State v. Roy
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State v. Roy
Concurring Opinion
I concur in the decision that appellant Misty Roy is not entitled to jail credit on her 2011 third-degree controlled-substance conviction for the time she spent in the custody of the Red Lake Nation in 2017. I agree that the time spent in the custody of the Red Lake Nation was not "in connection with" the 2011 third-degree controlled-substance conviction. Accordingly, Roy is not entitled to jail credit under Minn. R. Crim. P. 27.03, subd. 4(B) (stating that a criminal defendant is entitled to custody credit for time spent in custody "in connection with the offense or behavioral incident being sentenced"). I write separately to make clear what the court does not-and cannot-decide today.
Our decisions on jail credit have evolved significantly over the last several decades. Minnesota Rule of Criminal Procedure 27.03, subd. 4(B), was adopted in 1975. The current rule provides:
When pronouncing sentence the court must ... [s]tate the number of days spent in custody in connection with the offense or behavioral incident being sentenced. That credit must be deducted from the sentence and term of imprisonment....
(Emphasis added.)
Beginning in the mid-1980s, we took notice of the legislatively imposed sentencing guidelines that shifted Minnesota from indeterminate sentencing to a determinate system and recognized that a separate ground for authorizing jail credit existed: preventing de facto sentencing departures by the conversion of concurrent sentences into consecutive sentences. State v. Dulski ,
We further noted that allowing such a de facto departure departs from the value of proportionate sentencing underlying the sentencing guidelines:
In any event, since the Carlton County sentence must be presumed to be a concurrent sentence, defendant was entitled to receive the credit he sought against both the Carlton County sentence and the Ramsey County sentence. Any other result would mean that the length of time served on the sentence for the first offense would turn on when the sentence is executed, something which is subject to manipulation and to irrelevant factors such as whether the defendant pleads guilty or insists on his right to a trial and whether he has to be transported from one county to another for the revocation proceeding.
By 1990, we acknowledged this shift in analysis explicitly:
We have re-addressed the issue of credit in a series of cases since the adoption of the Sentencing Guidelines. At first we focused on whether the time in jail was served "in connection with" the offense of conviction against which credit was sought. State v. Vaughn ,361 N.W.2d 54 , 59 (Minn. 1985). Later decisions shifted the focus to insuring that denial of that jail credit did not in effect convert a presumptively concurrent sentence into a de facto consecutive sentence and that the total length of time the defendant served did not turn on irrelevancies or on things subject to manipulation by the prosecutor.
State v. Goar ,
Later, in Asfaha v. State , we held that a defendant is entitled to jail credit for time spent at a treatment facility in which the level of confinement was equivalent to that of a jail.
In short, our jurisprudence has evolved from the mid-1980s such that jail credit is properly awarded if the defendant was in custody "in connection with" the offense being sentenced or if failing to award jail credit results in a de facto departure under the sentencing guidelines by converting a concurrent sentence into a consecutive sentence. In fact, this distinction is embedded in the sentencing guidelines rules concerning concurrent/consecutive sentences. A concurrent sentence is presumed in cases when (1) "an offender is convicted of multiple current offenses" or (2) "there is a prior felony sentence that has not expired or been discharged." Minn. Sent. Guidelines 2.F. Moreover, the overarching concern in awarding jail credit is to ensure the proportionality in sentencing that the Legislature intended when it adopted the sentencing guidelines as well as fundamental fairness and equity.
Considering this evolution in our approach to jail credit and the value we now place on proportionality, fundamental fairness, and avoiding de facto upward departures, the dichotomy between the interjurisdictional rule (when the defendant is held in custody in a different jurisdiction on a non-Minnesota crime) and the intrajurisdictional rule (when the defendant is held in custody in Minnesota) is unsupportable. For purposes of jail credit, there is no principled reason to treat a person held in custody on a controlled-substance violation by Red Lake authorities (or by another state for that matter) any differently from a person held in custody by Minnesota authorities for the same offense. See State v. Garcia ,
We have not addressed the interjurisdictional rule since 1986.
The issue of conversion of a concurrent sentence into a consecutive sentence was not squarely raised in either Willis or Linehan . In Willis , the Illinois court acquitted the defendant of the Illinois charge, so there was no sentence to which the subsequent Minnesota sentence could run concurrently. 376 N.W.2d at 429 & n.2.
