Opinion
A-13814
11-20-2024
MICHAEL ALAN LONGINY III, Appellant, v. STATE OF ALASKA, Appellee.
Doug Miller, Law Office of Douglas S. Miller, Anchorage, under contract with the Office of Public Advocacy, for the Appellant. Thomas C. Mooney-Myers, Assistant Attorney General, Anchorage, and Treg R. Taylor, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.
UNPUBLISHED See Alaska Appellate Rule 214(d)
Appeal from the Superior Court, Third Judicial District, Palmer Trial Court No. 3PA-20-01492 CI, Jonathan A. Woodman, Judge.
Doug Miller, Law Office of Douglas S. Miller, Anchorage, under contract with the Office of Public Advocacy, for the Appellant.
Thomas C. Mooney-Myers, Assistant Attorney General, Anchorage, and Treg R. Taylor, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.
Before: Allard, Chief Judge, and Harbison and Terrell, Judges.
SUMMARY DISPOSITION
Michael Alan Longiny III pleaded guilty to a consolidated robbery count and was sentenced to a 5-year term of imprisonment (the 2015 case). The Department of Corrections (DOC) calculated Longiny's maximum release date as November 19, 2020. Longiny sought post-conviction relief, alleging that his release date in the 2015 case was improperly calculated. The superior court dismissed Longiny's case as moot. Longiny now appeals.
The pertinent facts are as follows. On March 21, 2019, Longiny was released onto mandatory parole in the 2015 case. He had 609 days of good-time credits, which were available to be imposed as a parole revocation sentence if he violated parole conditions. Longiny was returned to custody for a three-day period in June 2019.
Longiny was re-released on mandatory parole after his brief incarceration in June 2019. He remained on parole until he was arrested on October 23, 2019, for evidence tampering, and was charged with that offense in 2019 (the 2019 case).
At oral argument, Longiny's counsel informed this Court that Longiny received a 2-year sentence in the 2019 case. Review of the court system's CourtView database shows that the case was disposed of at a November 24, 2021, change-of-plea/sentencing hearing.
The Parole Board reimposed the remaining 606 days of time and made Longiny ineligible to return to parole supervision. DOC updated Longiny's time accounting, calculating that, if Longiny served the full 606 days in custody, his maximum release date would be June 19, 2021. But DOC awarded Longiny good-time credits equal to one-third of the 606-day parole revocation sentence (202 days). It calculated his projected release date from the incarceration portion of his parole revocation sentence (also his new maximum release date) as November 29, 2020.
22 AAC 20.275 provides: "A prisoner whose mandatory parole is revoked is required to serve a term equal to the difference between the date of release on mandatory parole and the maximum release date, unless the board revokes only a portion of parole as reflected in the board's order. This term is reduced by good time after revocation." (Emphasis added.) In other words, an inmate is awarded good-time credits on a parole revocation sentence. Because the 606-day parole revocation sentence (treated as an independent sentence) is less than 2 years, Longiny was subject to unconditional release once he had served the parole revocation sentence minus good-time credits.
Longiny subsequently sought post-conviction relief, alleging that DOC's post-parole revocation time accounting was incorrect. The superior court declined to reach the merits, however, concluding (after receiving input from the parties) that Longiny's claims were moot.
The superior court erred in concluding that Longiny's application for postconviction relief was moot. Longiny was held in custody on both the 2015 case and the 2019 case at the same time. If he were entitled to relief in the 2015 case, this would shorten the sentence in that case, and the sentence in the 2019 case would begin on an earlier date.
The court also erroneously characterized Longiny as seeking to engage in the prohibited practice of time-banking. This case does not present the same factual basis or policy concerns present in Marker v. State, 829 P.2d 1191, 1195 (Alaska App. 1992).
See, e.g., United States v. Al-Arian, 514 F.3d 1184, 1189 (11th Cir. 2008) (stating that if the appeals court reversed the basis of the district court's contempt order, "the time Al-Arian served pursuant to the civil contempt order would be credited towards the sentence he is serving pursuant to his guilty plea. Hence, this appeal is not moot."); Werber v. United States, 149 F.3d 172, 176 (2d Cir. 1998) (stating that "this appeal is not moot, because resolution of the sentencing issue will affect how long Werber is in jail, albeit on a different sentence"); United States ex rel. Monaghan v. Burke, 196 F.2d 785, 786 n.1 (3d Cir. 1952) (concluding that a challenge to a 1930 sentence was not moot because any excess time served on that case could be credited against a 1946 sentence); Seilhamer v. Pa. Bd. of Prob. & Parole, 996 A.2d 40, 42 n.2 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2010) ("[B]ecause any error in the recalculation of the maximum date on Seilhamer's original sentence could impact the timing of Seilhamer's new state sentence, and because the Commonwealth continues to exercise custody and control over Seilhamer such that this Court could award him relief, the present matter is not moot.").
While we conclude that Longiny's case was not moot, we also conclude that Longiny's substantive contentions did not establish a prima facie claim for relief. Our case law subsequent to the superior court's dismissal of this action has rejected the primary legal claims advanced by Longiny.
Longiny first claims that extending his period of incarceration past the original maximum release date of November 19, 2020, calculated by DOC, violated the post-Senate Bill 91 version of AS 33.16.220(i). But we held in Roller v. State that "this provision prohibited extending the period of parole past a parolee's original maximum release date, but not from extending the period of incarceration past that date."
Roller v. State, 539 P.3d 518, 520 (Alaska App. 2023) (emphasis added).
Longiny's second argument is that earned compliance credits acted to "reduce [his] period of parole," which he equates to the amount of time that could be imposed for a parole revocation sentence. But we recognized in Roller that the period of parole supervision is distinct from the amount of time that is available to be reimposed as a parole revocation sentence, directly contradicting Longiny's contention.
Roller, 539 P.3d at 520.
Longiny also contends that the 2019 amendments to AS 33.16.270 could not be applied to him because the applicability clause for the 2019 legislation said that the amendments only applied to "conduct" occurring on or after the effective date of the 2019 bill. Longiny asserts that "conduct" in that clause referred to the commission of a new criminal offense. We rejected that contention in Summerall v. State. There we concluded that "conduct" referred to the commission of a parole or probation violation or the successful service of parole or probation supervision.
Summerall v. State, 553 P.3d 1255, 1258-62 (Alaska App. 2024).
Our case law did resolve one of Longiny's legal claims in his favor - his contention that DOC's policy of awarding earned compliance credits on a calendarmonth system violated the plain language of AS 33.16.270, which required credits to be awarded for every 30-day period spent in compliance with parole conditions.Longiny is correct that he was entitled to credits for each 30-day period spent in compliance on parole between March 21 and June 25, 2019, and June 28 and October 23, 2019. But those credits would only act to reduce his period of parole supervision and Longiny would still have been subject to parole supervision when his parole was revoked in January 2020.
Roller, 539 P.3d at 529.
For the reasons stated above, we AFFIRM the superior court's dismissal of Longiny's amended post-conviction relief application.