Section 27.24 Credit for Jail Time

• Library: Criminal Practice 2012 Supp

G. (§27.24) Credit for Jail Time

A defendant’s sentence of imprisonment begins when the defendant is received into the Department of Corrections or other ordered place of confinement. If the defendant has been confined in a jail, a prison, or other custody during the period after the offense occurred and before the defendant’s sentence of imprisonment begins, the defendant is usually entitled to a credit for the time of the confinement if it was related to the offense the defendant will be starting the sentence of imprisonment for. Section 558.031.1, RSMo 2000. There are restrictions or limitations on the credit for the confined time. “Such credit shall be applied only once when sentences are consecutive.” Section 558.031.1(1). The credit will only be applied if the defendant was in custody in the state of Missouri (unless the custody was compelled exclusively by a Missouri order). Section 558.031.1(2). Further, the sentencing court may, in its discretion, give the defendant credit toward the sentence for any period of probation or parole. See §§ 559.100.2 and 559.036.3, RSMo 2000.

Other restrictions or limitations apply when a defendant escapes from custody by interrupting the jail time credit to be applied, § 558.031.3, or when a sentence is vacated and a new sentence imposed for the same offense, § 558.031.4. In the case of a vacated sentence, all of the time that the defendant has served under the vacated sentence is to be credited to the new sentence unless the time has already been credited to another sentence under § 558.031.1.

A brief history of the courts’ interpretations of § 558.031 should be looked at. In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled in State ex rel. Jones v. Cooksey, 830 S.W.2d 421, 425 (Mo. banc 1992), that a sentencing court does not have jurisdiction to determine the amount of jail time to be credited to a defendant but that it was the Department of Corrections that makes that determination. In 1995, there was an amendment to the statute. In 1999, in Goings v. Missouri Department of Corrections,
6 S.W.3d 906 (Mo. banc 1999), the Supreme Court heard the appeal of a denial of a declaratory judgment action in which the defendant had asked to be given credit for jail time served. The defendant, Goings, while incarcerated in the Department, challenged the Department’s denial of credit for certain time served. The Supreme Court found that Goings was entitled to credit because the time served was “related to” the current offense and that the...