# FILED
May 30, 1997 Cecil W. Crowson Appellate Cou rt Clerk IN THE COURT OF CRIMI NAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE

AT NASHVILLE MARCH 1997 SESS ION

WILLIAM JONES, ) ) Appellant, ) No. 01C01-9606-CC-00263

) ) Davidson County v. ) ) Honorable Hamilton V. Gay den, Jr., Judge ) JACK MORGAN, Warden, ) (Habeas Corpus) Nashville Community Service ) Center, DONAL CAMPBELL, ) Corrections Commissioner, and ) the TENNESSEEDEPARTMENT ) OF CORRECTION, ) ) Appellees. ) For the Appellant : For the Appellee : William Jones, Pro Se John Knox Walkup No. 85426 Attorney General of Tennessee NCSC 7466 Centennial Blv d. and Nashville, TN 37209-1052 Patricia C. Kussmann Assistant Attorney Gener al of Tennessee 450 James Robertson Parkwa y Nashville, TN 37243-0493 Victor S. Johnson, III District Attorney General Washington Square 222 2nd Avenue North Nashville, TN 37201-1649

OPINION FILED:____________________
AFFIRMED Joseph M. Tipton Judge2 O P I N I O N
The petitioner, William Jon es, appeals as of right from the dismissal of his petition for habeas corpus rel ief by the Davidson Count y Circuit Court for

failure to state grounds justifying the issuance of a writ of habeas corpus. The petitioner is i n the custody o f the Dep artment of Correc tion servi ng an eff ective sen tence of sixty-two years for his 1977 convi ctions of second degree murder and armed robbery. On appeal, the petitioner contends that his sentence has been serv ed, given the sentencing credits to w hich he claims entitlement.

In his pro se petition, the petitioner contends that he is being illegally restrained of his liberty because of a denial and improper cal culation of sentencing reduction credits. He as serts that he should have bee n awarded twelve years, seven months and eight days for g ood behavior credits. H e argues that he should be released, calculating h is parole eligibil ity as May 1993 and hi s sentence expiration as May 1995.

The state filed a motion to dismiss the petition, asserting that the petitioner failed to state gr ounds upon which habeas corpus relief could be granted and that the trial court lack

ed jurisdiction as gr

ounds for dismissal. In dismi ssing the petition for habeas corpus relief, the tr ial court held that it had j urisdiction to revi ew the petition, but found that the petition failed to stat e grounds upon which a w rit of habeas corpus could be granted. The trial court stated: Petitioner

assert s that ov er the c ourse of his conf i nement he has become entitled to 12 years, 7 mont hs and 8 days of sentence reduction c redits. Even accepting that as true, it is clear from the face of the petition that petitioner’s sentence h as not expired an d t hat what he is actually complaining about is either the failure of respondents to grant him a parole heari ng or respondent’s failure to calculate his s ente nce reduction credits properly. Neither of these is a proper subject of habea s corpus re view.3

The trial court held that sent encing credits are int

ernal Department of Correcti on matters which must be addres sed through the Uniform Adminis trative Procedures Ac

t.
Ordinarily, the Gre

at Writ of habeas corpus is available w hen a petitioner alleges that the sentence has fully expired, thereby claiming that he or she i s entitled to release. See , e.g. , Ricks v. State , 882 S.W.2d 387 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1994). However, such rel ief is not available to ch allenge Department of Correc tion matters that have no bearing on the v alidity of the restraini ng conviction, the re sulting sentence, or the expiration of the sentence. See , e.g., State v. Warren , 740 S.W.2d 425, 428 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1986). In this respect, any complaint regarding sentence credit miscalculations that rel ate to parole or other relea se eligibility short of full service of the sentence does not warrant habeas corpus relief.

In the present case, much of the petit ioner’s complaints deal w ith inactions by the Department of Correction relativ

e to parole hearings and cal culation of sentence reduction credits. As the trial court conc luded, the petitioner’s cl aims on these issues do not state gr ounds for habeas corpus relief.
As for the petitioner’s cla im that his sentence has, in fact, expired as of May 1995, he alleges that an unidentified Department of Correction counselor told him when he was origi nally incarcerated tha t his sixty-tw

o-year sentence woul d be deemed “to ‘flatten’ (fully expire)” at the end of thirty-one years. He then asserts that given his sentence reduction credits to which he claims entitlement and the tim e he has actually served since 1977, he should now be entitled to release. However, it is obvious that his actual service of about nineteen years plus the sentencing credits of twelve years, seven months and eight day s to which he claims ent itlement do not add up to expir ation of his sixty-tw

o-year sentence. Moreov er, he presents no law t o support his claim that a sixty-two-y

ear sentence expires in thirty-one years. Instead, the record indica tes that4

he is using as his base sentence an expiration date c alculation by the Department of Correction that already includes his projected s entencing credits. In ot her words, the petitioner’s calculati ons provide him with doubled sentencing credits to which he is not entitled.

Thus, without his sentence ha ving fully expi red, the petitioner is not entitled to habeas corpus relief. In consideration of the foregoing and the record as a whole, the judgment of the tri al court is affirmed.

_______________________________ Joseph M. Tipto n, Judge CONCUR:

_________________________ Joe G. Riley, Judge

_________________________ Thomas T. W oodall, Judge