Martin v. Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole12/30/2003
James T. Martin (Appellant) appeals from an Order of the Commonwealth Court affirming an Order of the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole (Board) denying him administrative relief from the recalculation of his maximum term expiration date based upon his recommitment as a technical and convicted parole violator. Appellant contends that he was not accorded credit to his original sentence for one year, one month, and nineteen days of pre-trial confinement.
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
On January 30, 1985, Appellant was sentenced to a two-and-one-half to ten-year term of imprisonment, with an effective date of June 20, 1984, based upon his guilty plea to a charge of robbery, 18 Pa.C.S. § 3701. Appellant's maximum term of incarceration was calculated to expire on June 20, 1994. He was released on parole in 1987, and continued on parole despite being charged with driving under the influence (DUI), 75 Pa.C.S. § 3731(a)(1), and reckless driving, 75 Pa.C.S. § 3736(a), in 1990, with a subsequent conviction for disorderly conduct, 18 Pa.C.S. § 5503(a), in 1993. The Board declared him delinquent in June of 1994, and revoked his parole as a convicted parole violator on August 22, 1996, based upon his conviction for a violation of the Uniform Firearms Act. His new expiration date for parole was recalculated as June 17, 2002. On March 8, 1999, Appellant was reparoled.
On May 30, 2000, Appellant was arrested and charged with, inter alia, two counts of DUI and the Board lodged a detainer on the same day. He was unable to post bail and, on July 19, 2001, Appellant was convicted of the charges and sentenced to forty-eight hours time served, with a one-year period of probation, to be served consecutively to the robbery sentence that he was already serving.
A panel revocation hearing was held on September 11, 2001, and, by Order dated November 6, 2001, Appellant was recommitted as a convicted parole violator to serve six months backtime. His parole violation maximum date was then recalculated as October 28, 2004. On December 4, 2001, Appellant filed a timely petition for administrative relief in which he claimed that the Board erred in calculating his parole violation maximum date by failing to give him credit for all of the time that he had served pursuant to the Board warrant. In particular, Appellant averred that, because the new sentence imposed was forty-eight hours time served, with a consecutive one-year probationary period, his original sentence should have been credited for the remaining time spent in custody from June 1, 2000 to July 19, 2001. That is, Appellant requested allocation of all excess custody time that could not be credited toward the sentence he received for his most recent DUI conviction (48 hours) and during which period the Board also detained him.
In a letter mailed January 2, 2002, the Board refused to credit Appellant's original sentence with the one year, one month, and nineteen days of Appellant's pre-trial confinement in excess of the sentence imposed. Appellant then filed a Petition for Review with the Commonwealth Court.
A majority of the Commonwealth Court affirmed in an unpublished Opinion based on a line of precedent established by that court in Rodriques v. Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole, 403 A.2d 184 (Pa. Cmwlth. 1979), and culminating in Smarr v. Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole, 748 A.2d 799 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2000). The court primarily relied upon its decision in Berry v. Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation and Parole, 756 A.2d 135 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2000). Judge Smith-Ribner dissented, explaining that she felt that Smarr was wrongly decided and that Appellant should receive credit for the excess time
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Pennsylvania DUI Attorneys
DUI Lawyers
|