Chap. 120.—An ACT to amend and re-enact Section 5019 of the Code of Vir-
ginia, as amended, in relation to confinement in jails and in the penitentiary,
so as to allow credit for certain time spent in the penitentiary. [H B 150]

Approved March 12, 1938

I. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia, That
section fifty hundred and nineteen of the Code of Virginia, as amended,
be amended and re-enacted so as to read as follows:

Section 5019. The term of confinement in jail or in the peni-
tentiary for the commission of a crime shall commence and be com-
puted from the date of the final judgment, which, in case of an ap-
peal, shall be that of the refusal of a writ of error or the affirmance
of the judgment; but any person who may hereafter be sentenced
by any court to a term of confinement in the penitentiary, or by any
court or justice to a term of confinement in jail, for the commission
of a crime, or in jail for default in the payment of a fine, shall have
deducted from any such term all time actually spent by such person
in jail or the penitentiary awaiting trial, or pending an appeal, and
it shall be the duty of the court or justice, when entering the final
order in any such case, to provide that such person so convicted be
given credit for the time so spent; but in no case shall a prisoner
be allowed credit for time not actually spent in confinement, and in
no case 1S a prisoner on bail to be regarded as in confinement for the
purposes of this statute. No such credit, however, shall be given to
any person who shall break jail or make an escape. All persons
heretofore sentenced to confinement in the penitentiary and now actu-
ally confined therein, in whose case the final order entered by the
court in which they were convicted fails to provide for credit for
the time actually spent by such person in the penitentiary awaiting
trial or pending an appeal, shall nevertheless receive credit for such
time so spent in the penitentiary, and it shall be the duty of the
superintendent of the penitentiary to make such allowance of credit
to such persons in addition to the good conduct allowance required
under section fifty hundred and seventeen of the Code.