Hemphill v. State

1998 OK CR 7, 954 P.2d 148, 69 O.B.A.J. 592, 1998 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 11, 1998 WL 45069
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma
DecidedFebruary 5, 1998
DocketO-96-910
StatusPublished
Cited by38 cases

This text of 1998 OK CR 7 (Hemphill v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hemphill v. State, 1998 OK CR 7, 954 P.2d 148, 69 O.B.A.J. 592, 1998 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 11, 1998 WL 45069 (Okla. Ct. App. 1998).

Opinions

ACCELERATED DOCKET ORDER

¶ 1 The above-named Appellant, James Hemphill, appeals from a May 17,1996 Order in the District Court of Ottawa County revoking his suspended sentence in Case No. CF-90-294. His appeal was regularly assigned to this Court’s Accelerated Docket under Section XI, Rules of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, Title 22, Ch. 18, App. (1997). Oral argument was held on September 11, 1997, and the Court duly considered Appellant’s one proposition of error raised upon appeal:

Proposition
Because it appears that Mr. Hemphill served his one year sentence in less than seven months, the expiration date of his sentence was advanced by five months; therefore the motion to revoke was filed after the sentence had run, and Mr. Hemp-hill should be released from custody.

¶2 After hearing oral argument and after a thorough consideration of Appellant’s proposition of error and the entire record before us on appeal, by a vote of four (4) to one (1), we affirm. Because Appellant’s circumstances present a situation not specifically addressed by any previously published opinion of this Court, the basis for the Court’s decision in this appeal warrants further discussion.

¶ 3 A sentence which has been entered and ordered suspended by a district court may not be revoked “for any cause unless a petition setting forth the grounds for such revocation is filed by the district attorney.” 22 O.S.Supp.1996, § 991b. Such a petition must be filed prior to the expiration of the suspended sentence, otherwise the district court’s power and authority to revoke the suspension terminates. Degraffenreid v. State, 599 P.2d 1107, 1109 (Okl.Cr.1979). Appellant’s single claim of error is that the District Court’s revocation order was unlawful because the State’s petition to revoke was filed after the period of suspension had expired.

¶ 4 The factual foundation for Appellant’s claim lies within the course of events which preceded the District Court’s May 17, 1996 revocation order. It begins with the five-year suspended sentence Appellant received on May 22, 1991, following an agreed plea of guilty to the offense of Injury of a Minor Child (Child Beating), After Former Conviction of a Felony. On October 7,1992, following revocation proceedings, the District Court entered an order which revoked one year of this five-year suspended sentence. Appellant was ordered to serve this one-year term in the custody of the Department of [150]*150Corrections (DOC). On February 13, 1996, the State filed in the trial court a “Motion to Revoke Suspended Judgment and Sentence” which requested revocation of the remaining balance of Appellant’s original May 22, 1991 five-year suspended sentence. It is this February 13, 1996 Motion to Revoke upon which the District Court’s authority to issue its May 17, 1996 revocation order is founded.

¶ 5 Appellant challenges the District Court’s jurisdiction on the premise he was able to discharge in approximately seven months the one year DOC term handed him on October 7, 1992. For this reason, he believes his May 22, 1991, five-year suspended sentence expired and the jurisdiction of the trial court lapsed before the State filed its February 13, 1996 Motion to Revoke. Under Appellant’s theory, because he is credited by DOC for one calendar year’s service for the seven-month period he spent in prison, his overall sentence should likewise be credited for one calendar year’s service which would thereby shorten the calendar length of Appellant’s five-year sentence by five months.1 Consequently, Appellant concludes his original five-year sentence legally expired five months before May 22,1996 (the five-year anniversary of his May 22, 1991 guilty plea, judgment, and sentence). If this is indeed the legal effect of Appellant’s early discharge from DOC custody, the State’s February 13, 1996 application to revoke would have been too late to have vested the trial court with authority to revoke.

