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Raymond v. State8/18/2004
NOTICE Memorandum decisions of this court do not create legal precedent. See Alaska Appellate Rule 214(d) and Paragraph 7 of the Guidelines for Publication of Court of Appeals Decisions (Court of Appeals Order No. 3). Accordingly, this memorandum decision may not be cited as binding precedent for any proposition of law.
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND JUDGMENT
In this appeal, Jamie I. Raymond claims that he was entitled to sentencing credit in one case for time he served in another case. For the reasons set forth here, we agree with Raymond.
Facts and proceedings
Raymond was arrested and charged in August 2002 with driving while under the influence and driving without a valid operator's license. He was released on an unsecured bond. Approximately five months later, in late January and early February 2003, Raymond was charged with two new offenses: felony assault and violation of his release conditions from the August 2002 charges.
Raymond was jailed for these two new offenses, but the State never took steps to formally revoke his bail release from the August 2002 charges. Thus, technically, Raymond was in jail only on the 2003 charges.
In late March 2003, Raymond and the State reached a plea agreement resolving all the charges stemming from his conduct in August 2002 and January 2003. Under this plea agreement, the State reduced the felony assault charge from January 2003 to fourth-degree assault, and Raymond pleaded no contest to this reduced charge. Raymond also pleaded no contest to the driving while under the influence charge from August 2002 and the violation of release conditions charge from February 2003. The State dismissed the driving without a valid operator's license charge from August 2002.
The plea agreement called for Raymond to receive a sentence of 365 days with 325 suspended for the fourth-degree assault; a sentence of 90 days, all suspended, for the violation of his release conditions; and a sentence of 180 days with 160 days suspended for driving while under the influence. (This 20 days to serve was the applicable mandatory minimum sentence.) Thus, in total, the plea agreement called for Raymond to serve 60 days in jail.
Although the parties had reached an agreement resolving all the charges, there was a delay in setting a change of plea hearing. The hearing was not held until April 11, 2003. On that day, Raymond attempted to enter no contest pleas to each of the three agreed-upon charges (fourth-degree assault, violation of release conditions, and driving while under the influence). But Magistrate David S. Landry, the judicial officer presiding over the hearing, did not have the file for the August 2002 charges, so he declined to accept Raymond's plea to the DUI charge. Instead, the magistrate would only accept Raymond's pleas to the fourth-degree assault and violation of release conditions charges from 2003. The DUI charge remained pending.
As explained above, the plea agreement called for Raymond to serve 40 days for the assault and no jail time for the violation of release conditions. Because Raymond had already served approximately 71 days in jail by the time of the April 11 change of plea hearing, he was released from custody following the hearing.
Two weeks later, on April 29, Raymond appeared in front of District Court Judge Jack W. Smith to enter his no contest plea to the remaining count: the driving while under the influence charge from August 2002. As explained above, the plea agreement called for Raymond to serve 20 days for this offense.
Because Raymond had already served a total of approximately 71 days, and because Raymond's sentences on the 200
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