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Ronnie O. Evansv.The State

CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
Docket No.A18A1895
DecidedMarch 5, 2019
JudgesCourt of Appeals of Georgia
Tags
CriminalCriminal LawCriminal ProcedureSentencingStatutory InterpretationReversalRemand
Case Summary

Ronnie Evans was convicted of misdemeanor driving under the influence and driving with defective or no headlights. The trial court imposed consecutive twelve-month sentences and ordered him to serve the full twenty-four months without early release, adding that any time released early would be served on probation. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded for resentencing. Georgia law assigns county inmate earned-time allowances to the custodian, not the sentencing judge. A court therefore may not require a defendant to serve a sentence day-for-day or convert any earned-time reduction into additional probation. Those conditions improperly usurped the custodian’s statutory authority. The court declined to consider Evans’s separate challenge to the headlights sentence because he abandoned it by offering no meaningful argument or supporting authority. The valid convictions remained, but the unlawful sentence conditions had to be removed.

Opinion

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