As a parolee, it is crucial to understand when the court will reward you with time served and when the court will not. The last thing a parolee wants to hear at the end of a parole period is that the court is denying credit for time served. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dealt with this issue in EX PARTE SEAN PAUL LLORANCE.
When Can a Person Receive Credit for Time Served While on Parole?Under Texas law, a person can receive time served while out of jail on parole if he or she meets two factors. First, the person must not have committed a crime under Section 508.149(a) of the Government Code. Second, the person’s jail sentence must be shorter than the remaining sentence. Section 508.149(a) lists various offenses such as murder, capital murder, kidnapping, indecency with a child, sexual assault, and robbery, which prohibit a person from gaining time served while on parole.
In this case, the defendant had been charged with unauthorized motor vehicle use and sentenced to a seventeen-year jail sentence. He served two years in prison and was released on parole in 1993. The State treated the next fourteen years as time served for the defendant. In 2007, the defendant was arrested for robbery and the Board of Pardons and Paroles revoked the defendant’s parole. The Court also held that the defendant forfeited all of the time served while on parole due to the new robbery convictions. Facing three twenty-five year sentences in addition to the fourteen forfeited years, the defendant argued that he did not forfeit the fourteen years credited to him. The State argued that his arrest for robbery was a violation under Section 508.149(a) and that the defendant violated the terms of his parole.
The Court used the argument from Ex parte Hernandez, 275 S.W.3d 895, 898 (Tex. Crim. App. 2009), where the Court said that while a defendant is serving time for a crime named in Section 508.149(a) (murder, capital murder, kidnapping, indecency with a child, sexual assault, robbery, etc.) the defendant may not receive credit for any time served while on probation. In this case, however; the defendant was not in jail due to a crime under that specific section. Instead, the defendant’s crime was unauthorized motor vehicle use which is not a crime listed under Section 508.149(a) of the Government Code. The Court had the duty to release the defendant from his parole in 2008, so the defendant is due all of his time credit under Texas law.
Guest and Gray Law Firm is a full service civil and criminal defense law firm serving the entire DFW Metroplex including Dallas, Kaufman, Rockwall and surrounding counties. Our main office is in Forney, Texas where we have served the community since 1967. We also have office locations in Rockwall and Kaufman, Texas. Our team of lawyers is ready to help with any criminal law concern you have.