State ex rel. Ford v. Seawell
This text of 446 So. 2d 882 (State ex rel. Ford v. Seawell) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.
Opinion
Plaintiff, an Angola inmate, appealed the dismissal of his writ of mandamus to require that defendants correct his parole eligibility date and bring him before the parole board.
The issues on appeal are the applicability of the writ of mandamus and the application of good time credit to plaintiffs sentence.
In 1976 plaintiff was sentenced to serve four eighteen year sentences and a five year sentence, all to run concurrently. After an appeal in 1979, one of his eighteen year sentences, for burglary of a pharmacy, was reduced to nine years, to run concurrently with the other sentences but to be served without benefit of parole, probation or suspension of sentence.
Plaintiff filed a writ of mandamus alleging that defendants, record custodians of the Department of Corrections, erred in setting his parole eligibility date as September 18,1984, by requiring that he serve the full nine year sentence prior to becoming eligible for parole and in failing to give him credit for good time on the nine year sentence. Defendants filed a peremptory exception of no cause or right of action which was denied.
The court, upon the commissioner’s recommendation, held that the Department of Corrections had the authority to establish procedures for the awarding of good time credit and that this was an exercise of discretion, not subject to mandamus even if the method selected did not give maximum benefit to some prisoners. The writ of mandamus would lie if the calculations were not uniformly or correctly made.
A writ of mandamus may be used to compel performance when there is no element of discretion left and the act is purely ministerial. La.C.C.P. art. 3863.1 Clarco Pipeline Co. v. East Baton Rouge Parish, 383 So.2d 1296 (La.App. 1st Cir.1980), writ dismissed, 386 So.2d 355 (La.1980). Mandamus will also lie to correct an arbitrary abuse of discretion, but will not be issued in doubtful cases. Smith v. City of Alexandria, 300 So.2d 561 (La.App. 3rd Cir.1974), writ denied, 303 So.2d 186, 187 (La.1974).
La.R.S. 15:571.3, as it read at the time of plaintiffs sentencing and as it currently reads, gives the Department of Corrections the power to establish procedures for awarding and recording good time and determining when it has been earned toward diminution of a sentence. A twenty-five day per month limit on good time credit existed at the time plaintiff was convicted.2
[884]*884The testimony of Paul Seawell, a records system analyst for the Department of Corrections, stated that with concurrent terms, the policy was to make the subject serve the longest term possible. Good time could only be earned on one sentence when concurrent sentences were being served, to keep the prisoner within the twenty-five day limit on good time credit. He further testified that the Department of Corrections has set up a uniform procedure in which a parallel of concurrent sentences is done to determine which will control good time credit, which is allowed on only one sentence.
We find no evidence that the procedures used for awarding good time are not applied uniformly or that the application of credit to only one of several concurrent sentences in a manner resulting in longer incarceration is an abuse of discretion.
For these reasons, the trial court judgment is affirmed with costs assessed to the plaintiff.
AFFIRMED.
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446 So. 2d 882, 1984 La. App. LEXIS 8242, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-ex-rel-ford-v-seawell-lactapp-1984.