ANDERSON v. WASHBURN (2019)

ORDER

This matter came before the Court upon the application for permission to appeal of the State of Tennessee. In 1994, Steven Anderson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, especially aggravated robbery, and aggravated robbery, for which he received an effective fifty-year sentence. On February 12, 2018, Mr. Anderson, proceeding pro se, filed in the Trousdale County Circuit Court his fourth petition for writ of habeas corpus. The petition asserted that, in sentencing him, the trial court failed to award Mr. Anderson pretrial jail credit for thirteen days of detention at a juvenile center prior to his transfer to the Shelby County Criminal Court.

On March 19, 2018, the habeas corpus court determined that Mr. Anderson’s claims lacked merit and had been previously determined; consequently, it denied the petition. Mr. Anderson filed a timely notice of appeal.

On appeal, the Court of Criminal Appeals, in a divided opinion, analyzed this Court’s decision in State v. Brown, 479 S.W.3d 200, 212-13 (Tenn. 2015). The majority found that Brown did not say “that an erroneous denial of pretrial jail credit would not be cognizable in habeas corpus.” Anderson v. Washburn, No. M2018-00661-CCA-R3-HC, 2019 WL 453957, at *5 (Tenn. Crim. App. Feb. 5, 2019). It concluded that “a properly-filed petition for writ of habeas corpus remains a viable avenue for relief on a claim that the trial court failed to award pretrial jail credit,” and went on to award Mr. Anderson habeas corpus relief. Id. at *7. On this basis, the Court of Criminal Appeals reversed and vacated the order of the habeas corpus court and remanded the case to the habeas corpus court to “transfer the case to the trial court for the entry of amended judgments to reflect pretrial jail credit for the time between December 10 and December 23, 1992.” Id.

In Anderson, Judge Williams filed a dissenting opinion, based on his interpretation of this Court’s decision in Brown. The dissent stated in part: “I read Brown to hold that any failure to award pretrial jail credits on a judgment that was the result of inaccurate computation should be corrected as a clerical mistake under Tennessee Rule of Criminal Procedure 36.” Id. at *8.

We agree with the Anderson dissent. In Brown, this Court sought to provide clarity to lower courts by stating that “a trial court’s failure to award pretrial jail credits does not render the sentence illegal and is insufficient, therefore, to establish a colorable claim for relief under Rule 36.1.” Brown, 479 S.W.3d at 213 (emphasis in original); see also State v. Wooden, 478 S.W.3d 585, 594-595 (Tenn. 2015) (“[W]e conclude that the definition of ‘illegal sentence’ in Rule 36.1 is coextensive with, and not broader than, the definition of the term in the habeas corpus context.”). Respectfully, if the failure to award pretrial jail credits does not render the sentence illegal, such a failure would not render the judgment otherwise illegal. See Cantrell v. Easterling, 346 S.W.3d 445, 456 (Tenn. 2011) (“[A] judgment in a criminal case includes both a conviction and a sentence. This Court has previously recognized that the adjudication of guilt–that is, the conviction–and the sentence are distinct and severable components of the judgment.” (emphasis in original)). Thus, a claim based on a trial court’s failure to award pretrial jail credits is not cognizable in the context of a petition for habeas corpus relief. Rather, the appropriate avenue for relief would be to seek correction of a clerical mistake pursuant to Tennessee Rule of Criminal Procedure 36.

Accordingly, the State’s application for permission to appeal is hereby granted, the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals is reversed, and the judgment of the habeas corpus court is reinstated. We remand the case to the habeas corpus court with directions to transfer the matter to the trial court, in order for the trial court to address any failure to award pretrial jail credit as a clerical mistake under Tennessee Rule of Criminal Procedure 36.

PER CURIAM