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State v. Brooks4/28/2005
On January 7, 1998, the Appellant pled guilty to robbery and misdemeanor possession of cocaine. He received concurrent sentences of six years for the robbery conviction, which was ordered suspended, and eleven months and twenty-nine days for the possession conviction, to be served in the county jail. No pretrial jail credit is reflected on the judgment form for either conviction; however, the appellate record was supplemented with a "mittimus" which reflects that the Appellant was credited with "320 days jail time" for both sentences. Although the record is silent on this point, we presume, based upon the number of pretrial jail credits, that the Appellant was released to supervised probation on the date the guilty pleas were entered.
On June 19, 2003, a probation violation warrant was issued alleging that the Appellant had violated the conditions of probation based upon new arrests and convictions for DUI, driving on a suspended license, disobeying a traffic sign, not having proof of insurance, leaving the scene of an accident, and domestic assault. Additionally, the warrant charged failure to report to his probation officer and failure to inform of a change in employment. A revocation hearing was held on February 17, 2004, at which time the Appellant conceded the alleged violations. He argued, however, that the three hundred twenty days of pretrial jail credit reduced his six-year sentence by the same number of days; thus, he asserted that his sentence had expired in February 2003, prior to the issuance of the probation warrant in June 2003, and that the trial court was without jurisdiction to revoke. The trial court rejected this argument and reinstated the original six-year sentence, granting the Appellant jail credit of three hundred twenty days against the sentence. The Appellant appeals this ruling.
Analysis
On appeal, the Appellant raises the legal question of whether the detention period awaiting trial, or in this case the period prior to entry of the guilty plea, proportionally reduces the probationary sentence. In effect, the Appellant contends that his probationary period had expired prior to the issuance of the revocation warrant "because of the three hundred twenty days credit due for his pre-plea incarceration." It is fundamental that a trial court has no authority to cause revocation of a suspended sentence after the sentence has expired. State v. Steven B. Mangrum, No. 01C01-9007-CC-00176 (Tenn. Crim. App. at Nashville, Feb. 21, 1991).
The Appellant cites as authority State v. Watkins, 972 S.W.2d 703 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1998) to support his argument that his probationary sentence had expired. The holding in Watkins did not decide the underlying issue presented in the instant case and is, thus, not dispositive. Watkins involved the probation revocation of two consecutive eleven month and twenty-nine day misdemeanor sentences. Central to the Watkins holding was that "the trial court may not impose a period of probation that exceeds the sentence authorized by law." 972 S.W.2d at 705. The Watkins court concluded that because the imposed probationary period extended beyond the maximum time allowed for the conviction, i.e., eleven months and twenty-nine days, the sentence had expired before the violation warrant issued. Id. at 705-706. Moreover, although the Appellant argues that his service of three hundred twenty days in jail proportionally reduced the expiration date of his probationary sentence, two opinions of this court have reached contrary conclusions. See State v. William A. Marshall, No. M2001-02954-CCA-R3-CD (Tenn. Crim. App. at Nashville, Oct. 14, 2002) (pretrial jail credits do not accelerate the expiration date of a defendant's probation
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