Do Juveniles Get Credit for Time Served on a Commitment?

Attorney Answer

Almost certainly not, if what your grandchildren received were one-year juvenile commitments. New Mexico courts have held that credit for time already spent in detention belongs to a youth actually sentenced as an adult — not to a child given a juvenile disposition.

The general credit statute, NMSA 1978, § 31-20-12, entitles a person who is sentenced as an adult to credit against the sentence for time already spent in presentence confinement. The limiting words there are doing real work.

The two juvenile tracks are different and the labels are not interchangeable. A "serious youthful offender" is defined by § 31-18-15.2(A) as a person fifteen to eighteen charged with and indicted or bound over for first degree murder; for that category, § 31-18-15.3(B) provides that time spent in a juvenile detention facility before trial shall count toward completion of any sentence imposed. A "youthful offender" is the separate category governed by § 32A-2-20, where the court has discretion either to impose an adult sentence — after findings that the child is not amenable to treatment under § 32A-2-20(B)–(C) — or to impose juvenile sanctions under § 32A-2-19. A one-year commitment of the kind you describe is a juvenile disposition under § 32A-2-19(B)(1)(a), not an adult sentence.

State v. Nanco, 2012-NMCA-109, 288 P.3d 527, decided this directly and decided it against the child. A youth charged with first degree murder at fifteen was found to have committed the lesser delinquent acts of voluntary manslaughter and tampering with evidence, and received a juvenile disposition. The Court of Appeals held the credit provisions of §§ 31-18-15.3 and 31-20-12 apply only to a serious youthful offender who is sentenced as an adult, and denied him credit for the twenty-five months he had already spent in juvenile detention. Because the credit statutes speak of a "sentence," the court held the Legislature did not intend that credit to reach juvenile dispositions.

What you can do

1. Find out which track each grandchild was actually on: an adult sentence, or a juvenile disposition. That single fact decides the credit question. 2. Get a copy of each disposition order. Ask the parent or legal guardian to request it, or ask the child's defense attorney directly. 3. If either child was in fact sentenced as an adult, have the attorney raise credit with the sentencing court — that is where the credit claim belongs. 4. If it is a one-year juvenile commitment, shift focus from credit to what is actually available: review of the disposition, release planning, and treatment placement, all through counsel. 5. For information, go through the parent or guardian or the child's attorney. Juvenile cases are closed proceedings, and that is why nobody has been telling you anything — it is not personal. 6. Ask the children's court clerk in the district where each case was filed what a family member may obtain and what the parent or guardian must request.