Court Opinion

ID: 9522963
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:34:29.38621+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:04:24.900945
License: Public Domain

BAKER, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority's holding that the trial court properly denied Robinson's Motion to Correct Erroneous Sentence. In a recent case, Crow v. State, 797 N.E.2d 319, 322 (Ind.Ct.App.2003), a panel of this court held that Indiana Code section 35-38-3-2(b)(4), requires the trial court to include in its judgment of conviction both credit for time served and good time credit earned under Indiana Code section 35-50-6-3(a). The Court explained its rationale as follows:
First, as a policy matter, once a defendant has been committed to the DOC, the DOC is in the best position to handle the assignment and modification of ered-it classes based on inmate behavior while incarcerated. Conversely, our case law on this issue fails to explain why the DOC is in the best position to assign credit time for a defendant who is a pre-trial detainee or awaiting sentencing in a local jail facility. Rather, the trial court, with assistance from the local sheriff, is in a better position to determine whether a defendant who has been incarcerated locally is entitled to Class I credit. The presumption is that the defendant earns Class I credit for each day he is incarcerated awaiting trial or sentencing. I.C. § 35-30-6-3(a). However, as we acknowledged in Robinson [v. State], 789 N.E.2d [965] at 968 [ (Ind.App.2003) ], under Indiana Administrative Code, title 210, rule 3-117, each sheriff is required to establish rules for inmate conduct and may, as a disciplinary action for violation of such rules, reassign prisoners to a lower credit time class or deprive them of earned credit time. Indeed, the Pre Sentence Investigation Report, which the county probation department submits to the trial court before sentencing, can easily include information for the court on the *1207defendant's behavior and the defendant's earned credit time while awaiting trial and sentencing.
Second, it made sense in cases decided under the former credit time statutes that our courts would defer to the DOC on issues of good time credit for defendants incarcerated awaiting trial and sentencing because, as we have already noted, under the old statutory scheme, a trial court could only make recommendations on credit time. However, the current credit time statutes do not limit the trial court's authority to that of making recommendations. And the judgment of conviction statute requires a trial court to include good time credit earned in its judgment of conviction. 1.C. § 85-38-3-2(b)(4).
Id. at 323-24.
I find such reasoning persuasive and now reject the rationale espoused by the majority that is set forth in Hatchett v. State, 794 N.E.2d 544 (Ind.Ct.App.2003), wherein we determined that the omission of good time credit was only "ministerial" and thus did not constitute error. I similarly recede from the position we advanced in Best v. State, No. 32A01-0305-PC-191, 797 N.E.2d 873 (September 24, 2003), an unpublished memorandum decision that cited Hatchett for the proposition that the trial court's omission of good time eredit in the abstract of judgment was not error.
In light of Crow, I would find that it was error for the trial court to impose its sentence without giving Robinson 192 days of Class I good time credit, which he earned while in jail awaiting sentence under Indiana Code section 35-50-6-8(@a). I would reverse and remand with instructions to issue a corrected Abstract of Judgment to reflect the good time credit Robinson has earned.