Opinion ID: 2521354
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Chamberlain and Johnson

Text: Two years after section 2900.5 was amended, as explained above, Justice Bernard Jefferson's concurrence in In re Chamberlain (1978) 78 Cal.App.3d 712, 720, 144 Cal.Rptr. 326 ( Chamberlain ) pointed out that nothing in the language of section 2900.5 prohibited a defendant from knowingly and intelligently waiving entitlement to custody credits. [¶] In Chamberlain, the trial court suspended a state prison sentence and placed the defendant on probation conditioned upon service of one year in county jail with no credit for the days the defendant had already spent in jail before sentencing. In a petition for habeas corpus filed in the Court of Appeal, the defendant unsuccessfully challenged that order. In a concurring opinion, Justice Jefferson agreed with the majority's denial of relief, but he did so for the following reason: By accepting probation, the defendant had waived his right to custody credits under section 2900.5, and he had done so knowingly and intelligently. But absent such a waiver, Justice Jefferson explained, any period of incarceration without credits would be an illegal sentence under former section 19a (now § 19.2), which `places a one-year limit upon a county jail commitment given as a condition of probation.' ( Chamberlain, supra, 78 Cal.App.3d at pp. 720-721, 144 Cal.Rptr. 326 (conc. opn. of Jefferson, J.).) ( People v. Johnson (2002) 28 Cal.4th 1050, 1053-1054, 123 Cal.Rptr.2d 700, 51 P.3d 913.) Agreeing with Justice Jefferson's concurrence in Chamberlain that same year, the Johnson court recognized that the interplay of section 19.2's long-standing one-year cap on the time that can be served in county jail as a condition of probation for any single violation, and the amendment of section 2900.5, requiring that all local jail time served be credited against any subsequent county jail term imposed as a condition of reinstatement of probation, created a dilemma for sentencing courts in those cases in which the defendant had already served a year or more in county jail as a condition of probation before subsequently violating probation. In such cases, if the sentencing court desired to reinstate the defendant on probation, the interplay of the two statutes forced the sentencing court to choose between sentencing the defendant to state prison or imposing no additional jail time as a condition of reinstatement of probation  because applying custody credit for the earlier one year of county jail time against the new county jail term would result in the defendant's having already served the maximum one-year county jail term permitted under section 19.2 for the new violation. As the Johnson court put it, if a defendant has served a year in jail as a condition of probation, a violation means either a prison sentence or a fatherly (or motherly) lecture on the evils of crime because the court is faced with the Hobson's choice of the `joint' or a `straight walk.' ( Johnson, supra, 82 Cal.App.3d at pp. 185, 187, 147 Cal.Rptr. 55.) The Johnson court therefore interpreted section 2900.5 as allowing a defendant to waive custody credits under that section for county jail time previously served, in order to permit a sentencing court to reinstate probation conditioned on service of an additional period of up to one year in county jail for the new probation violation, without running afoul of section 19.2's one-year limitation on county jail terms, thereby avoiding the necessity of terminating probation and sentencing the defendant to prison if the court did not see fit to give the defendant a `straight walk.' ( Johnson, supra, 82 Cal.App.3d at p. 187, 147 Cal.Rptr. 55.) We recently reaffirmed the validity of the rationale and waiver rule of Johnson in People v. Johnson, supra, 28 Cal.4th 1050, 123 Cal.Rptr.2d 700, 51 P.3d 913. Citing various cases upholding custody credit waivers in a wide variety of circumstances, and noting that Courts of Appeal have not questioned that a defendant may waive entitlement to such credits under section 2900.5, we stated: Like the Courts of Appeal that have addressed the issue, we too conclude that a defendant may expressly waive entitlement to section 2900.5 credits against an ultimate jail or prison sentence for past and future days in custody. ( People v. Johnson, at pp. 1054-1055, 123 Cal.Rptr.2d 700, 51 P.3d 913.) The precise issue in this case arises when a defendant has been afforded the benefit of one or more Johnson waivers, in order to permit the sentencing court to continue or reinstate the defendant on probation conditioned on service of an additional county jail term as described above, and the most recent probation violation ultimately convinces the court that probation must be terminated and the defendant sentenced to prison. In that situation, may all the previously waived custody credits for local time spent in jail as a condition of probation be recaptured and applied against the state prison sentence being imposed?