"Conditional Release" Term is Consecutive to "Supervised Release" Term When Still Incarcerated

State v. Roy, Minn.Ct.App., 4/11/2016.  This appeal is about the calculation of conditional release time.  Recall that an executed sentence consists of two parts:  the first part is serving 2/3 of the pronounced sentence; the second part is "supervised release" for the remaining 1/3 of the sentence (parole).  For certain offenses, however, there is an additional part of the sentence, "conditional release." Supervised and conditional release terms overlap.  

Unless, it turns out, that the supervised release term is spent still in prison on something else.  That's Mr. Roy.  A court sentenced Mr. Roy to an executed sentence of sixty months for first degree robbery. While serving that sentence, the state charged him with, and he was convicted of, third degree criminal sexual conduct.  A court imposed a concurrent executed sentence of twenty-eight months for that sex offense.  By this time Mr. Roy had served the entire twenty-eight months plus two more months.  

The Department of Corrections determined that Mr. Roy finished serving the twenty-eight month CSC sentence on the day he got sentenced on it, and that his conditional release term began to run the very next day.  Mr. Roy countered that when he reached the two-third's point of that twenty-eight month sentence his status on that sentence changed to "supervised release" the following day. This meant that his conditional release term also began the next day and that he should get credit toward the conditional release term for the remaining one-third of the twenty-eight month sentence.

The court of appeals concludes that "supervised release" only happens to guys who are "in the community," and thus rejects Mr. Roy's argument that it's not where you are but what you are that matters. The court says that because Mr. Roy was still in prison during what would otherwise have been the "in the community" supervised release term he does not get credit toward the supervised release term.  Along the way the court overrules a previous opinion, State v. Koperski, 611 N.W.2d 569 (Minn.Ct.App. 2000) that said exactly what Mr. Roy was arguing.