Molden v. State

750 N.E.2d 448, 2001 Ind. App. LEXIS 1130, 2001 WL 722825
CourtIndiana Court of Appeals
DecidedJune 28, 2001
Docket49A04-0010-CR-448
StatusPublished
Cited by45 cases

This text of 750 N.E.2d 448 (Molden v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Indiana Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Molden v. State, 750 N.E.2d 448, 2001 Ind. App. LEXIS 1130, 2001 WL 722825 (Ind. Ct. App. 2001).

Opinion

OPINION

NAJAM, Judge.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE

David Molden appeals his eight-year sentence following his plea of guilty. Mol-den raises a single issue for our review, namely, whether the trial court erred when it failed to award him eredit against his sentence for the time he spent in pretrial home detention. 1

We affiem.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

In January 1998, the State arrested and charged Molden with several crimes related to his operation of a male prostitution service called "Just Boys." Molden spent sixty-eight days in jail before posting bond on March 21, 1998. As a condition of his release, the trial court placed Molden on electronic home detention.

In April 2000, Molden pleaded guilty to Possession of Child Pornography, a Class A misdemeanor; Sexual Misconduct with a Minor, a Class C felony; and two counts of Promoting Prostitution, a Class C felony. On June 29, 2000, the trial court sentenced Molden to eight years executed and credited him with sixty-eight days for the time he spent in jail prior to posting bond. The court, however, did not award Molden credit against his sentence for the 831 days he spent in electronic home detention. This appeal followed.

DISCUSSION AND DECISION

Because pre-sentence jail time credit is a matter of statutory right, trial courts generally do not have discretion in awarding or denying such credit. See Weaver v. State, 725 N.E.2d 945, 947 (Ind.Ct.App.2000). However, those sentencing decisions not mandated by statute are within the discretion of the trial court and will be reversed only upon a showing of abuse of that discretion. Cf. Jones v. State, 698 N.E.2d 289, 291 (Ind.1998) (relating to post-judgment sentence not pretrial confinement). Molden argues here that he is entitled to credit for time served, as opposed to good time credit, for the 831 days he served on pretrial home detention. See Purcell v. State, 721 N.E.2d 220, 222 (Ind.1999) (distinguishing "good time ered-it," the credit a prisoner receives for good behavior and educational attainment, from "credit for time served," the credit toward the sentence a prisoner receives for time actually served). Specifically, Molden argues here that, because a convicted person serving his sentence on home detention is entitled to credit for time served toward a *450 subsequent prison sentence if the court revokes the home detention under Indiana Code Section 85-88-2.6-5, a person in pretrial home detention is likewise entitled to credit for time served against any eventual sentence. Id. We cannot agree.

In Purcell, the defendant pleaded guilty to Driving While Suspended as a Habitual Traffic Violator, and the trial court sentenced him to three years' electronic home detention under the supervision of a community corrections program. After spending 690 days on home detention, the defendant violated the terms of the program. The trial court revoked the home detention and ordered him to serve his original three-year sentence in prison. In doing so, the trial court declined to award the defendant sentence credit for the time served on home detention. Our supreme court disapproved and remanded to the trial court with instructions to eredit the defendant with the 690 days he spent on home detention. Id. at 224. The court based its conclusion on Indiana Code Seetion 85-38-2.6-5, which reads in part: "If a person who is placed [in a community corrections program] violates the terms of the placement, the court may, after a hearing ... [revoke the placement and commit the person to the department of correction for the remainder of the person's sentence." (Emphasis added). The court concluded that the term "remainder" means that a defendant whose home detention has been revoked must receive credit for the time spent on home detention. Id. at 228. Otherwise, if a defendant were not entitled to credit for time served, the commitment would not be for the "remainder" of the offender's sentence but for the entire sentence. Id. The essential holding in Purcell is that a defendant convicted and sentenced to home detention is entitled to receive credit for time served against any subsequent incarceration, if the court later revokes the home detention. Molden seeks to analogize Purcell's holding to this case. But unlike the defendant in Purcell, Molden had not yet been convicted and was serving a stint of pretrial home detention. The statutes the Purcell court relied on in reaching its decision 2 clearly do not apply to cireumstances where the defendant is on home detention awaiting trial or sentencing and seeks credit for time served against his eventual sentence. 3 Indeed, the Purcell court noted that distinction when it commented in a footnote as follows:

Although not directly before us today, we have revisited the question [of pretrial home detention] and conclude that a trial court is within its discretion to deny a defendant credit toward [his] sentence for pretrial time served on home detention. Absent legislative direction, we believe that a defendant is only entitled to credit toward sentence for pretrial time served in a prison, jaill,] or other facility [that] imposes substantially similar restrictions upon personal liberty. In this regard, we return to and adopt Judge Sullivan's conclusion in [Capes v. State, 615 N.E.2d 450, 455 (Ind.Ct.App.1993) ].

Id. at 224 fun. 6.

In Capes, this court concluded that a person who is confined in home detention *451 awaiting trial should not earn sentence credit under Indiana Code Section 35-50-6-3. Capes, 615 N.E.2d at 455. We noted that time spent in home detention is not identical to time spent in jail or prison and held that only when a person has been confined in a prison, county jail, or any facility which imposes substantially similar restrictions upon personal liberty is a person entitled to credit against his sentence for time served prior to trial. 4 Id.

The question of sentence credit for pretrial home detention was not before the supreme court in Purcell. And the supreme court does not decide important questions of law in footnotes. Allstate In-demmity Co. v. Brown, 696 N.E.2d 92, 95 (Ind.Ct.App.1998). But the court squarely addressed the question, and it left no doubt how pretrial home detention should be treated when it adopted Judge Sullivan's conclusion in Capes. Accordingly, we hold in this case that the trial court acted within its discretion when it denied Molden sentence credit for time spent in pretrial home detention.

Even if we were to disregard the Purcell footnote on pretrial home detention, we would still reach the same result under Franklin v. State, 685 N.E.2d 1062 (Ind. 1997), overruled on other grounds by Purcell v.

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Bluebook (online)
750 N.E.2d 448, 2001 Ind. App. LEXIS 1130, 2001 WL 722825, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/molden-v-state-indctapp-2001.