Court Opinion

ID: 9565032
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:13:25.437718+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:20.427486
License: Public Domain

QUINN, Chief Justice,
dissenting in part:
I dissent from part III of the majority opinion, which reverses the district court’s determination that the Department of Corrections (department) incorrectly calculated the defendant’s good time credits. In resolving the issue of statutory good time credits, the majority relies basically on Price v. Mills, 728 P.2d 715 (Colo.1986). Because the facts in Price were substantially different from those present here, I find that decision analytically unsuitable for the proper resolution of this case.
I.
Price involved two inmates, Price and Jenkins, both of whom had been sentenced for crimes committed prior to July 1, 1979, and were later convicted and sentenced for additional crimes committed subsequent to July 1, 1979, while they were on parole from their earlier sentences. Price had been sentenced in 1974 to an indeterminate term not to exceed fifteen years, and again in 1976 for a consecutive indeterminate term not to exceed five years, thus resulting in a maximum term of imprisonment of twenty years. Price was later paroled, and in 1981 he was convicted of a crime committed subsequent to July 1, 1979, and was sentenced to a term of eight years to be served concurrently with the previously imposed 1974 and 1976 sentences.
The other inmate, Jenkins, had been sentenced in 1977 to three concurrent terms of indeterminate to twenty years. In 1983, while on parole, Jenkins was convicted and sentenced to eight years for a burglary committed in 1982. The eight year sentence was made expressly concurrent to the indeterminate to twenty year sentences imposed in 1977.
When Price and Jenkins filed cases challenging the department’s calculation of good time credits, they were simultaneously serving sentences for offenses committed both before and after July 1, 1979. 728 P.2d at 718. As a result, they were conceivably subject to two different statutory good time schemes: section 17-22.5-201, 8A C.R.S. (1986) (hereinafter section 201), which establishes the formula for determining good time credits for offenders sentenced for crimes committed prior to July 1,1979; and section 17-22.5-301, 8A C.R.S. (1986) (hereinafter section 301), which establishes the formula for determining good time credits for offenders sentenced for crimes committed on or after July 1, 1979. The department’s method of allocating good time credits for concurrent sentences for crimes committed both before and on and after July 1,1979, was to apply section 201 credits to the composite sentence “if a sentence for any pre-July 1, 1979, offense produces the longest incarceration effect *64for the inmate,” and to apply the section 301 credits to the composite sentence “if the incarceration effect of any or all sentences for pre-July 1, 1979, offenses is shorter than the incarceration effect of a sentence for an offense committed on or after July 1, 1979.” 728 P.2d at 718.
Although we noted in Price that the department might well have adopted some other method of allocating good time credits for concurrent sentences imposed for crimes committed prior to and subsequent to July 1, 1979, we nonetheless concluded that the department’s chosen method was reasonable and contravened no legislative or constitutional rights of the inmates. The department’s method of calculating good time credits found support in section 17-22.5-101, 8A C.R.S. (1986), which requires the department to construe separate sentences as one continuous sentence whenever an offender “has been committed under separate convictions with separate sentences.” Further support for our holding was found in section 17-22.5-304, 8A C.R.S. (1986), which prohibits any inmate subject to the good time credits of section 201 from receiving any good time credits authorized by section 301.
II.
Since Price involved concurrent sentences which in functional effect constituted one term of imprisonment represented by the longest of the concurrent sentences imposed, Schubert v. People, 698 P.2d 788, 795 (Colo.1985), it would have been virtually impossible for the department to divide the concurrent sentences into discrete units of time and to apply one statutory credit formula to one part of the concurrent sentence and another statutory credit formula to another part of the same sentence, when in reality the inmate was simultaneously serving one term of imprisonment for all sentences. In this case, however, we are dealing with a consecutive sentence for a crime committed after July 1, 1979, which sentence by its very nature is separate and distinct from any previously imposed sentence. See In re Packer, 18 Colo. 525, 530, 33 P. 578, 580 (1893) (recognizing that a consecutive sentence commences only upon the expiration of the previous sentence).
In my view, the administrative considerations of uniformity and practicability of implementation present in Price are not present here. In the case of a consecutive sentence for a crime committed on or after July 1, 1979, there is no compelling administrative urgency to consolidate the consecutive sentence with the prior sentence imposed for a crime committed before July 1, 1979, and then to aggregate both sentences into one composite sentence for the purpose of allocating good time credits to the entire term of imprisonment based on which of the separate sentences will produce the longest incarceration effect on the inmate. I acknowledge that section 17-22.-5-101, 8A C.R.S. (1986), requires the department to construe an inmate’s separate sentences as one continuous term of imprisonment. However, I find nothing in the statutory scheme to prohibit the allocation of good time credits in accordance with section 301 to a consecutive sentence which, although when aggregated with a prior sentence adds up to one continuous term of imprisonment, is nonetheless served in a period of time that is separate and distinct from a previously imposed sentence. Indeed, requiring the department to allocate section 301 good time credits to a consecutive sentence imposed for a crime committed on or after July 1, 1979, effectuates the mandate of section 17-22.5-304, 8A C.R.S. (1986), which states that section 301 good time credits “shall apply” to persons convicted of crimes committed on or after July 1, 1979.
For the above reasons, I dissent from part III of the court's opinion. I would affirm the judgment of the district court in its entirety.
I am authorized to say that Justice ERICKSON and Justice VOLLACK join me in this dissent.