Rule 35 Correction or Reduction of Sentence

This rule gives the court a way to fix a sentence after it has already been handed down. There are two different situations covered here, and they work in different ways.

The first situation is when a sentence is just plain illegal, meaning the court had no legal authority to impose it. If this happens, the judge can fix it at any time. There's no deadline for this because an illegal sentence can be corrected whenever someone catches the problem.

The second situation is different. It covers cases where the sentence itself was legal, but the court wants to reduce it, maybe because new information came up or the judge thinks the punishment was too harsh. Here, there's a strict 120 day deadline. This countdown starts from when the sentence was first given, or from when probation was revoked, or from when a higher court sent back its final decision on an appeal. Either the person convicted or the court itself can start this process, but once the window closes, the option to reduce the sentence this way is gone.

One helpful detail in this rule is that changing someone's punishment from jail time to probation counts as a valid form of "reducing" a sentence. So if a judge decides that probation makes more sense than prison, that change fits within the rules described here, as long as it happens within that 120 day window.