also awaiting trial on the burglary charge was irrelevant, because his freedom from confinement--his right to be at liberty--was not in any way related to the viability of the burglary charge. His ability to make bail on the burglary charge became immaterial. Even had the burglary charge been dismissed, he would still have been in confinement. Thus, there is no logical reason why credit should be given on the burglary charge for his service of sentence on a separate crime.
It should be remembered that in our decisional law the origin of the confinement credit was a matter of equal...
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