State v. AndersonState v. Anderson
- Reporters:
- ,
- Before:
- Sheldon, Sheldon, Prescott, Pellegrino
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Syllabus
The defendant, who had been convicted of assault in the second degree and reckless endangerment in the second degree, appealed to this court from the trial court‘s denial in part and dismissal in part of his motion to correct an illegal sentence, and from the dismissal of his motion to revise the judgment mittimus. The defendant had been in the custody of the Psychiatric Security Review Board and confined to a state hospital after previously having been found not guilty of various charges by reason of mental disease or defect in 2008. While confined at the hospital, the defendant commenced a pattern of assaulting other patients and hospital staff and various charges were brought against him related thereto. When he failed to post bond for those charges, he was transferred to a correctional facility. He subsequently was found guilty of assault in the second degree and reckless endangerment in the second degree. Eleven months before the defendant‘s release date on his 2008 conviction, the trial court sentenced him on September 12, 2016, on the assault and reckless endangerment charges to a term of incarceration that was to run consecutively to the term of incarceration that he was then serving. The court remanded him to the custody of the Commissioner of Correction instead of ordering that he be returned to the state hospital. The defendant claimed in his motion to correct that the trial court lacked the authority to remand him to the custody of the Commissioner of Correction and that he, instead, should have been returned to the state hospital where he had been serving his 2008 sentence. The defendant further claimed that all time that he had spent in prison completing his 2008 sentence as presentence jail credit should be credited toward the consecutive sentence on the assault and reckless endangerment charges. He further claimed that the judgment mittimus should be revised to implement the court‘s order that he receive all pretrial credits to which he was entitled. The court denied the defendant‘s motion to correct, concluding that it was not appropriate to allow the defendant to remain at the state hospital as a consequence of his prior insanity acquittal when he had seriously injured a staff member and endangered others, and that the defendant had not proved that he suffered from a mental disease or defect at the time he committed the crimes that led to his conviction on the assault and reckless endangerment charges. The court also dismissed the defendant‘s request for pretrial jail credit for lack of jurisdiction, ruling that it did not constitute a viable claim for relief under the applicable rule of practice (
Procedural History
Substitute information charging the defendant with the crime of assault in the second degree and with four counts of the crime of reckless endangerment in the second degree, brought to the Superior Court in the judicial district of Middlesex and tried to the court, Vitale, J.; judgment of guilty, from which the defendant appealed to this court, which affirmed the judgment of the trial court; thereafter, the Supreme Court denied the defendant‘s petition for certification to appeal; subsequently, the court, Vitale, J., denied in part and dismissed in part the defendant‘s motion to correct an illegal sentence, and the defendant appealed to this court; thereafter, the court, Vitale, J., dismissed the defendant‘s motion to revise or correct the judgment mittimus, and the defendant filed an amended appeal. Affirmed.
Monte P. Radler, public defender, for the appellant (defendant).
Nancy L. Walker, assistant state‘s attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Peter A. McShane, former state‘s attorney, and Jeffrey Doskos, senior assistant state‘s attorney, for the appellee (state).
