Opinion ID: 2240421
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: issues

Text: Defendant was incarcerated at the Indiana State Prison at the time that Harold Rice, a prison employee, was murdered. Defendant, upon his conviction for that murder, received a life sentence to commence upon the completion of the term of imprisonment he was then serving. Defense counsel correctly cites Baromich v. State, (1969) 252 Ind. 412, 249 N.E.2d 30, for the proposition that a trial court cannot impose a consecutive sentence in the absence of specific statutory authority and argues that the trial court lacked such authority. The issue is controlled by Ind. Code § 35-1-20-6 (Burns § 9-1021 1975) (repealed by § 3555 of Acts 1978, P.L. 2), in effect at the time Defendant was convicted and sentenced, which gave the trial court authority to impose the sentence. A portion of that statute dealt with the return to prison of an inmate convicted of an offense committed while confined to a state penal institution. The statute, in pertinent part, provided that where the inmate was sentenced to imprisonment in the state prison, his term of imprisonment was to begin to run from the expiration of the term for which he was imprisoned at his removal   . We have previously determined that it was proper, pursuant to the above statute, to postpone the commencement of one sentence until a previous term of imprisonment had expired. Corbin v. State, (1957) 237 Ind. 293, 145 N.E.2d 170.