Rollover Jail Credit

When a person has pretrial jail credit shared between multiple charges, and those charges result in consecutive sentences, the shared jail credit gets applied only once. Does it matter which individual sentence gets the credit? Let’s start with a refresher on the general rule for jail credit for consecutive sentences. Suppose a person is arrested and held in jail on both Charge A and Charge B for 5 months. He is convicted and receives consecutive sentences: 10-21 months for Conviction A, followed by 10-21 months for Conviction B. Under G.S. 15-196.2, the 5 months of jail credit are applied to only one of the individual sentences, because “creditable time shall not be multiplied by the number of consecutive offenses for which a defendant is imprisoned.” Had the sentences been allowed to run concurrently, G.S. 15-196.2 would have required the court to apply all 5 months of the shared jail credit to both sentences. Unfortunately, that’s the easy version of the rule. It’s not hard to come up with variations on the hypothetical where the pretrial credit for the two charges does not perfectly overlap. For instance, suppose the defendant is detained on Charge A for 2 months and released, then detained on Charge B for 2 months and released, and then later held on both charges together for 3 months. In that case the defendant would have been in custody for 5 months on each individual charge. But if the defendant receives consecutive sentences, the 3 months of shared credit can [...]