Opinion ID: 767535
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Suspended License Conviction

Text: 15 Section 4A1.2(c)(1) does not count driving while license suspended as an offense for purposes of the criminal history calculation, unless the defendant was sentenced to a year probation or imprisonment of thirty days. The Guidelines indicate that to count as a sentence of imprisonment, the defendant must have actually served a period of imprisonment on such sentence. U.S.S.G. sec. 4A1.2 application note 2. 16 Staples received a two-level increase related to his conviction in 1997 for driving on a suspended license, which had been suspended after his conviction for driving under the influence of drugs. In 1998, Staples was serving a 250-day sentence for a probation violation related to a domestic battery conviction. After his release from jail on the probation violation, he pleaded guilty to the suspended license charge and was sentenced to 250 days in jail with credit for time served on the probation violation charge. Staples now claims that the 250-day sentence on the license conviction should not count because he was sentenced to time previously served and did not actually serve any of his sentence for driving on a suspended license. The question is whether time actually served includes time previously served. We review this question de novo. See McClanahan, 136 F.3d at 1149. 17 The plain language of sec. 4A1.2(c)(1) indicates that a conviction is counted if the sentence was . . . a term of imprisonment of at least 30 days. See U.S.S.G. sec. 4A1.2(c)(1). According to the PSR, Staples' sentence was 250 days jail, $300 fine and costs. Neither the Guidelines nor Staples' sentence make a distinction as to how or when the defendant must serve the sentence, such as receiving time off for good behavior, surrendering voluntarily at some future date or getting credit for time spent awaiting trial. The simple meaning of the Guidelines language is to count any sentence of at least 30 days, and this section is unconcerned with how or when the sentence of at least 30 days is served so long as it is a term of imprisonment. The sentencing judge may have agreed that Staples had already served the required time and therefore released him, but the judgment that he serve 250 days in jail stood. 18 Staples looks to the application notes for a definition of sentence of imprisonment, which he finds in Application Note 2. But as the government points out, that note specifically references two Guidelines sections dealing with suspended sentences, see U.S.S.G. sec. 4A1.2(a)(3), (b)(2), which in this situation are very different from a sentence crediting time already served. With a suspended sentence, the offender may never spend a day in jail. The sentence hangs over his head as a way to ensure compliance with the terms of probation or other court orders. Credit for time served evinces the court's determination that the offender must spend some time in jail but has already served that time, either awaiting trial or on some other offense. It is a way to avoid excessive or duplicative punishment but does not reflect the court's determination that this offense is so minor that no jail time is warranted. 19 In United States v. Atkinson, 15 F.3d 715, 721 (7th Cir. 1994), we considered whether a sentence of time served awaiting trial counted as time actually served. The defendant had been sentenced to fouryears, but the judge suspended the term except for the seventy-seven days already served. We held that the plain language of the Sentencing Guidelines directed that the seventy-seven days counted as the applicable prison term, but the suspended term did not. Id. Atkinson was slightly different from this case in that the defendant here spent the time served on a different charge, but the principle is the same: Time served is real time and time suspended is not. 20 Staples looks to the Fourth Circuit case United States v. Stewart, 49 F.3d 121, 124 (4th Cir. 1995), for the proposition that time served is not an imposed sentence. Stewart however is inapplicable. In that case, the defendant had spent twenty-four days in jail awaiting a parole revocation hearing, but his parole ultimately was not revoked and he was not reincarcerated. The twenty-four days were not punishment and did not reflect the seriousness of his offense, since no offense was found. It was, like pretrial detention, an administrative detention to ensure that the offender showed up for court. The Fourth Circuit held that Stewart's time served could not be counted as a sentence of imprisonment because it was administrative in nature and not punishment. Id. at 125. The court in United States v. Latimer, 991 F.2d 1509, 1517 (9th Cir. 1993), likewise refused to count as incarceration the time spent awaiting a parole revocation hearing and placement in a community treatment center, because this was not a reflection of the seriousness of a crime in the way that imprisonment is. Had Staples been held without bail while awaiting trial, that time could not be counted as a sentence of imprisonment, but being given credit for time served on another offense is a different story. It reflects the seriousness of the offense and appropriately should be counted as a qualifying term of imprisonment for purposes of sec. 4A1.2(c)(1).