United States v. Beaty

          ORDER RE MOTION TO CORRECT

          SHARON L. GLEASON, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

         Before the Court at Docket 82 is Defendant Joshua Beaty's Motion to Correct Typographical or Other Clerical Error Pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 36. The Government did not file any response to the motion. Oral argument was not requested and was not necessary to the Court's decision.

         BACKGROUND

         On January 22, 2010, Joshua Beaty was arrested in Wasilla, Alaska, for the alleged burglaries of two residences. Mr. Beaty was subsequently convicted of Burglary in the First Degree in Alaska case 3PA-10-02192CR. On July 26, 2012, Mr. Beaty was sentenced to six years in prison in that case. He was given a delayed remand, for which he failed to report.^[1]

         On October 26, 2012, Mr. Beaty was arrested for an attempted home burglary in Big Lake, Alaska.^[2] Mr. Beaty was found to be in possession of two firearms and 2.18 grams of heroin. Charges for both state and federal crimes arose from the incident.

         On June 12, 2013, Mr. Beaty pled guilty in this case to Felon in Possession of Firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(a)(2).^[3] On October 1, 2013, Mr. Beaty was sentenced to 96 months' imprisonment for that crime.^[4] The Amended Judgment stated that “[t]his term is to be served concurrently with the sentence imposed in the State case 3PA-12-02890CR and credit for time served effective as of October 26, 2012.”^[5] At the time of Mr. Beaty's federal sentencing, he had been incarcerated since October 26, 2012, the date of his arrest. However, Mr. Beaty was not sentenced in State case 3PA-12-02890CR until in August 2015, when he was sentenced to a ten-year term of imprisonment for Burglary, followed by a three-year term of imprisonment for Assault.^[6]

         At the sentencing in this case, statements made by the parties and the Court indicated a mistaken belief that Mr. Beaty's ongoing incarceration was based solely on Mr. Beaty's arrest for the October 26, 2012 conduct that was the basis of both this federal conviction and the subsequent sentence imposed in 3PA-12-02890CR.^[7] However, on August 11, 2017, Jose Santana of the Bureau of Prisons sent a letter to this Court explaining that “[a]t the time the federal sentence was imposed, Mr. Beaty was in the primary custody of the State of Alaska serving a six (6) year state sentence on un-related burglary charges in State case number 3PA-S10-02192CR, beginning September 1, 2012, with a release date of August 28, 2018.”^[8] The letter explained that Mr. Beaty would not begin to serve his sentence in 3PA-12-02890CR until September 1, 2018. Therefore, “[t]he Bureau of Prisons (Bureau) cannot commence Mr. Beaty's federal sentence until September 1, 2018, when the 6-year term of imprisonment in case number 3PA-S10-02192CR is complete, as the federal sentence was not ordered to run concurrently with this state case.”^[9]

         On October 19, 2017, Mr. Beaty filed the instant Motion to Correct, asserting that this Court should use its authority under Rule 36 to issue an amended judgment providing that “Mr. Beaty's federal sentence run concurrently with both 3PA-12-02890CR and 3PA-S10-02192CR.”^[10]

         DISCUSSION

         Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 36 provides that the Court “may at any time correct a clerical error in a judgment, order, or other part of the record, or correct an error in the record arising from oversight or omission.” Mr. Beaty maintains that this Court erred by failing to specify in the Amended Judgment that his sentence was to run concurrently with his sentence in state case 3PA-10-02192CR.

         Mr. Beaty notes that this Court's Amended Judgment “directed Mr. Beaty to receive credit for time spent in custody as of the date of his arrest, October 26, 2012, ” and suggests that “the court may have been unaware that Mr. Beaty was being held in custody in a separate state case or inadvertently omitted the additional case number from the Judgment.”^[11]

         The Court only intended for the federal sentence in this case to run concurrently with Mr. Beaty's sentence in 3PA-12-02890CR. This is consistent with the terms of the parties' plea agreement, which states:

The parties agree to recommend in accordance with U.S.S.G. §5G1.3(b)(2) that the defendant's term of imprisonment, if any, run concurrently with any term of undischarged imprisonment imposed in the case of State of Alaska v. Joshua R. Beaty, 3PA-12-02890CR, State of Alaska Criminal Superior Court, Third Judicial District at Palmer, filed on October 27, 2012.^[12]

         During the change of plea hearing, the Court stated that “the parties have agreed to recommend that the term of imprisonment run concurrently with any term of undischarged imprisonment in a State case, specifically 3PA-12-2890CR.”^[13] Furthermore, the Judgment itself stated that the federal sentence was to run concurrently only with the sentence imposed in state ...