¶ 6 Whether Appellant served his one-year term from his first revocation proceeding in less than twelve months does not have any consequence upon the length of time within which the State had to file its motion to revoke Appellant’s suspended sentence. Our state’s sentencing statutes contemplate that when a defendant is sentenced he receives only one sentence, not multiple ones. The suspension order is not a separate sentence but is instead a condition placed upon the execution of the sentence. See 22 O.S.Supp.1996, § 991a(A)(l) (a dis-trict court may “[sjuspend the execution of sentence in whole or in part, with or without probation”). The statutory procedure for revoking a suspended sentence is consistent with this concept. “The court may revoke a portion of the sentence and leave the remaining part not revoked, but suspended for the remainder of the term of the sentence, and under the provisions applying to it.” 22 O.S. Supp. 1996, § 991b.2 This statute provides a district court, by its partial revocation, is merely taking away a portion of the suspended term, leaving any remaining portion of the time suspended intact “under the provisions applying to it.”

¶ 7 This is consistent with this Court’s previous decisions. In Kaemper v. Page, 449 P.2d 732 (Okl.Cr.1969), a defendant received a ten-year suspended sentence. Subsequently, five years of the defendant’s suspended sentence were revoked. After his release from prison on the first five-year term, a second revocation returned the defendant to prison to serve the remaining five years. In a dispute with prison officials wherein defendant complained he was being processed as though he had been given two separate five-year sentences, the Court held defendant was “serving the balance of a ten-year sentence and that his two periods of incarceration in the State Penitentiary are under the authority of a single judgment and sentence for a ten-year term.” Id. at 733.

¶ 8 In Roberson v. State, 560 P.2d 1039 (Okl.Cr.1977), the defendant received a five-year suspended sentence on September 14, 1970. On February 27, 1975, the trial court entered a revocation order stating “the same is hereby REVOKED, as to the First One [151]*151Year, the last Four Years to remain suspended, subject [to] being revoked for any subsequent violation of the terms of the original order.” Id. at 1039. After defendant’s release, the State, on March, 11, 1976, filed an application to revoke defendant’s suspended sentence. In reversing the revocation order which sustained the State’s application, the Court held:

We thus conclude that while the trial court, during the term of the original judgment and sentence, could have revoked the suspended sentence in whole or in part, up to five years, it was without authority to order additional suspended time past the term of the original judgment and sentence; accordingly, we conclude the trial court was without jurisdiction to issue any order in the case after September 14,1975.

Id. at 1040 (italics in original).

¶ 9 Just as a defendant’s suspended sentence may not be lengthened by intervening revocation orders occurring within the original term of sentence, a suspended sentence may not be shortened by intervening revocations.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

MARTIN v. STATE
2024 OK CR 30 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 2024)
COTTON v. STATE
2024 OK CR 21 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 2024)
BRYANT v. STATE
2022 OK CR 5 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 2022)
Perdue v. Crow
N.D. Oklahoma, 2021
Vaughn v. Klinger
Tenth Circuit, 2018
TRYON v. STATE
2018 OK CR 20 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 2018)
WELLS v. STATE
2016 OK CR 28 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 2016)
Moss v. Oklahoma Department of Corrections
2016 OK CR 23 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 2016)
MOSS v. OKLAHOMA DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS
2016 OK CR 23 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 2016)
FRIDAY v. STATE
2016 OK CR 16 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 2016)
State v. Salathiel
2013 OK CR 16 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 2013)
Johnston v. Jones
447 F. App'x 912 (Tenth Circuit, 2012)
Grimes v. State
2011 OK CR 16 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 2011)
Warnick v. Booher
2006 OK CR 41 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 2006)
Torres v. State
2005 OK CR 17 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 2005)
Miller v. State
2004 OK CR 29 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 2004)
Frederick v. State
2001 OK CR 34 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 2001)
Hemphill v. State
1998 OK CR 7 (Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma, 1998)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
1998 OK CR 7, 954 P.2d 148, 69 O.B.A.J. 592, 1998 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 11, 1998 WL 45069, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hemphill-v-state-oklacrimapp-1998.