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Raymond v. State8/18/2004
3 charges had totaled only 40 days, Raymond asserted that he was entitled to credit for the entire 20-day sentence that was to be imposed under the plea bargain for the driving while under the influence charge.
The State objected to Raymond's proposal. The State pointed out that Raymond had only been jailed for the January 2003 offenses, and not for the August 2002 offenses. Alaska Statute 12.55.025(c), which governs credit for time served, states that a defendant is to receive credit for time previously spent in custody only "if the [defendant's] detention was in connection with the offense for which sentence [is being] imposed." The State therefore argued that Raymond was not entitled to credit against the August 2002 DUI charge.
Judge Smith concluded that the State's argument was correct. He denied Raymond's request for credit against the DUI sentence, and ordered Raymond to serve an additional 20 days in jail. Raymond now appeals Judge Smith's decision.
Discussion
As noted above, Alaska Statute 12.55.025(c) declares that a defendant is to receive credit against a sentence for time that the defendant previously served in jail if that jail time was served "in connection with" the crime for which the defendant is being sentenced. Under the circumstances of this case, we conclude that Raymond's prior jail time was served "in connection with" his August 2002 DUI charge.
We addressed an analogous situation in Walters v. State. The defendant in Walters was on probation stemming from a conviction for theft. While on probation, Walters was arrested and incarcerated for a new drug offense. Based on the new drug offense, the State petitioned the superior court to revoke Walters's theft probation - however, Walters was never formally arrested and re-incarcerated for violating his probation.
The parties then negotiated a plea agreement: Walters admitted the probation violation, and the State dismissed the new drug charge. The superior court sentenced Walters to serve the previously suspended portion of his sentence in the theft case, but the court refused to give Walters credit for 13 days he spent in custody between the date he was arrested on the new drug charge and the filing date of the petition to revoke his probation. The court ruled that Walters was not entitled to this credit because he had not been jailed for violating his probation, but only for the new drug offense.
On appeal, we held that Walters was entitled to credit for this jail time. We noted that the superior court had revoked Walters's probation based on allegations that he had committed a drug offense. We therefore concluded that the 13 days that Walters served in jail following his arrest on the drug charge was sufficiently "connected" for purposes of AS 12.55.025(c) to the probation violation for which he was ultimately sentenced.
Based on the construction that we gave to AS 12.55.025(c) in Walters, we conclude that Raymond should receive credit against his DUI sentence. True, Raymond was being sentenced for the DUI charge that arose in August 2002, and Raymond was never technically jailed for that charge, but rather for the new offenses that he committed in January 2003. But one of those January 2003 offenses was violation of the conditions of his bail release from the August 2002 charges. Given this fact, we conclude that Raymond's charges from 2003 were sufficiently connected to his charges from August 2002 that he was entitled to credit for time served against the sentence he received for the DUI charge from August 2002.
The State argues that this result is contrary to our decision in Marker v. State. But we conclude that Marker is
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