In addition, since 1978, we have recognized that a state sentence imposed for an offense subsequent to a federal sentence should run concurrent to that federal sentence. State v. Wakefield ,
The practical import of Wakefield is that Minnesota courts should give jail credit for time spent in non-Minnesota custody on non-Minnesota offenses where the second sentence is to run concurrent to the first. Notably, Wakefield involved a crime committed before the adoption of Minn. R. Crim. P. 27.03, subd. 4(B), and so we did not consider the "in connection with" test that we applied in our later interjurisdictional cases. Linehan ,
All that said, the validity of the interjurisdictional/intrajurisdictional dichotomy in jail credit jurisprudence and the issue of whether proportionality, fundamental fairness, and avoiding de facto upward departures should be considered when a defendant is held in custody in another jurisdiction on an unrelated offense is not properly presented here. In fact, the court agrees that the question of a de facto upward departure is not before us. Supra at 347 ("[I]t is unclear what the district court could have made Roy's Minnesota sentence concurrent or consecutive to ."). The record does not include any information about the Red Lake conviction or sentence. Under those circumstances, I agree that we cannot and should not reach the question of whether failing to give Roy jail credit for the time spent in Red Lake custody is a de facto conversion of a concurrent sentence to a consecutive sentence.
Because the only issue properly before us is whether Roy was in Red Lake custody "in connection with" the 2011 third-degree possession offense and because I agree with the court that Roy was not in Red Lake custody "in connection with" the 2011 offense, I concur.
Before implementation of Rule 27.03, we did not recognize a right to jail credit for time held in custody in connection with the offense being sentenced. See State v. Saldana ,
During the mid-1980s when we last addressed interjurisdictional jail credit, our analysis of jail credit was in flux even in so-called intrajurisdictional cases. Compare Dulski ,
In Willis , we expressly acknowledged in footnote 2 that the concurrent/consecutive sentencing issue was not at issue. 376 N.W.2d at 429 n.2. We distinguished Dulski and Patricelli on the ground that the cases involved both (1) a jail credit against concurrent sentences and (2) the State's participation as a party to both of the relevant criminal charges. Id. We then noted that neither of those factors were in play in Willis . Id. Rather, we emphasized the "in connection with" test: "In the instant case, however, the defendant was held on criminal charges issued in one state and hold was placed upon him for unrelated charges issued out of another state." Id. (emphasis added).
Opinion of the Court
This case involves the issue of whether a defendant can receive custody credit against her Minnesota sentence for time spent in the custody of the Red Lake Nation. Appellant Misty Kay Roy was convicted of third-degree controlled-substance crime in 2011 in Beltrami County District Court. The district court stayed imposition of her sentence and placed her on probation. In 2017, while she was still on probation for her Minnesota offense, Roy was convicted of two gross misdemeanors in Red Lake Tribal Court. She served her sentence in the Red Lake Detention Center and was released directly to Beltrami County, because the district court had revoked her stay. Roy asked the district court to grant her credit for her incarceration time in the Red Lake Detention Center against her district court sentence for third-degree controlled-substance crime. The district court held that Roy was not entitled to custody credit for time served in Red Lake, and the court of appeals affirmed. We hold that Roy is not entitled to custody credit against her Minnesota sentence for the time she spent in Red Lake custody, because her Minnesota conviction was not the sole reason for her Red Lake custody. Accordingly, we affirm.
*344FACTS
In 2011, Roy was charged with third-degree controlled-substance crime,
The Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians is a federally recognized Indian tribe with a reservation within Minnesota. On July 15, 2017, Roy was charged in Red Lake Tribal Court with committing two gross misdemeanors while on the Red Lake Reservation. Roy was convicted of both counts and released pending sentencing. On September 14, 2017, Roy's corrections agent filed a probation-violation report, alleging that Roy violated her probation, in part by failing to remain law-abiding, based on her Red Lake convictions. On September 15, 2017, the district court revoked the stay of imposition of sentence for Roy's 2011 conviction. The court ordered that Roy be apprehended and taken into custody. Roy was not, however, immediately taken into Beltrami County custody. Roy was sentenced in Red Lake Tribal Court on October 5, 2017, and her sentence at the Red Lake Detention Center began on October 22. Roy was released directly from Red Lake custody to Beltrami County custody on November 12, 2017.
On November 27, 2017, Roy appeared in district court and requested that her 2011 sentence be executed and that she be given custody credit for the time she served from October 22, 2017, to November 12, 2017 (21 days) in the Red Lake Detention Center. The district court sentenced Roy to 21 months in prison. It granted Roy 86 days of custody credit, which included the time she had previously served in Beltrami County detention from 2011 to 2017, as well as the time she had served since being taken into custody by Beltrami County on November 12, 2017. But the court denied Roy credit for the time she served in the Red Lake Detention Center. The court said that it was the law, and "not just a policy," to decline to extend credit for time served in Red Lake detention because Red Lake is a sovereign nation.
