Case Name: Robert McCARTHY, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee
Court: Florida District Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1997-01-31
Citations: 689 So. 2d 1095
Docket Number: No. 96-1659
Parties: Robert McCARTHY, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
Judges: DAUKSCH and HARRIS, JJ., concur.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 689
Pages: 1095–1097

Head Matter:
Robert McCARTHY, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
No. 96-1659.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fifth District.
Jan. 31, 1997.
Order Denying Rehearing March 21, 1997.
Steven G. Mason, Orlando, for Appellant.
Robert A Butterworth, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Steven J. Guardiano, Assistant Attorney General, Daytona Beach, for Appellee.

Opinion:
THOMPSON, Judge.
Robert McCarthy appeals a judgment and sentence which required that he serve time in the Department of Corrections followed by probation. He argues the trial court erred when it did not credit him with time served on home confinement or electronic surveillance. We affirm.
McCarthy entered a plea of nolo con-tendere to attempted sexual battery in exchange for a negotiated sentence which required him to serve three and one-half years in the Department of Corrections followed by twenty years probation. At the time of sentencing, McCarthy argued that he should be given credit for 159 days he served on home confinement pretrial. Defendants placed on home confinement are allowed to leave their homes for work, school or other activities permitted by their surveillance supervisors. McCarthy argues that this is equivalent to incarceration in the county jail.
Section 921.161(1), Florida Statutes (1995), provides:
(1) A sentence of imprisonment shall not begin to run before the date it is imposed, but the court imposing sentence shall air low a defendant credit for all of the time he spent in the county jail before sentence. The credit must be for a specified period of time and shall be provided for in the sentence. (emphasis supplied.)
The Florida Supreme Court in Pennington v. State, 398 So.2d 815 (Fla.1981), refused to extend the meaning of the statute to include time spent in a rehabilitative center while on probation. Halfway houses, rehabilitative centers, and state hospitals, the court stated, are not jails. It opined that the statute meant what it said, that credit would be given only for time spent in the county jail, and declined to extend the statute. The supreme court did, however, allow an exception to the rule promulgated in Pennington. In Tal-Mason v. State, 515 So.2d 738 (Fla.1987), the supreme court held that credit must be given for time spent committed to a state hospital for incompetence to stand trial. The court ruled that the "coercive commitment to a state institution was indistinguishable from pretrial detention in a 'jail,' as that term is understood in common and legal usage." Id. at 739. Compare Roberts v. State, 622 So.2d 628 (Fla. 1st DCA 1993) (holding that defendant was not entitled to credit for time spent in a private psychiatric hospital because the confinement was not coercive or involuntary), rev. denied, 634 So.2d 626 (Fla. 1994). Incarceration has been defined confinement in a governmental institution such that a defendant's liberty is circumscribed to the functional equivalent of custody in the county jail. Thomas v. State, 644 So.2d 352 (Fla. 3d DCA 1994), citing Fernandez v. State, 627 So.2d 1 (Fla. 3d DCA 1993), rev. denied, 639 So.2d 977 (Fla.1994). A house arrest program in which the defendant wears an electronic bracelet used for monitoring his whereabouts, and checks with a supervisor daily by telephone and weekly in person, imposes restraints on the defendant's liberty prior to trial, but the conditions do not impose on the defendant restraints which are so onerous as to be equivalent to incarceration in the county jail or the forensic ward of a mental hospital. Fernandez.
AFFIRMED.
DAUKSCH and HARRIS, JJ., concur.