Opinion ID: 836201
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: parolees and time served

Text: As a general matter, when a defendant is convicted of a felony, he is sentenced to an indeterminate term of imprisonment and is incarcerated, thereby being placed in the custody of the Michigan Department of Corrections (DOC). He then begins serving his sentence, and the date of his parole eligibility is determined by MCL 791.234(1), which provides: Except as provided in [MCL 791.234a], a prisoner sentenced to an indeterminate sentence and confined in a state correctional facility with a minimum in terms of years other than a prisoner subject to disciplinary time is subject to the jurisdiction of the parole board when the prisoner has served a period of time equal to the minimum sentence imposed by the court for the crime of which he or she was convicted, less good time and disciplinary credits, if applicable. Thus, once the defendant serves an amount of time equal to the minimum sentence, he is eligible for parole and may be paroled by the Parole Board (the Board). Assuming the Board grants the defendant parole, he then becomes a parolee and, according to MCL 791.238(6), continues to serve out the unexpired portion of his sentence while on parole. MCL 791.238(6) provides: A parole shall be construed as a permit to the prisoner to leave the prison, and not as a release. While at large, the parole prisoner shall be considered to be serving out the sentence imposed by the court. To illustrate how these statutes operate together, assume a defendant has been convicted of a crime and is sentenced to a term of 5 to 10 years' imprisonment. After serving the minimum 5-year term, the defendant becomes eligible for parole, and the Board decides to grant the defendant parole, thereby making him a parolee. The parolee spends 1 year on parole and then commits a new crime, which means that he has now served a total of 6 years on his original 5- to 10-year sentence. However, once he is incarcerated for allegedly committing a new offense, the unexpired portion of the initial sentence, along with how the parolee's time spent in jail pending a determination of whether he violated his parole is allocated, is determined, in part, by MCL 791.238, which states: (1) Each prisoner on parole shall remain in the legal custody and under the control of the department.... Pending a hearing upon any charge of parole violation, the prisoner shall remain incarcerated. (2) A prisoner violating the provisions of his or her parole and for whose return a warrant has been issued by the deputy director of the bureau of field services is treated as an escaped prisoner and is liable, when arrested, to serve out the unexpired portion of his or her maximum imprisonment. The time from the date of the declared violation to the date of the prisoner's availability for return to an institution shall not be counted as time served. Notably, subsection 2 only states that a parolee, after being reincarcerated, is liable to serve out the unexpired portion of his first offense, not that he automatically resumes serving that term. Being liable to serve out the unexpired portion of the original sentence is not, as assumed by the majority, the equivalent of automatically continuing to serve that sentence, as a parolee does while he remains on parole. [1] See MCL 791.238(6). This conclusion is supported by the distinctive language of MCL 791.238(6) and MCL 791.238(2), each of which establish, in a different context, when a defendant is and is not considered to be serving out his original sentence. In MCL 791.238(6), the Legislature specifically required that a prisoner shall be considered serving out the unexpired portion of his initial sentence while on parole. MCL 791.238(2), on the other hand, only states that a parolee is liable to serve out the unexpired portion of his first sentence, but does not require that he automatically resume serving that unexpired portion. MCL 791.238(2) also clarifies, using mandatory language (shall not), when a parolee is not to receive credit toward his original sentence. If the Legislature had intended that a parolee who is arrested for a new crime while on parole automatically continues serving time toward the sentence for his first offense, it could have used the same definite language (shall) as it did in MCL 791.238(6). However, because MCL 791.238(2) instead uses permissive language (is liable ... to serve), rather than the same mandatory language used in MCL 791.238(6), it becomes necessary to examine whether a defendant is actually serving time toward his original sentence when he is arrested for a new crime while on parole. The answer to this question depends on whether the defendant's parole violation ultimately leads to a subsequent conviction of another crime for which jail credit can apply. If a defendant is arrested because of a parole violation that does not constitute a new criminal offense, and the Parole Board requires the defendant to serve an additional amount of the unexpired portion of his first sentence, then there is no question that any time the parolee spends reincarcerated must be credited as time served toward his original sentence because there is no other sentence to which that time can be credited. However, if a defendant is arrested for a new crime while on parole, MCL 768.7a(2), as discussed in part I(C) infra, prohibits the defendant from serving his original and new sentence concurrently, which means that the only way to know if the defendant is serving time toward his original sentence is to determine if the parolee will receive jail credit for his new sentence once he is convicted. If he does receive jail credit, then despite the fact that he remains liable to serve out the unexpired portion of his initial sentence, he will not have actually been doing so during the time he was reincarcerated. Thus, in order to determine whether a defendant who is arrested for committing a new crime will be entitled to credit for time served on his original sentence for which he remains liable, it becomes necessary to determine whether a defendant in this situation receives jail credit toward his new sentence.