State v. Tal-Mason

• Decision Date: 20 August 1986
• Docket Number: A,TAL-MASO,No. 85-1754,85-1754
• Parties: 11 Fla. L. Weekly 1831 STATE of Florida, Appellant, v. Davidppellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 1179

492 So.2d 1179

11 Fla. L. Weekly 1831

STATE of Florida, Appellant, v. David TAL-MASON, Appellee.

No. 85-1754.

District Court of Appeal of Florida Fourth District.

Aug. 20, 1986.

Rehearing Denied Sept. 18, 1986.

Jim Smith, Atty. Gen., Tallahassee and Georgina Jimenez-Orosa, Asst. Atty. Gen., West Palm Beach, for appellant.

Richard A. Belz, Supervising Atty., and Jeffrey M. Leukel, Certified Legal Intern of Florida Institutional Legal Services, Inc., Gainesville, for appellee.

PER CURIAM.

The lower court ruled that appellee was entitled to receive credit towards his sentence for time spent in custody of the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services while adjudicated incompetent to stand trial. In so doing, the court found the jail-time credit statute, Section 921.161(1), Florida Statutes (1983) to violate the equal protection and due process clauses of the state and federal constitutions. The supreme court has previously ruled on the constitutionality of section 921.161 and its non-applicability to pre-sentence confinement in state hospitals and rehabilitation centers. Pennington v. State, 398 So.2d 815 (Fla.1981). We cannot agree with the trial judge that Pennington is inapplicable to the facts of this case. Accordingly, the judgment of the trial court is reversed.

WALDEN, J., and COWART, EDWARD D., Associate Judge, concur.

ANSTEAD J., concurs specially with opinion.

ANSTEAD, Judge, specially concurring.

The issue presented by this case is whether Section 921.161(1), Florida Statutes (1983) requires that a defendant convicted of a crime receive credit toward his or her jail sentence for time spent in a state mental hospital while adjudicated incompetent to stand trial. If not, we must determine whether such credit is required by the United States and Florida Constitutions. I concur with the majority that the supreme court's opinion in Pennington v. State, 398 So.2d 815 (Fla.1981) answers both questions in the state's favor and requires reversal. However, I find the appellee's arguments to be forceful, and I write separately to emphasize the approach permitting credit taken by other jurisdictions to this important question.

David Tal-Mason was arrested on June 30, 1977 and charged with one count of first degree murder and two counts of grand theft. Pursuant to Section 925.10, Florida Statutes (1977), the trial court ordered him committed to the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services for an evaluation of his competency to stand trial. Tal-Mason was transferred to South Florida State Hospital in Hollywood, and in January 1978, was adjudicated mentally incompetent to stand trial. He was returned to court on three subsequent occasions in 1979 and 1981, and each time was found incompetent to stand trial. In April, 1982, he was transferred to the North Florida Evaluation and Treatment Center in Gainesville.

On March 29, 1983, Tal-Mason was found competent to stand trial, and on August 8, entered a plea of guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. On January 25, 1985, he filed a motion pursuant to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850 seeking credit against his sentence for time spent in custody before trial. Specifically, he alleged that he spent a total of five years and twenty-seven days in the custody of the DHRS before trial for which he was not given credit on his sentence. He also alleged that he had spent one year and thirteen days in county jail awaiting trial but received credit for only one year. The trial court initially granted his request for an additional thirteen days' credit for time spent in county jail but denied credit for time spent in the two state mental hospitals. Tal-Mason filed a motion for rehearing, and on July 22, 1985, the court issued a detailed order reversing its earlier position and granting Tal-Mason credit for time spent undergoing treatment in state hospitals. The court also found Section 921.161(1), Florida Statutes (1983), which by its terms limits credit for pre-sentence confinement to time spent in county jails, to violate the constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection of the law. The state now appeals the trial court's ruling.

At the time Tal-Mason was sentenced, section 921.161(1) provided:

A sentence of imprisonment shall not begin to run before the date it is imposed, but the court imposing a sentence shall allow a defendant credit for all of the time he spent in the county jail before sentence. The credit must be for a specified period of time and shall be provided for in the sentence.

