Opinion ID: 1355776
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: jurisdiction to credit against minimum sentence

Text: The record suggests that the trial court wished to fashion a sentence which would reduce the length of appellant's incarceration. Uncertain as to whether it had authority to credit presentence time served against a mandatory minimum sentence, the trial court attempted to avoid this jurisdictional problem by emplacing the ungainly sentence now presented. In order that the trial court may exercise the full range of its sentencing authority on remand, we clarify. This court has frequently held that, although it is not constitutionally required that the minimum term of a sentence be explicitly reduced for presentence incarceration, the power to do so dwells firmly within the discretion of the trial court. Harley v. State, 737 P.2d 750, 756 (Wyo. 1987); Heier, 727 P.2d at 710. Those holdings might seem inconsistent with the plain language of our indeterminate sentencing statute [7] and a number of cases in which we have denied the sentencing court the power where required to impose a mandatory minimum sentence and to substitute probation for a portion of the sentence. Cook v. State, 710 P.2d 824 (Wyo. 1985); Williams v. State, 692 P.2d 233 (Wyo. 1984); Evans v. State, 655 P.2d 1214 (Wyo. 1982). A substantial distinction can be drawn, however, between those cases and the issue presently before us. In those cases, the sentencing courts, under statutory authority which permitted them to suspend the execution of all or a part of a sentence, [8] created hybrid sentences, the total terms of which were within statutory limits. W.S. 7-13-301 (1977). However, since those sentences were composed partially of probation time and partially of confinement for less than the mandatory minimum, we held that those sentencing courts had exceeded the limits of their discretionary powers. Cook, 710 P.2d at 825; Williams, 692 P.2d at 235-36; Evans, 655 P.2d at 1224. Not only had those sentencing courts interfered with powers more properly belonging to the parole board, they had usurped the power of the legislature to set fitting punishments for the offenses it had defined. Williams, 692 P.2d at 235-36. Similar considerations do not exist in the present case. Here, the trial court merely determined that the total time actually served by appellant would range between the mandatory minimum term required for a habitual criminal and eleven years and seven months. There was no attempt to set a punishment for a lesser period of incarceration than that which the legislature has determined to be minimally fitting. We therefore hold that it is firmly within the discretionary sentencing authority of the trial court to credit the mandatory minimum term of an indigent's sentence with presentence time served. [9]