Opinion ID: 2995097
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Campbell’s Prison Sentences

Text: On November 10, 1981, Campbell (who has also used the monikers Tony Redfield, Donald Lee, Donald Shelton, and Rodney Lee) was convicted in the state of Michigan of breaking and entering and given a prison sentence of one and a half to 15 years. After serving only about three months, he escaped from a halfway house. The governor of Michigan issued an escape warrant for his arrest, but Campbell evaded the Michigan police. In October of 1983, law enforcement officials caught up with him in Illinois, where he was apprehended on charges of residential burglary. He was convicted of that offense and sentenced to a prison term of four and a half years plus a two- year mandatory supervised release (MSR) term. Campbell was released from prison in February 1986 (about 25 months early), based on good conduct credit that he had earned, and he began serving the MSR term. But on July 23, 1986, after serving only about six months of MSR, he was arrested yet again for unlawful use of a weapon by a felon and on December 10, 1986, was sentenced to a two-year prison term, with credit for time served since July 23. Because of the weapons conviction, the Prisoner Review Board (Board) revoked Campbell’s burglary MSR on January 6, 1987. Campbell was ordered to serve the time remaining on his two-year MSR term (about 18 months) in prison. This computation was in accordance with 730 ILCS sec. 5/3-3-9 (West 2000), which states that for MSR violators, recommitment shall be for the total mandatory supervised release term, less the time elapsed between the release of the person and the commission of the violation for which the mandatory supervised release is revoked. sec. 5/3- 3-9(a) (3)(i)(B). The statute at that time also allowed the Board to revoke up to a year of the good conduct credit earned during the burglary sentence and to add another year to the MSR term. Id. In apparent keeping with these rules, Campbell was ordered reincarcerated for 18 months. At that time, the Board did not order Campbell to serve any of the 25 months that had been deducted from his sentence on the burglary charge because of his good conduct credits (although the statute would have permitted it to add on another 12 months to the 18 month sentence). Because the new 18 month term was to be served concurrently with the 24-month unlawful use sentence, Campbell’s initial projected release date was July 23, 1988. This changed, however, in response to a number of offenses Campbell committed after his return to prison (including arson, assaulting an officer and other inmates, property damage, and possession of gang-related material). When all was said and done, the Board revoked all of the good conduct credits Campbell had earned earlier while serving the burglary sentence. The net result was a new release date of March 29, 1990. Matters became even more complicated when the Board decided that the four and a half months Campbell had spent in jail awaiting sentence on the unlawful use charge could not be credited against the original six and a half year burglary sentence. This had the effect of pushing his release date back to August 16, 1990. The Board made this decision in reliance on 730 ILCS sec. 5/3-3-9(a)(3)(ii), which states that in computing the sentence of an MSR violator, the person shall be given credit against the term of reconfinement for time spent in custody subsequent to his parole only if that time has not been credited against another sentence. See also Jackson v. Fairman, 418 N.E.2d 200 (Ill. App. Ct. 1981). By March of 1987, Campbell was starting to wonder when he could expect to be released. He made a few inquiries, but he did not receive consistent stories about his projected release date. At some point, he wrote or spoke to each of the following individuals, asking for a clarification of the calculation of his sentence. Michael Lane, the IDOC director, gave him an explanation on at least two separate occasions. John Groves, the chief records officer for IDOC, reviewed the calculations at least twice. Statesville Warden Michael O’Leary and Pontiac Correctional Center Warden Howard Peters III referred him to their respective records clerks, Carol Mills and Charles Williams, each of whom explained the sentence calculations to Campbell at least twice. In the meantime, dissatisfied with the explanations he was receiving and suspecting that the prison officials were not allowed to revoke the previously earned good conduct credits, Campbell filed a habeas corpus petition in state court on April 8, 1988, against Statesville Warden O’Leary, contending that his release date should have been no later than July 23, 1988, and that O’Leary erred in calculating a projected discharge date of August 16, 1990. The Will County Circuit Court dismissed this petition on September 2, 1988, but on June 21, 1989, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed the dismissal. The Appellate Court held that the record did not adequately explain why four and a half months had been added to the six and a half year burglary sentence, and it remanded the case to the trial court for a more detailed hearing. This hearing was continued several times. Ultimately, Campbell’s petition was dismissed again by the Circuit Court on May 31, 1990. On July 11, 1990, the Illinois Appellate Court asked the Circuit Court to conduct another hearing on the petition and ordered Campbell to be released on bond. On July 30, 1990, the Circuit Court decided that Campbell’s burglary sentence should have ended no later than June 1989 because the statute allows the Prison Review Board to revoke only one year’s worth of good conduct credit. The court then ordered Campbell’s immediate release from custody. Campbell undoubtedly thought that he had finally prevailed, but that was not to be the case as a practical matter. When Williams began to process Campbell’s release on July 11, he discovered a successor to the old Michigan escape warrant for Campbell’s arrest, which had been issued March 24, 1987. As a result, Campbell’s Illinois victory did not result in his actual release, but instead simply caused him to be transferred to the Livingston County Sheriff and turned over to the custody of Michigan in September. Michigan gave Campbell credit for time served in Illinois and he was released by Michigan authorities on April 1, 1991.