In Dalton v. State, 362 So.2d 457 (Fla. 4th DCA 1978), this court affirmed a trial court ruling which denied the appellant credit for time spent in a state mental hospital while being evaluated for competency to stand trial. In Dalton, we did not cite the county jail limitation set out in section 921.161 as controlling the disposition of a request for credit for time spent in a mental hospital as opposed to a jail. Instead, we relied heavily on certain language from the supreme court's opinion in Dorfman v. State, 351 So.2d 954 (Fla.1977), drawing a distinction between "confinement in a prison ... as part of a criminal sentence, and a period of treatment in a mental hospital for the purpose of helping the individual to return to society." 351 So.2d at 957, quoted in Dalton 362 So.2d at 458. For a number of reasons, I would no longer support our holding in Dalton. First, the Dorfman case, which we viewed to be "controlling" in Dalton, 362 So.2d at 458, has been superseded by subsequent law. Dorfman upheld the denial of credit for a period during which the appellant was committed as a mentally disordered sex offender under Chapter 917, Florida Statutes (1971). 351 So.2d at 957. A subsequently enacted provision of the Mentally Disordered Sex Offender Act, section 917.014, would require credit to be given under the facts of that case. Further, I no longer see a clear analogy between the facts of Dorfman and a situation in which a defendant is committed while being evaluated for competency to stand trial. The court in Dorfman emphasized the fact that the committal order in that case was civil in nature, and was imposed with the objective of allowing the defendant to return to society. 351 So.2d at 957. In contrast, the order of commitment in a case like Dalton or this one serves the sole, limited objective of enabling the defendant to assist his counsel in preparing his defense at trial. See Fla.R.Crim.P. 3.211. The procedure in no way contemplates restoring the defendant to a state of good overall mental health or releasing him from control of the criminal justice system. In fact, the procedure is analogous to a county jail inmate's temporary hospitalization for an injury or illness, which may delay his trial, but which would surely be credited towards his sentence upon conviction.

Finally, Dalton did not reach the constitutional questions raised by the failure of the statute to provide credit for certain kinds of pretrial custody. These questions were addressed for the first time on different facts by the supreme court in Pennington v. State. In Pennington, the petitioner was required as a condition of probation to spend time in a drug rehabilitation center. The petitioner's probation was later revoked and the trial court, when imposing sentence, declined to give credit for 363 days spent in the rehabilitation center. This court affirmed the denial of credit, and the supreme court approved that decision. 398 So.2d at 816-817. In Pennington, the supreme court foreclosed each claim for relief urged by the appellee in this case. Citing precedent from the Eighth and Ninth Circuits, the court broadly rejected the argument that to allow credit for jail time but not for time spent in a rehabilitative center or state hospital constitutes a denial of equal protection:

Halfway houses, rehabilitation centers, and state hospitals are not jails. Their purpose is structured rehabilitation and treatment, not incarceration.

398 So.2d at 817. From this premise, the court reasoned that persons in jail and persons confined to state hospitals or treatment centers are not similarly situated and may be differently treated without violating the equal protection clause. Id. at 816. Disallowing credit for other than jail time was, in the court's opinion, "strictly a matter for state concern." Id. Going on to address the relevant state statute, the court dismissed the contention, also made by the appellee herein, that the statute should be given a broad reading. Declining to extend the "plain language" of section 921.161, the court held that the statute applies strictly to county jails and not to other kinds of pre-sentence confinement. Id. at 817.

The court below distinguished Pennington in its order, ostensibly on the basis that a sentence imposed upon a revocation of probation is not comparable for the purposes of jail-time credit to a sentence imposed upon an initial criminal conviction. As the supreme court noted in Pennington, however, the relevant statute, section 921.161(1), applies equally to both situations. See also Dailey v. State, 471 So.2d 1349, 1350 (Fla. 1st DCA 1985). Moreover, while some courts have considered the extent to which freedom of movement is curtailed in determining the applicability of the sentence credit statute, compare Nygren v. State, 658 P.2d 141 (Alaska App.1983) with People v. Freeman, 95 Ill.App.3d 297, 50 Ill.Dec. 846, 420 N.E.2d 163 (1981), it appears that the supreme court's holding in Pennington was intended to apply to all treatment programs, regardless of the degree of confinement.

Thus, having concluded that Pennington controls, I must concur with the opinion of the majority. However, it should be noted that the law in other jurisdictions is by no means uniform in denying credit for time spent hospitalized awaiting an adjudication of competency. A small number of states...