The Court of Appeals decided Henriquez v. State (h/t Indiana Law Blog). One issue was the language of IC 35-38-1-1(b) which provides:
When the court pronounces the sentence, the court shall advise the person that the person is sentenced for not less than the earliest release date and for not more than the maximum possible release date.
Instead of telling Henriquez his earliest release date and the latest release date, the sentencing court told him “he was sentenced for ‘not less than the earliest release date
and [] for not more than the maximum possible release date.'” This, of course, provides him with no meaningful information. Nevertheless, two members of the Court of Appeals decided this was acceptable because not being informed of the actual dates did not actually harm Henriquez and because it would be “incredibly difficult” for the trial court to interpret the actual dates. Figuring out sentencing times can be very complex.
The trial court would have to consider not only the term of the sentence but also the term of any other concurrent or consecutive sentence, credit time earned before sentencing, the maximum amount of credit time in the current credit class, possible educational credit time, and the possibility of parole and probation violations and revocations down the road.
The Court urged the General Assembly to reconsider the statute and the “unworkable obligation it places on our trial courts.”
I was just thinking of how much I would not want to represent a jailer if, having been told by a court to advise a prisoner of his maximum possible release date, the jailer decided it would be too hard to calculate and just told the prisoner, “the court wanted me to tell you that you would not be held past your maximum possible release date.” If we went to the judge and told the judge that the jailer offered no meaningful information to the inmate because figuring out the maximum release date would have been too complicated, my guess is that the judge would not be amused.
Judge Baker (the third member of the panel), for his part, dissented. He was willing to accept that the task mandated by the General Assembly was difficult but disagreed that it could, therefore, be ignored entirely.
[I] do believe that the clear statutory language requires the trial court to attempt to calculate the earliest date a defendant could be released and also the outside limit of the
possible actual time of incarceration. The mere fact that a statutory requirement is difficult to fulfill cannot possibly mean that it can be ignored altogether.
Good catch, Dog. This majority decision is disappointing. The statutory requirement is clear, if functionally a little murky. The minimalist reading of the statute by the majority reminds me a little of the apocryphal lesson in statutory construction presented by the infamous Judge Roy Bean. A man stood charged with killing a Chinaman. Judge Bean stated that “I’ve read this murder statute ten times and I can’t find anything in it about it being illegal to kill a Chinaman.”