Request By:
Mr. Joseph L. Moore
County Fee Systems
Executive Department for
Finance and Administration
Division of Accounts
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Kentucky Revised Statute 64.150 provides a fee to jailers for keeping and dieting prisoners as follows: "Keeping and dieting prisoners in jailwhen confined for an offense or contempt,per day$5.75"
The unit of government whose law the prisoner is charged with violating is responsible for paying the jailer his fee. Therefore, the state treasury must bear the burden of dieting fees for any prisoner charged with a violation of the Kentucky Revised Statute.
The jailers are confronted with this situation: In the afternoon a person is lodged in the county jail. Shortly thereafter he is released by the district judge. Then on the same afternoon the same defendant is arrested again on a different charge and again lodged in the county jail. Some of the county jailers feel that they are entitled to the per diem of $5.75 twice, since they contend that he was in the jail on two different offenses.
In OAG 67-272, which you mention, we concluded that since the courts have adopted the common law rule to the effect that judicially a day is the whole or any part of the period of 24 hours, from midnight to midnight, the computation of the per diem fee must necessarily take the "midnight-to-midnight" rule into consideration. Thus if a particular defendant is incarcerated in the county jail, the fee of $5.75 will be paid for any incarceration between midnight of one day to midnight of the next day. Should he remain in jail after the second midnight then that would involve another $5.75, since his retention would extend over into the second period of midnight to midnight. See
Talbott v. Caudill, 248 Ky. 146, 58 S.W.2d 385 (1933).
It is our opinion that the doctrine of the common law rule as exposed in Talbott v. Caudill is still the law in Kentucky. Thus no matter the number of times an individual is committed to and released from the jail during any day [midnight to midnight] the Executive Department for Finance and Administration would pay, where the prisoner is charged with violating a statute, only one day for keeping and dieting that individual so long as his retention involves only one day, in terms of midnight to midnight.
The point is that the computation of the dieting fee is based upon one day in jail being considered confinement for all or any part of the period from midnight to midnight. It has nothing to do with a prisoner being charged with different offenses in connection with such retention. The thrust of the common law rule is that the law will not cut a day into pieces, since the law generally rejects all fractions of a "day". Further, there is nothing in KRS 64.150 suggesting any departure from the common law rule based on different offenses being charged to the same prisoner. Only the time frame [midnight to midnight] is significant.