Defendant picks up a SJF Meth charge in 2000. Case is still pending today. In '01, he gets a second degree Meth charge. He bonds out on both, fails to appear, and is now sitting in jail waiting for a plea offer.

He has no drug charges before his SJF in 2000.

Is probation mandatory on the State Jail?

(I've seen this discussed before, but I couldn't find it in a quick review of recent topics.)

This is another one of those situations where 15(a)(1) seems not to make much sense, but probably means what it says. Maybe the thread you were looking for was Previously Convicted. Whether he gets a probated sentence on the SJF depends on the sequence of the trials.

So, this guy has a pending SJF, a 2nd degree felony drug case and a third degree bail jumping, and you are worried about automatic probation for the SJF?

How about offering some pen time on the other two cases and a stacked (automatic) probation for the SJF?

Plead him to a decent amount of time on the 2nd degree meth case and fta's and dismiss the sjf case or use it as consideration for the punishment on the plea.

How about convicting him on the pen time cases and then pleading him to time on the SJF case? As long as you do it with the SJF case last, he'll already have a prior conviction and won't fall under mandatory probation.

His lawyer was arguing that because he had a mandatory probation case in the SJF I had to run all three cases together, the probation mandate trumping my other recommendations.

Strange argument, but it gave me enough pause to post here and see what you guys thought.