Opinion
The following procedural history is relevant to the defendant‘s claims on appeal. “On January 10, 2008, the [defendant] entered guilty pleas, pursuant to the Alford doctrine,1 to three counts of burglary . . . and one count of larceny . . . and admitted a violation of probation. The state entered a nolle prosequi as to the remaining charges. On March 6, 2008, the trial court sentenced the [defendant] to a total effective sentence of five years imprisonment and three years of special parole. The [defendant] did not file a direct appeal.” (Footnote in original; internal quotation marks omitted.) Anderson v. Commissioner of Correction, 308 Conn. 456, 458, 64 A.3d 325 (2013). On May 6, 2011, the defendant received a consecutive sentence of five years imprisonment on additional charges. The release date for that sentence, to which we have referred as “the 2008 sentence,” was calculated by the Department of Correction (department) to be August 5, 2017. “Following an
“Upon arriving at the hospital, the defendant allegedly commenced a pattern of assaulting other patients and hospital staff. As a result of his conduct on various dates from October, 2013, through February, 2014, he was charged with several misdemeanors.7 Thereafter, in April, 2014, he was charged with, inter alia, two counts of assault of health care personnel, a class C felony. See
“‘On June 18, 2014, the trial court, Gold, J. . . . concluded that, although the defendant
The defendant appealed to our Supreme Court, claiming “that the trial court‘s order setting a monetary bond as a condition of release and, because he was unable to post that bond, his subsequent transfer to the custody of the Commissioner of Correction were in violation of his constitutional rights, namely, his right to bail under the state constitution and his right to procedural due process under the federal constitution.” Id., 299. The court rejected each of the defendant‘s claims, and further held “that the
As a result of the incidents that occurred while he was at Whiting, the defendant was convicted, after a court trial, of one count of assault in the second degree in violation of
The court posited: “The question now is the nature of an appropriate sentence and more practically where the sentence will be served once it is imposed under the unique circumstances presented, and to ensure that [the defendant] receives the opportunity for appropriate treatment.” The court then explained: “The . . . circumstances [of this case] are unique in that the defendant is presently now serving the aforementioned ten year sentence while also simultaneously an insanity acquittee, again, to speak colloquially, on different charges, and is now facing sentencing on subsequent crimes he committed at Whiting for which this court has found him criminally responsible. Thus, the defendant‘s sentencing presents the preliminary questions of whether and how the defendant can be moved to the [department‘s] jurisdiction for . . . these subsequent criminal offenses when he‘s still under technically the jurisdiction of the board although simultaneously also serving a criminal sentence in a different matter.”
The court further explained: “The court has considered the sentencing goals as well as all the information before it, including balancing the defendant‘s rights to mental health treatment if needed with that of the rights of the victims under . . . the Connecticut constitution to be protected from the accused. . . .
“[T]he court intends to impose a sentence and order that the defendant be immediately transferred to the custody of the [department]. The court believes this action to be appropriate based on the serious nature of these allegations and is a consequence of the defendant‘s seemingly unabated proclivity to assault or threaten staff in a treatment setting or in corrections.
On January 20, 2017, the defendant filed a motion to correct “an illegal disposition and/or sentence imposed in an illegal manner.” In his motion, the defendant argued that the court did not have the authority, when sentencing him on September 12, 2016, to remand him to the custody of the Commissioner of Correction. He claimed that because the sentence that was imposed on September 12, 2016, was to be served consecutively to the sentence that he was then serving, which was the 2008 sentence, he should have been returned to Whiting to continue serving the 2008 sentence, which is where he had been serving the 2008 sentence until he was transferred to the department as a pretrial detainee. He argued that because he had not been restored to sanity and was still hospitalized as an insanity acquittee at the time of his September 12, 2016 sentencing, he was entitled to be treated for his mental disease or defect instead of being punished by incarceration. He also asked the court to award him credit toward his consecutive sentence for all time he had spent in jail as a pretrial detainee in this case, which he inadvertently neglected to request when he was sentenced. The state did not file a written objection to the defendant‘s motion.
