Clampet v. State3/6/2003
ing him to pay the balance of his fines, fees, and court costs. The trial court denied Pike's motion to dismiss, and then held a third probation-revocation hearing. The court denied the State's petition to revoke, but found Pike in contempt for violating the conditions of his probation and sentenced him to 150 days in the Benton County jail.
On appeal, Pike argued that the trial court erred in finding him in contempt of court at the third revocation hearing because the court lost jurisdiction over him when it executed his sentence at the second revocation hearing by accepting his guilty plea and ordering him to pay the balance of his fines. This court agreed, holding as follows:
We have made it clear that a trial court loses jurisdiction to modify or amend an original sentence once a valid sentence is put into execution. E.g., McGhee v. State, 334 Ark. 543, 975 S.W.2d 834 (1998); Harmon v. State, 317 Ark. 47, 876 S.W.2d 240 (1994); DeHart v. State, 312 Ark. 323, 849 S.W.2d 497 (1993); Jones v. State, 297 Ark. 485, 763 S.W.2d 81 (1989). We have also held that a plea of guilty, coupled with a fine and either probation or a suspended imposition of sentence, constitutes a conviction, thereby depriving the trial court of jurisdiction to amend or modify a sentence that has been executed. McGhee, supra; Harmon, supra; Jones, supra.
In McGhee, supra, the State urged us to overrule Harmon, supra, but we declined to do so and reversed the trial court, adhering to our long-standing case law, which holds that a plea of guilty, coupled with a fine and a suspension of imposition of sentence of imprisonment, constitutes a conviction, and that, therefore, the court loses power to modify the original order. McGhee, supra (citing Jones, supra).
Similarly, in the present case, by the time of the third revocation hearing, the trial court had lost subject-matter jurisdiction to modify the sentence that had already been executed by the trial court's actions in revoking [Pike's] Act 346 of 1975 status, accepting his guilty plea, and ordering him to pay the balance of $866.25 in fines, fees, and court costs. Pike, 344 Ark. at 484.
What Judge Keith did at Pike's second revocation hearing is identical to what he did in Clampet's first revocation hearing: the judge revoked Clampet's Act 346 status, accepted his initial guilty plea, and ordered him to pay the balance of his "restitution in lieu of a fine." Because that "restitution" was comprised of money that in reality constituted a fine, given the language of § 16-90-307, the judge's actions at the May 1999 revocation hearing amounted to executing Clampet's sentence. The plea of guilty, coupled with a fine and probation, constitutes a conviction, thereby depriving the trial court of jurisdiction to amend or modify a sentence that has been executed. See Pike, supra; McGhee, supra; Baker v. State, 318 Ark. 223, 884 S.W.2d 603 (1994) (trial court enters a conviction judgment if it sentences the defendant to pay a fine and places the defendant on probation); Harmon, supra; Jones, supra (interpreting § 5-4-301(d)(1) to mean that a guilty plea, a fine, and suspension of imposition of sentence amounts to a conviction, which, in turn, entails execution).
Because the valid sentence was put into execution at the May 1999 hearing, the trial court was without jurisdiction, in August of 2001, to amend or modify Clampet's sentence, and the court thus erred in denying Clampet's motion to dismiss the State's petition to revoke his probation. The trial court's denial of Clampet's motion to dismiss is therefore reversed.
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