Background
Gregery Keeten pled guilty to armed robbery in 2012 and was placed on probation. In 2016, while still on probation, he was charged with misconduct involving weapons in a separate case. Keeten was arrested on a probation violation warrant and held without bail on the revocation case, though the court found him bailable on the weapons charge. A jury convicted Keeten of the weapons offense in 2018. The superior court then revoked probation in the armed robbery case and sentenced Keeten to consecutive terms: four years for armed robbery and ten years for the weapons conviction.
The court awarded Keeten 1,037 days of presentence incarceration credit on his armed robbery sentence but zero days on his weapons sentence. Keeten later filed a post-conviction relief petition arguing that 643 days of the credit—the time between his October 2016 arrest and July 2018 sentencing—should have been applied to the weapons sentence instead of the armed robbery sentence, contending the misallocation caused him to be held beyond his sentence expiration. The superior court summarily dismissed the petition.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals granted review but denied relief. Judge Becke, writing for a unanimous panel, held that the sentencing court correctly applied the 643 days of presentence incarceration credit to the armed robbery sentence in the probation revocation case. Under A.R.S. § 13-712(B), credit must be applied to time “actually spent in custody pursuant to an offense.” Because the record showed Keeten was taken into custody on a probation violation warrant and held without bail in the revocation case—even though he was simultaneously bailable on the weapons charge—his pretrial detention was “pursuant to” the probation revocation, not the new weapons charge.
The court also rejected Keeten’s procedural objection that the superior court dismissed his petition without obtaining a response from the State. The court noted that Arizona Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.9(a) gives the State 45 days to respond but does not make a response mandatory. The trial court waited until the response deadline passed before ruling, which was sufficient.
Key Takeaways
- Under A.R.S. § 13-712(B), presentence incarceration credit is applied to the case that is the legal basis for the defendant’s custody, not necessarily the case that resulted in trial. When a defendant is held without bail on a probation revocation warrant while simultaneously facing new charges, the credit attaches to the revocation case.
- A trial court may summarily dismiss a post-conviction petition after the State’s 45-day response period expires without requiring the State to file a response.
- An appellate court may affirm a trial court’s denial of post-conviction relief on any legally correct ground, even if the trial court relied on different reasoning.
Why It Matters
Presentence incarceration credit allocation frequently arises in cases involving simultaneous pending charges and probation revocation proceedings. This decision clarifies that the determining factor is the legal basis for the defendant’s pretrial detention—which case’s warrant or hold kept the defendant in custody—rather than which case ultimately went to trial. For criminal defense attorneys advising clients in this situation, the opinion underscores the importance of addressing credit allocation at the time of sentencing, when bail and custody records are most readily available.