Tal-Mason v. State

• Decision Date: 12 November 1987
• Docket Number: No. 69508,P,TAL-MASO,69508
• Citation: Tal-Mason v. State, 515 So.2d 738, 12 Fla. L. Weekly 568 (Fla. 1987)
• Parties: 12 Fla. L. Weekly 568 Davidetitioner, v. STATE of Florida, Respondent.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

Page 738

515 So.2d 738

12 Fla. L. Weekly 568

David TAL-MASON, Petitioner, v.STATE of Florida, Respondent.

No. 69508.

Supreme Court of Florida.

Nov. 12, 1987.

Richard A. Belz and Jeffrey M. Leukel of Florida Institutional Legal Services, Inc., Gainesville, for petitioner.

Robert A. Butterworth, Atty. Gen. and Georgina Jimenez-Orosa, Asst. Atty. Gen., West Palm Beach, for respondent.

BARKETT, Justice.

We have for review State v. Tal-Mason, 492 So.2d 1179(Fla. 4th DCA1986), which expressly declared valid section 921.161(1), Florida Statutes(1985).^*We have jurisdiction.Art. V., § 3(b)(3),Fla. Const.We quash the order of the district court and remand for further proceedings.

David Tal-Mason, petitioner, was arrested June 30, 1977, for first-degree murder and two counts of grand larceny, and indicted on July 26, 1977.On December 9, 1977, the trial court ordered him committed to the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services("HRS") for evaluation of his competence to stand trial.

Tal-Mason was transferred to the forensic unit of the South Florida State Hospital and in January 1978 was found mentally incompetent to stand trial.Between 1979 and 1981, he was returned to court on three separate occasions.Each time, he again was found incompetent to stand trial.In April 1982he was transferred to the North Florida Evaluation and Treatment Center in Gainesville.

After spending five years and twenty-seven days in custody at state mental hospitals, Tal-Mason was found competent to stand trial on March 29, 1983.On August 8, 1983, he pled guilty to a charge of second-degree murder and was given a life sentence by the court.

On January 22, 1985, Tal-Mason filed a 3.850 motion on two grounds: (1) that he had spent one year and thirteen days in a county jail prior to trial, but had received credit only for one year; and (2) that the five years and twenty-seven days he spent in state mental institutions should be credited against his sentence.The court granted Tal-Mason credit for the additional thirteen days of jail time, but denied credit for time in state institutions.

Tal-Mason filed a motion for rehearing, which was granted.Oral arguments were held July 10, 1985.At that time, the trial court reversed its prior decision and held section 921.161(1), Florida Statutes, unconstitutional as applied to Tal-Mason.The court then granted Tal-Mason credit for the five years and twenty-seven days spent in the state mental institution.The trial court reasoned that the statute violated Tal-Mason's equal protection and due process rights.State v. Tal-Mason, 11 Fla.Supp.2d 173, 176(Fla. 17th Cir.Ct.1985).

The state appealed to the Fourth District, which reversed the trial court.492 So.2d at 1179.The Fourth District based its decision on this Court's opinion in Pennington v. State, 398 So.2d 815, 817(Fla.1981), which upheld the constitutionality of the statute in question and announced that

[h]alfway houses, rehabilitative centers, and state hospitals are not jails.Their purpose is structured rehabilitation and treatment, not incarceration....Our statute, section 921.161(1), states: "[T]he court imposing a sentence shall allow a defendant credit for all of the time he spent in the county jail before sentence."... We decline to extend the statute's plain language to require that credit be given in other circumstances.

(Emphasis in original.)

In Pennington, the petitioner had violated the conditions of her probation and subsequently was sentenced to five years in state prison on her original conviction.She appealed to this Court when the Fourth District refused to reverse a trial court order denying her credit for time spent in a live-in drug rehabilitation program, a condition of her probation.398 So.2d at 816.We approved the district court's decision.Id.AccordCalhoun v. State, 403 So.2d 1082(Fla. 1st DCA1981);Turner v. State, 395 So.2d 1242(Fla. 1st DCA1981).

Turning now to the facts of this case, we find that commitment for incompetence, unlike probationary rehabilitation, infringes upon significant liberty interests in a particularly coercive manner.Probationary conditions are more in the nature of a contract between the probationer and the state.The defendant clearly has a choice to reject those conditions, albeit at the risk of continued detention in jail or prison.Thus, rather than restricting liberty, probationary rehabilitation usually serves to increase it by allowing the probationer an escape from involuntary confinement already lawfully imposed, in favor of a freer environment such as a community-based halfway house.For this reason, participation in such a rehabilitation program does not constitute a coercive deprivation of liberty, and a probationer is not entitled to credit for time spent there after a court finds that he has violated the terms of his probation.

Tal-Mason, on the other hand, clearly had no choice when he was confined in a state mental institution.He entered into no agreement with the state to obtain an early release from confinement or from any other punishment less restrictive than jail time.Rather than increasing his liberty, Tal-Mason's confinement was in the strictest sense a complete deprivation of liberty.He was in the total custody and control of the state at all times.And while his confinement involved psychological treatment, the primary purpose of both the treatment and the detention was to hold Tal-Mason until such time as he became competent to stand trial, if ever.Thus, his coercive commitment to a state institution was indistinguishable from pretrial detention in a "jail," as that term is understood in common and legal usage.

Black's Law Dictionaryat 748(5th ed. 1979) defines a "jail" as

[a] place of confinement that is more than a police station lockup and less than a prison.It is usually used to hold persons either convicted of misdemeanors (minor crimes) or persons awaiting trial.

With this definition in mind, we agree with Judge Anstead's statement in his concurring opinion below that there is "no meaningful distinction ... between incarceration before trial in a county jail, and state enforced confinement in a mental hospital in preparation for trial."492 So.2d at 1182.As our sistercourt in Kansas aptly noted,

The physical place of confinement is not important as the appellant technically continued to be in jail while held in custody at the hospitals.He was not free on bail, had no control over his place of custody and was never free to leave the hospitals.For all practical intents and purposes, he was still in jail.The court takes judicial notice that the state mental hospitals have the facilities to enforce confinement of their patients, which brings them within the dictionary definition of a "jail."

State v. Mackley, 220 Kan. 518, 519, 552 P.2d 628, 629(1976).We similarly take judicial notice of the facilities for enforced confinement that exist in...