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681 So. 2d 1104

Johnson v. State

Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama

Decided February 9, 1996

Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama · decided 1996-02-09

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“"Quick appeals from the circuit court's dismissal of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, in which he challenges the calculation of credit for time he spent in jail before trial. "Quick argues that he was not credited with the proper amount of time for the time he served in jail while awaiting trial. Specifically, Quick claims that he has been continuously incarcerated since he was arrested for burglary in 1995 and that the clerk is crediting him only with jail time accrued from the date of his acquittal on the charge of capital murder to the date he was sentenced on his burglary convictions. "The State moved to dismiss Quick's petition. In support of its response, the State offered the affidavit of Kathy Holt, correctional records director for the Department of Corrections, averring that Quick received 213 days of jail credit for each burglary conviction based on the certified report of the clerk of the circuit court in which Quick was convicted and sentenced, as required by § 15-18-5 , Ala. Code 1975. Attached to the affidavit were certified copies of the clerk's forms indicating the amount of credit Quick had accrued for time served. The trial judge subsequently dismissed the petition for the writ of habeas corpus. "Section 15-18-5 , Ala. Code 1975, requires that `actual time spent incarcerated pending trial shall be certified by the circuit clerk or district clerk on forms to be prescribed by the Board of Corrections.' Although the State's response indicates that the”

quoted by 2 later decisions, including Gunn v. State, 981 So. 2d 441 - Wilson v. State

Relies on 488 So. 2d 33 - Boutwell v. State · Mintz v. State · Mead v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1996-02-09

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently September 2011

7 state decisions

50199620002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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¶1

¶2The appellant, Donald Dwight Johnson, an inmate serving a 15-year sentence at Staton Correctional Facility for the unlawful distribution of a controlled substance, appeals from the circuit court's summary denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, wherein he challenges the calculation of credit for time he spent in jail pending his trial. The appellant claims that although he spent 12 months in jail awaiting trial, only 41 days of that time was credited to his sentence as required by §§ 15-18-5 and 15-18-7, Ala. Code 1975.

¶3Attached to the state's response to the appellant's petition is a computer printout of the appellant's "Inmate Summary" maintained by the Department of Corrections, which reflects that the appellant was credited with 41 days of pretrial jail time on his sentence in the unlawful distribution case, CC-90-2841, tried in the Jefferson County *1105 Circuit Court. The state's response also contains an affidavit from the director of records for the Department of Corrections averring that the appellant received the 41 days of jail credit based on the certified report of the clerk of the circuit court in which the appellant was convicted and sentenced, as set out in § 15-18-5.1 While the state's response indicates that the clerk of the sentencing court was the source for the 41-day figure, the state's response does not sufficiently address the what is the substance of the appellant's claim in his petition: that the clerk of the sentencing court either miscalculated or misreported the correct amount of pretrial jail time on the forms submitted to the Department of Corrections.

¶4"A petition for writ of habeas corpus is a proper procedure to test whether the State has properly calculated the amount of time the inmate must serve in prison." Mead v. State,475 So.2d 645 (Ala.Cr.App. 1985). See Hardy v. State, 534 So.2d 328 (Ala.Cr.App. 1986); Boutwell v. State, 488 So.2d 33 (Ala.Cr.App. 1986).

¶5We hold that the appellant's petition has sufficient merit to warrant a hearing to determine whether the clerk of the sentencing court properly calculated and reported the amount of the appellant's pretrial jail time in case no. CC-90-2841 and to ascertain how much time the appellant did spend in jail pending trial in that case.

¶6This case is hereby remanded to the circuit court for that court to conduct a hearing on this issue. A return to remand shall be filed with this court within 63 days.

¶7REMANDED WITH DIRECTIONS.*

¶8All Judges concur.

¶9

1 The state argues in its response that § 14-3-38, Ala. Code 1975, does not allow jail credit to be aggregated on concurrent sentences. We question, however, whether § 14-3-38 is even relevant to the claim raised by the appellant, because while the appellant's "Inmate Summary" reflects that the appellant was convicted and sentenced for several other offenses before and after his sentencing in the unlawful distribution case, it does not appear that the appellant is seeking to apply credit for time in jail accumulated in any other case toward his sentence in case no. CC-90-2841. See, e.g., Mintz v. State,675 So.2d 1356 (Ala.Cr.App. 1995).
* Note from the Reporter of Decisions: On August 23, 1996, on return to remand, the Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed the appeal, without opinion.

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