The court of appeals affirmed. State v. Roy ,
ANALYSIS
We must decide whether Roy should receive credit against her Minnesota sentence for the time she spent in the Red Lake Detention Center. The district court's decision whether to award custody credit "is a mixed question of fact and law; the court must determine the circumstances of the custody the defendant seeks credit for, and then apply the rules to those circumstances." State v. Johnson ,
A defendant bears the burden of establishing that she is entitled to credit for time spent in custody. State v. Clarkin ,
*345Johnson ,
When determining whether to award custody credit, we distinguish between intrajurisdictional custody (custody within Minnesota) and interjurisdictional custody (custody outside of Minnesota). In evaluating credit for intrajurisdictional custody, we seek to avoid four potential concerns: "de facto conversion of a concurrent sentence into a consecutive sentence; indigent persons serving effectively longer sentences as a result of their inability to post bail; irrelevant factors ... affecting the length of incarceration; and manipulation of charging dates by the prosecutor so as to increase the length of incarceration." Johnson ,
We apply a different test for determining interjurisdictional custody credit. For a defendant to receive credit on a Minnesota sentence for time spent in another jurisdiction's custody, the defendant's Minnesota offense must be "the sole reason" for the custody. State v. Mattson ,
Roy argues that, on these facts, we should apply our intrajurisdictional rule rather than the interjurisdictional rule. A threshold question before we can apply either rule is whether the Red Lake Nation is within the jurisdiction of the State of Minnesota. It is not.
Although-as Roy argues-the Red Lake Nation is within the borders of the state of Minnesota, it is an independent sovereign nation with jurisdiction over the members of its tribe. See Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians v. State ,
Under the test for determining interjurisdictional custody credit, a defendant can only receive credit for time spent in the custody of another jurisdiction if the time was served solely in connection with the Minnesota offense.
*346Mattson , 376 N.W.2d at 416. It is undisputed that the time Roy spent in the Red Lake Detention Center was in connection with her two Red Lake convictions. Therefore, Roy's Minnesota conviction cannot be the sole reason for her detention, and the time she spent in the Red Lake Detention Center does not qualify for custody credit. See Willis , 376 N.W.2d at 428-29 (holding that the defendant was not entitled to custody credit for time he was held in Illinois "both on the Illinois charges and on a Minnesota hold").
Roy's argument that she is entitled to custody credit under the interjurisdictional rule clearly fails. Roy makes two arguments in an attempt to avoid this result. First, she argues that denying her credit for the time she served in the Red Lake Detention Center would transform her sentences into de facto consecutive sentences and would increase the length of her incarceration based on irrelevant factors that are subject to manipulation. But these are factors we consider when we apply the intrajurisdictional custody credit rule, not the interjurisdictional rule. Compare Johnson ,
Second, Roy argues that even if the interjurisdictional rule applies, it is not a "hard and fast rule[ ]." She claims that we have awarded credit against a Minnesota sentence for time that a defendant spent in custody in connection with another jurisdiction's charges if both jurisdictions "prefer concurrent sentencing and neither says a sentence is to be run consecutive." As support, Roy cites State v. Wakefield ,
In Wakefield , the defendant was first sentenced for a federal offense and was then sentenced for a Minnesota offense. Id . The Minnesota district court did not specify whether his Minnesota sentence was concurrent or consecutive to his federal sentence.
Here, Roy's Red Lake Tribal Court sentence was imposed on October 5, 2017, and Beltrami County District Court imposed an executed 21-month sentence for third-degree controlled-substance crime on November 27, 2017. Roy argues that because the district court did not specify whether her Minnesota sentence was concurrent or consecutive, it is presumed to be concurrent. See
We do not find Wakefield persuasive because Wakefield is not a custody credit case. It involved the related, but separate issue, of concurrent versus consecutive sentencing. In Wakefield , the question was whether a defendant who had a second sentence imposed (his Minnesota sentence) while he was serving another sentence (his federal sentence) should have these sentences run concurrently, rather than having to serve the second sentence after the first one was complete.
*347Moreover, it is unclear what the district court could have made Roy's Minnesota sentence concurrent or consecutive to. In order for a sentence to be concurrent or consecutive, the defendant must be subject to another sentence at the time the court imposes the second sentence. See
Given the unique and sovereign status of the Red Lake Nation, the interjurisdictional rule applies to Roy's custody credit calculation.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the decision of the court of appeals.
Affirmed.
Concurring, Thissen, J.
CONCURRENCE
This federal statute is the codification of Public Law Number 83-280,
Roy also argues that the district court's denial of credit violated her right to equal protection under the law because non-Indian probationers who committed the same conduct on the reservation would have received credit against their sentences. Roy did not raise an equal protection claim before the district court. We decline to reach Roy's equal protection claim because she raised it for the first time on appeal. See State v. Sorenson ,
Reference
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- STATE of Minnesota v. Misty Kay ROY
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