Barnes, J.
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The sole issue Pollard raises is whether the trial court properly denied his motion for educational credit time.
On June 30, 2003, Pollard was charged with Class A felony dealing in cocaine. He pled guilty to the charge on November 9, 2005. On January 27, 2006, he was sentenced to twenty years executed in the Department of Correction (DOC) …
From January 2008 to December 16, 2011, while serving his sentence at the Branchville Correctional Facility, Pollard pursued a Bachelor of Science degree. He completed the requirements and received his degree on December 16, 2011. Per Indiana Code Section 35-50-6-3.3(d)(4), the amount of credit time Pollard could earn for obtaining his bachelor’s degree was two years (730 days). Subsection (j) of the statute provided, however, that earned credit time could not reduce an inmate’s sentence to less than forty-five days.
On January 13, 2012, Pollard submitted his Bachelor of Science educational credit request to the correctional facility. His request was denied on January 17, 2012, because his earliest projected release date from the correctional facility was within forty-five days of his request for educational credit. On January 24, 2012, Pollard was released to parole.
Pollard’s parole was revoked on or about December 5, 2013, for a violation of parole rules, and he was reincarcerated. On May 8, 2014, he submitted to the correctional facility a second request for educational credit for obtaining his Bachelor of Science degree. Pollard’s request was denied on May 12, 2014. A letter issued by the DOC Director of Education explained that the request was denied because Pollard “did not complete the Bachelor of Science degree during [his] current period of incarceration and it was denied previously, [sic] one cannot bank away time for future periods of incarceration. Therefore, the
Education Division [of the DOC] cannot offer you any relief in this matter.”
On February 24, 2016, Pollard filed with the trial court a pro se motion for educational credit based on the completion of his bachelor’s degree. He requested that two years (730 days) of credit time be subtracted from the earliest projected release date for his reincarceration. On March 2, 2016, the trial court denied his motion. …
Pollard argues that the trial court erred when it denied his motion for educational credit for a bachelor’s degree he earned when he was originally incarcerated for his conviction for dealing in cocaine. According to Pollard, 730 days of credit time should be applied to the time he must serve due to a parole violation because the credit time was earned “under the same commitment and cause he is now serving.” We disagree.
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Pollard’s argument, essentially, is that the 730 days of educational credit he earned during his incarceration for the dealing in cocaine conviction should be applied to reduce the time he must serve for the parole violation. Pollard bases his argument on Rodgers v. State, 705 N.E.2d 1039, 1042 (Ind. Ct. App. 1999), and the proposition that an inmate’s entitlement to educational credit time accrues immediately upon his or her completion of the degree, regardless of subsequent parole violations or parole status.
In Rodgers, the defendant completed the requirements for earning a GED while serving his sentence in a community corrections program. Rodgers twice violated his probation after being released on home detention. When his probation was revoked, he applied for educational credit. The trial court denied the credit. … This court concluded that, at the time Rodgers violated his probation, he already had earned the credit time for his GED. Therefore, the trial court could not deny him the credit based on his subsequent probation violations, and the probation violations could not be used as evidence of his failure to demonstrate a pattern consistent with rehabilitation.
Rodgers is distinguishable from the instant case. Unlike Rodgers, Pollard was not denied the educational credit because of his parole violation. Pollard earned the credit; however, the credit could not be applied to reduce his sentence for dealing in cocaine because he earned the credit within forty-five days of his release date. … Had he obtained his degree earlier, or if the time remaining until his release date had been longer, some or all of the credit earned could have been applied to his earlier incarceration.
Nothing, however, in Rodgers suggests that Pollard should be able to “bank” credit time to be used toward a future incarceration due to a parole violation. To the contrary, this court observed that Rodgers’s “entitlement to the education credit time accrued immediately upon his completion of the degree.” Rodgers, 705 N.E.2d at 1042; see Ind. Code § 35-50-6-1(c) … Pollard has not shown that the trial court erred when it declined to apply the educational credit time earned for his 2011 completion of a bachelor’s degree to his reincarceration for a parole violation.
The trial court properly denied Pollard’s motion for educational credit time. We affirm.
Kirsch, J., and Robb, J., concur.