Opinion ID: 2281794
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Application of Viers.

Text: The Court of Appeals cited Viers and acknowledged the discussion contained in Viers regarding whether an error is clerical or judicial in nature. But the Court of Appeals believed Viers was not controlling because Viers did not involve an escape charge. And the Court of Appeals believed the case at hand involved an illegal sentence, while Viers did not. Undeniably, Viers did not involve an escape charge. But that is a distinction that makes no true difference because the precise nature of the underlying criminal offense does not affect our clear explanation in Viers about what makes an error judicial in nature. And, contrary to the viewpoint of the Court of Appeals and the trial court, the sentence in Viers was, at least arguably, contrary to a statutory directive. As we noted in Viers, the PSI apparently failed to indicate that Viers had been in jail while serving a federal sentence. After this oversight came to its attention, the trial court amended the judgment on the basis that it had no authority to give jail-credit for time spent serving a federal sentence. See KRS 532.120(3). [17] So Viers is directly on point, and the Court of Appeals and trial court erred by declining to apply it to the case at hand. Application of Viers to the facts of this case leads to the inescapable conclusion that the error in the case at hand was judicial in nature. [18] That inarguable conclusion, however, does not entirely resolve this appeal because Viers did not address whether a party  a defendant in a typical case, the Commonwealth in the case at hand  may use CR 60.02 to correct an erroneous jail-time credit award after the time for filing an appeal has elapsed. Instead, Viers involved only the application and scope of RCr 10.10, which governs correction of clerical errors. [19] Viers stands for two important propositions. First, it elucidates the difference between a judicial error and a clerical error. Second, it firmly holds that judicial errors are not correctable under RCr 10.10. When applied to this case, the holding in Viers means that the error in this case was judicial in nature and, consequently, could not have been corrected via RCr 10.10. But Viers leaves unanswered the question of whether a judicial error is correctable under CR 60.02. So we must now turn to the heart of this appeal: is CR 60.02 a device for an aggrieved party to challenge a judicial error? After careful consideration, we conclude that it is not.