United States District Court, D. Alaska
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 ...