At the hearing on the motion to correct, defense counsel explained that he was “not asking the [reviewing court] to review the sentence itself. This motion is directed to the orders of the court as far as imposing the sentence and the impact of the court‘s order on custody of [the defendant]. . . . I‘m proceeding specifically under the subsection [of
In response, the state argued that the defendant‘s motion should be denied. The state contended that the court properly imposed the September 12, 2016, sentence to run consecutively to the defendant‘s 2008 sentence. The state further argued that the court properly declined to remand the defendant to Whiting on September 12, 2016 as it was not a safe environment for the defendant or the staff or other patients receiving treatment there. The state also argued that the court did not have jurisdiction pursuant to
The court orally denied the defendant‘s motion to correct, citing the rationale on which it relied in imposing the September 12, 2016 sentence. The court also dismissed the defendant‘s request for pretrial jail credit for lack of jurisdiction because that request did not constitute a viable claim for relief under
We begin by setting forth the following relevant legal principles. “The Superior Court is a constitutional court of general jurisdiction. In the absence of statutory or constitutional provisions, the limits of its jurisdiction are delineated by the common law. . . . It is well established that under the common law a trial court has the discretionary power to modify or vacate a criminal judgment before the sentence has been executed. . . . This is so because the court loses jurisdiction over the case when the defendant is committed to the custody of the commissioner of correction and begins serving the sentence. . . . Because it is well established that the jurisdiction of the trial court terminates once a defendant has been sentenced, a trial court may no longer take any action affecting a defendant‘s sentence unless it expressly has been authorized to act. . . . [
“[A]n illegal sentence is essentially one [that] either exceeds the relevant statutory maximum limits, violates a defendant‘s right against double jeopardy, is ambiguous, or is internally contradictory. By contrast . . . [s]entences imposed in an illegal manner have been defined as being within the relevant statutory limits but . . . imposed in a way [that] violates [a] defendant‘s right . . . to be addressed personally at sentencing and to speak in mitigation of punishment . . . or his right to be sentenced by a judge relying on accurate information or considerations solely in the
“Recently, our Supreme Court explained, in addressing the trial court‘s dismissal on jurisdictional grounds of a motion to correct an illegal sentence that [t]he subject matter jurisdiction requirement may not be waived by any party, and also may be raised by a party, or by the court sua sponte, at any stage of the proceedings, including on appeal. . . . At issue is whether the defendant has raised a colorable claim within the scope of
“We review the [trial] court‘s denial of [a] defendant‘s motion to correct [an illegal] sentence under the abuse of discretion standard of review. . . . In reviewing claims that the trial court abused its discretion, great weight is given to the trial court‘s decision and every reasonable presumption is given in favor of its correctness. . . . We will reverse the trial court‘s ruling only if it could not reasonably conclude as it did.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Logan, 160 Conn. App. 282, 287, 125 A.3d 581 (2015), cert. denied, 321 Conn. 906, 135 A.3d 279 (2016). “Our determination of whether a motion to correct falls within the scope of
The defendant first claims that his 2016 sentence was imposed in an illegal manner because the court improperly ordered that he be immediately remanded to the custody of the Commissioner of Correction and incarcerated, instead of remanded to the custody of the board and returned to Whiting, where he had been serving his 2008 sentence.11 He claims: “By having imposed a consecutive sentence to an unexpired 2008 sentence, and subsequently ordering immediate imprisonment pursuant to the 2008 sentence, the trial court effectively modified the term of a valid judgment imposed by an earlier court without the legal authority to do so.” The defendant thus is arguing that he should have been sent back to Whiting on September 12, 2016 to finish serving his 2008 sentence, which has now expired. By way of relief, the defendant asks this court to “remand [this case] with instructions to the trial court to impose its original sentence for the convictions in this case retroactive to September 12, 2016.” The defendant explains: “The specific sentencing relief that [he] is seeking from this particular claim is retroactivity of the sentence imposed by [the] trial court from August 5, 2017, the estimated release date of the 2008 sentence, to its imposition date of September 12, 2016, an advance of [his] estimated release date from this sentence by nearly eleven months.”
The defendant‘s claim is misplaced because, even if we assume, arguendo, that the trial court should have returned him to Whiting instead of remanding him to prison,
The defendant‘s claim that the court erred in dismissing that portion of his motion to correct an illegal sentence in which he asserted that he was entitled to presentence credit for all time he had spent incarcerated in lieu of bail in this case, and his related request to revise his mittimus to implement the court‘s order that he receive all pretrial credits to which he was entitled, are likewise unavailing. As previously noted, the trial court‘s jurisdiction under
The judgment is affirmed.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.