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Committee passes bill to count jail time as time served in probation revocation cases
Summary
House Bill 535 would change calculations so time spent in jail awaiting a probation-revocation adjudication counts as time served the same way it does in other sentencing contexts; sponsor said the change corrects a 2023 Court of Appeals decision (Kellum) that produced inconsistent results.
Representative Smith (chair) presented House Bill 535 (LC481478) to address uncertainty created by the 2023 Court of Appeals decision in Kellum. The sponsor said courts and the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) had reached inconsistent results about whether time spent in jail awaiting probation-revocation adjudication counts as time served for subsequent carceral sentences.
The sponsor described the practical problem: under the Kellum decision, time in jail prior to a revocation hearing could count only as time on probation, so GDC might ignore pre-hearing custody when calculating a new carceral sentence, producing a longer period behind bars than judges intended. Representative Smith said the bill would make probation-revocation counting consistent with other sentencing contexts so that "time sitting in jail awaiting adjudication of a case" counts as time served when appropriate.
The sponsor said the Department of Corrections supported the language after adding a clause to prevent credit when the sentence is tolled due to an individual's reporting issues. Committee members asked no further questions. The committee voted by voice to pass HB535; the transcript records the chair announcing the bill "passes" and the meeting adjourned shortly thereafter.
Why it matters: The bill resolves a Court of Appeals-created discrepancy in how pre-hearing custody is counted in probation-revocation cases, aligning practice with judges' sentencing intent and GDC calculation procedures while preserving an exclusion in specified tolling situations.
