Opinion ID: 1353881
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Has Pickens Been Negatively Affected?

Text: There remains the issue of whether Pickens has been afforded all the benefits of his original plea. Pickens claims that vacation of the escape conviction did not give [him] the full benefit of his plea agreement.... Br. Appellant at 9 (No. 08-1264). He offers three different theories as to how he has been negatively affected. His first contention is that he has already served time for the escape conviction, which will not be credited toward the murder conviction. This argument is explicitly dealt with in the state court's order vacating the escape conviction, which indicates that Pickens is to be put in the same position as if the original agreement had been enforceable. As Michigan concedes and the district court recognized, any time Pickens has served under the now vacated escape conviction must be credited toward the time he must serve for murder. Next Pickens alleges that the conditions in which he was incarcerated were worse because his escape and murder sentences were designated to run consecutively as opposed to concurrently. However, the security classification guidelines of the Michigan Department of Corrections do not bear out this theory. Only one factor is tied to the length of a prisoner's sentence, and it provides that prisoners who are within 7 years of their release date are eligible for a lower classification. Pickens's earliest possible release date is still more than 7 years away, whether his sentences ran consecutively (as the written judgment provided) or concurrently (as he believed). Now that Pickens's escape conviction has been vacated, he is in fact in a better position than if his plea had been legally enforceable. Pickens currently resides in the Lakeland Correctional Facility, and is classified as Level II. Because the escape conviction is no longer part of his record, he is eligible to be reduced to Level Ithe next lowest2-to-3 years earlier than he would be otherwise. Moreover, Pickens's claim that he is better off now under the prison's security classification system with the escape conviction vacated than with the escape sentence imposed concurrently is beside the point. The precise conditions of his incarceration were never addressed in his plea, and Pickens's security classification could be altered without denying him any benefit of the bargain he struck. See Dean, 1993 WL 40900, at  1. Finally, Pickens notes that his security classification has changed and his privileges have been reduced since he filed this case. Br. Appellant at 13 (No. 07-1266). But these changes are unrelated to the vacation of his escape conviction, and do not implicate due process concerns. Ibid. ; Dean, 1993 WL 40900, at .