Living in a halfway house does not equal jail time

ANCHORAGE — A state appeals court has ruled that a woman allowed to spend part of her time appealing her conviction on drugs and weapons charges in a halfway house doesn’t get to count that time against her prison sentence.

According to a ruling penned by state appeals court judge David Mannheimer, Billie Rae Deemer, of Wasilla, was arrested in 2005 and eventually convicted of cocaine possession, possessing a gun in furtherance of a drug crime, and giving false information to a police officer.

Her appeal was denied in Dec. 2010. But in 2007, as she waited for the appeals process to play out, she was allowed to live first at Lydia Center — a home for people either coming out of prison or leaving a drug treatment center — and then in a private apartment.

There are actually rules on the books that say defendants are entitled to discount from their sentences pre-trial time spent in facilities where they are “subjected to restrictions approximating those experienced by one who is incarcerated.”

But, Mannheimer wrote, even though Lydia House had some strict rules — residents had to maintain a job, submit to urinalysis tests and stick to a curfew — people living there could leave whenever they wanted. They just couldn’t come back if they broke the rules.

“Even though Deemer was obliged to follow Lydia House rules, … if she wished to continue living there, Deemer was not subject to custody or to monitoring during most of the day. For this reason, we agree with (Superior Court) Judge (Eric) Smith that Deemer is not entitled to credit against her sentence for the time she spent at Lydia House,” Mannheimer wrote.