COURT OF APPEALS
DECISION
DATED AND FILED
July 8, 2008
David R. Schanker
Clerk of Court of Appeals
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NOTICE
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This opinion is subject to
further editing. If published, the
official version will appear in the bound volume of the Official
Reports.
A party may file with the
Supreme Court a petition to review an adverse decision by the Court of
Appeals. See Wis. Stat. § 808.10 and Rule 809.62.
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Appeal No.
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STATE OF WISCONSIN
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IN COURT OF
APPEALS
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DISTRICT I
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State of Wisconsin,
Plaintiff-Respondent,
v.
Lawrence Griffin, Jr.,
Defendant-Appellant.
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APPEAL
from orders of the circuit court for Milwaukee
County: Mel
Flanagan, Judge. Affirmed.
Before Curley, P.J., Fine and Kessler, JJ.
¶1 PER CURIAM. Lawrence
Griffin, Jr.,
appeals pro se from circuit court
orders denying his motion for sentence credit and requests for
reconsideration. The circuit court
denied the motions because Griffin
did not meet the criteria for sentence credit established in Wis. Stat. § 973.155(1)(a)
(2005-06). Because Griffin
failed to demonstrate that he was entitled to sentence credit, we affirm the
circuit court’s orders.
¶2 Griffin’s appeal No. 2007AP1336-CR
arises from two crimes to which Griffin
pled guilty in 2001. On the first count,
he received a six-month jail sentence and on the second count, he received a
two-year prison sentence. A third count
was dismissed and “read in” at sentencing.
In 2007, Griffin
sought sentence credit, which was denied because the sentence on that case had
expired.
¶3 Relative to appeal No. 2007AP1337-CR, Griffin was convicted in October 2004. He received a forty-two-month prison
sentence, of which a minimum of eighteen months was to be in initial
confinement. He received no sentence
credit. The circuit court stayed the
sentence, however, and imposed a two-year period of probation. The circuit court initially denied Griffin sentence credit for time spent in custody, but,
upon Griffin’s motion, the circuit court granted
Griffin eight
days of credit.
¶4 In the third appeal, Griffin
had been convicted in 2006 of two crimes and had been sentenced to a total of
six years, nine months’ incarceration, each consecutive to all other sentences,
with Griffin to
serve a minimum of three years in initial confinement. The circuit court denied Griffin’s request for sentence credit.
¶5 Griffin’s
motion for sentence credit related to his convictions in 2004 and 2006. He argued that his sentences in those cases
should be adjusted under Wis. Stat. § 973.195
because of his good conduct and progress toward rehabilitation while
incarcerated. The district attorney
objected to the request, and the circuit court, after reviewing records
associated with Griffin’s incarceration,
concluded that conduct reports Griffin
accrued while incarcerated indicated that sentence adjustment was not
appropriate. The circuit court further
concluded that the “full time designated for initial confinement at sentencing
is necessary to punish and deter the defendant, especially under circumstances
where the defendant was given an opportunity to conform his conduct on
probation.” On appeal, Griffin does not challenge this determination
by the circuit court, and we will not consider it further.
¶6 Griffin then sought sentence credit several more times, each
time arguing that he should be granted sentence credit for time he spent on
probation or extended supervision in the 2004 and 2006 cases. This remains Griffin’s position on appeal, as
he argues that the “fact” that he was required to remain in Wisconsin “while on
probation or parole,” means that he was in constructive custody and therefore
subject to prosecution for escape. See State v. Magnuson, 2000 WI 19, ¶31,
233 Wis. 2d 40, 606 N.W.2d 536 (“[F]or purposes of sentence credit an
offender’s status constitutes custody whenever the offender is subject to an
escape charge for leaving that status”).
¶7 The circuit court rejected Griffin’s argument, as do we. Wisconsin
Stat. § 946.42(1)(b) defines escape to mean leaving custody “in any
manner without lawful permission or authority.”
The legislature has, however, defined custody for purposes of an escape
charge to exclude “the custody of a probationer, parolee, or person on extended
supervision by the department of corrections … unless the person is in
actual custody or is subject to a confinement order under
s. 973.09(4).” See § 946.42(1)(a).
Thus, to the extent Griffin
is arguing that he should be granted credit for time spent on probation,
parole, or extended supervision, he was not entitled to credit because he was
not “subject to an escape charge for leaving that status.” See
Magnuson,
233 Wis. 2d
40, ¶31. Because Griffin has not demonstrated that he was
denied sentence credit to which he was entitled, we affirm the circuit court’s
orders.
By the Court.—Orders affirmed.
This
opinion will not be published. See Wis. Stat. Rule 809.23(1)(b)5.