Court Opinion

ID: 9648676
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:32:14.211307+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:07:56.298190
License: Public Domain

Justice SAYLOR,
Concurring.
Pursuant to Section 9760(1) of the Judicial Code, I believe that express time credit was due for the time that Appellee spent in jail relative to at least one of the offenses that were the subject of his resentencing on violation of conditions of probation. See 42 Pa.C.S. § 9760(1) (requiring time credit “for all time spent in custody as a result of the criminal charge for which a prison sentence is imposed”); see also 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(b) (prescribing that a sentencing court’s alternatives available upon revocation of probation are the same as available at the time of the initial sentencing).1 In this regard, I would overrule Commonwealth v. Bowser, 783 A.2d 348 (Pa.Super.2001), which declined to recognize the requirement for such credit in the context of resentencing following violation of conditions of probation arising from a split sentence on a single offense, and in my view, thereby unduly limited the effect of Section 9760(l)’s plain language.2
*459I concur in the majority’s holding that mandamus relief is not available in this circumstance, however, since the General Assembly has designated the Post Conviction Relief Act, 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 9541-9546, as a means for obtaining collateral relief relative to an illegal sentence. See 42 Pa.C.S. § 9542. Nevertheless, in light of prevailing uncertainty concerning the breadth of the legality-of-sentence exception to general principles of waiver and preclusion (including the PCRA’s one-year time bar, see 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)) arising in the aftermath of this Court’s per curiam reversal in Commonwealth v. Wynn, 567 Pa. 183, 786 A.2d 202 (2001),3 I recognize that the present availability of relief to Appellee in the post-conviction setting is unsettled.

. As amicus curiae details, the probationary sentence giving rise to the resentencing was a component of a split sentence (i.e., sentencing on a single offense that combines elements of both incarceration and probation), or, more precisely, five overlapping, identical, concurrent, split sentences corresponding to the five charges as to which Appellee pled and was convicted. Thus, Section 9760(1) was facially implicated at the time that Appellee was resentenced in light of his violation of conditions of probation (since the identical charges giving rise to his custody also gave rise to the probationary term).

. Some of the complexity of our sentencing law arises from the failure to uniformly apply commonly understood procedures such as that which is prescribed by Section 9760(1). A trial court generally has the option of imposing an appropriate sentence up to the statutory maximum on resentencing in light of violations of conditions of probation; the courts merely should apply the straightforward, statutorily-prescribed rule requiring the affordance of credit for time that the defendant has spent in custody as a result of the charge for which the new sentence is imposed. See 42 Pa.C.S. § 9760(1). The alternative approach presently in practice results in unevenness and diminished *459clarity in sentencing, and, in my view, departs from the plain terms of the statute.

. See generally Commonwealth v. Roney, 581 Pa. 587, 600-01 n. 32, 866 A.2d 351, 359-60 n. 32, 2005 WL 106771 (Jan. 20, 2005); Commonwealth v. Aponte, 579 Pa. 246, 250 n. 1, 855 A.2d 800, 802 n. 1 (2004).