Request By:
Mr. Lee Roy Davis, Jr.
Clark County Jailer
P.O. Box 497
Winchester, Kentucky 40391
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
As Secretary of the Kentucky Jailers Association, you raise certain questions about county jail operations.
Your basic question is whether or not the $6.00 fee payable to the county jailer for attending district or circuit court applies to the situation in which the pretrial release officer or agent interviews in jail your jail prisoners. In that situation, you simply bring the applicable prisoners out of their cells to another part of the jail for the purpose of their being interviewed by the pretrial release officer.
From the standpoint of the operation and maintenance of the county jail, it is not an integral part of the state court system. Cf. Sections 109-124 [the Judicial Department] of the Kentucky Constitution. There is no statute making the county jail a part of the judicial system.
KRS 64.150 provides in part that the county jailer shall be paid for "attending district or circuit court, per day (jailer shall be paid the fee for each day a prisoner is transported to court) . . . $6.00." (Emphasis added). The fee is paid by the unit of government whose law the prisoner is charged with or convicted of violating. In most cases, the prisoner is charged or convicted of violating state statutes. In such cases, the payment is from the state treasury.
Historically under the statute, KRS 64.150, payment of the court attendance fee has been based upon the jailer's actually taking prisoners out of the jail to a building or courthouse where the court is in session. The idea of the jailer's attending court held in jail simply was never intended by the statute, since the constitution and the statutes have never countenanced the thought that the judges would come to the county jail to hold court.
The matter of bail and pretrial release investigation is covered in KRS 431.515, 431.520, 431.525 and 431.530.
RCr 4.06, covering duties of pretrial services agency, reads:
"The duties of a pretrial services agency authorized by the Administrative Office of the Courts to serve the trial court shall include interviewing defendants eligible for pretrial release, verifying information obtained from defendants, making recommendations to the court as to whether defendants interviewed should be released on personal recognizance and any other duties ordered by the Supreme Court."
In this situation in which you claim the $6.00 fee for court attendance, and in which you and the prisoners never leave the jail building, and considering that the pretrial officer is merely interviewing defendants eligible for pretrial release and making recommendations to the trial court, pursuant to RCr 4.06 and 4.08, it is our opinion that the fee cannot be lawfully claimed and earned. Such investigations by a pretrial release officer or agency do not constitute a court session.
New legislation would be required to pay the jailers for any extra effort occasioned by the interview system.
Jailers are required to make prisoners available on an individual basis in the jail for such pretrial release interviews. See RCr 4.06 and KRS 431.515. The law does not contemplate a mass release type of interview. Each defendant has his own case.
You raise the question as to whether it was lawful for the Finance Department to withhold $2,500 from your dieting fees claim of April, 1980. The $2,500 represents, according to the Finance Department, money illegally paid out to you, since January 1979, as fees for the claimed $6.00 per day per prisoner for making defendants available in the jail for pretrial release interviews. That being the case, in our opinion you owed the state the $2,500. KRS 44.030 provides in part that "no money shall be paid to any person on a claim against the state in his own right, or as an assignee of another, when he or his assignor is indebted to the state. The claim, to the extent it is allowed, shall be credited to the account of the person so indebted, and if there is any balance due him after settling the whole demand of the state such balance shall be paid to him."
When we consider that the $2,500 payments to you represented this claimed fee for prison interviews, and considering the policy expressed in KRS 44.030, above, it is our opinion that the Finance Department acted legally in deducting $2,500 from your dieting fee check. The controlling factors in the situation are KRS 64.150 [court attendance fee] and KRS 44.030.