Court Opinion

ID: 9736717
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:03:27.524636+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:08.276383
License: Public Domain

MATHIAS, Judge,
concurring.
I concur that, under the unique and extraordinary facts presented to the court in this case, it was error not to credit Kincaid with his probation time previously served on the same offenses. However, I write separately to emphasize my belief that the result appropriately reached with regard to Kincaid is not a holding that should support broad application and extrapolations throughout Indiana's criminal justice system.
The critical feature in this case is that Kincaid was not credited with his probation time served on exactly the same offenses to which he pled guilty a second time after the original convictions were overturned on a post-conviction relief petition. The State does not dispute that the two different pleas were based on the same offense. Had the prosecutor offered, and had Kincaid pled guilty after his PCR relief to any of the other charges, except the exact offenses which were subject to post-conviction relief, there would have been no need for the trial court to credit the probation time at issue. See Kilpatrick v. State, 746 N.E.2d 52, 59 (Ind.2001) (stating the double jeopardy clause only prohibits multiple punishments for the same offense).
Probation remains a privilege and a matter of grace discretionary with the trial court. See Cox v. State, 706 N.E.2d 547, 549 (Ind.1999); Hubbard v. State, 683 N.E.2d 618, 620 (Ind.Ct.App.1997). It is usually, and in this case, the result of an extraordinary effort by the trial court to fashion an equitable and rehabilitative sentence individualized to a particular erimi-nal defendant. Probation is also often an attempt to give a defendant "a second chance" in that defendant's fight against alcohol or drug addiction. Probation allows the defendant to avoid incarceration and attempt to remain a productive part of society, rather than being removed from society with all of the attendant costs to the defendant, the defendant's family and to society at large. Here, after his first probation violation, the trial court tried to responsibly fashion a "third chance" for Kincaid.
What a trial court can never know is whether a defendant will later come to *720believe that his or her original plea was legally involuntary. While I join in the sentiment of footnote 6, I am not as certain of it as I would like to be.
I am also concerned that defining probation broadly as punishment will lead to new extrapolation that pretrial release on bond, with or without restrictions such as electronic monitoring, is "punishment" that should somehow qualify for eredit against a sentence ultimately imposed upon conviction. See Molden v. State, 750 N.E.2d 448, 451 (Ind.Ct.App.2001) (holding that pretrial time spent in electronic home detention need not be credited to sentenced time of incarceration). Similarly, if probation is "punishment," it is difficult to logically justify the sentencing procedure sanctioned in Sutton v. State, 562 N.E.2d 1310, 1314 (Ind.Ct.App.1990), which holds that presentence incarceration does not have to be credited to executed incarceration time that is made a condition of a probation sentence upon conviction. Above all, I am quite certain that we cannot foresee the final destination at the end of this new road.
For all of these reasons, I write in concurrence to emphasize what I believe to be the limited precedential value of Kincaid's unique facts and cireumstances.