COA orders woman’s sentence revised to include credit time

The Indiana Court of Appeals found Thursday that a trial court incorrectly calculated the sentence a woman should serve in the Department of Correction after she had her probation revoked.

After pleading guilty in 2012 to Class D felony operating a vehicle while intoxicated, Casie Rudisel was sentenced to three years in the DOC with all that time suspended except for 180 days served on home detention as a direct commitment. She was later placed on work release, but over the next two years, did not comply with the terms of her sentence and even left Freedbirds Solution Center where she was placed. At a September 2014 hearing, the trial court revoked her probation and ordered her to serve the remainder of her sentence in the DOC. She would serve two years and six months in the DOC with credit for five actual days served in jail.

Rudisel disputed the amount of credit time she was awarded, believing she should have received credit for 104 days she served in jail as well as the five days the judge awarded her. The trial court denied her motion.

In Casie S. Rudisel v. State of Indiana, 84A01-1410-CR-425, Judge Elaine Brown wrote that Rudisel previously received credit for 104 days for actual time served. The presumption from Robinson v. State, 805 N.E.2d 783, 786 (Ind. 2004) – that sentencing judgments that fail to expressly designate credit time earned shall be understood by the court and the DOC to automatically award the number of credit time days equal to the number of pre-sentence confinement days – indicates that the court also awarded her 104 days of credit time. But the trial court order did not note that, but instead just credit for the five days. Rudisel was entitled to 109 days for incarceration plus 109 days of credit time for a total credit of 218 days.

The 2014 order was in excess of the maximum sentence for a Class D felony, so the COA remanded for the trial court to take into account the 2018 days and resentence Rudisel within the statutory limit.