What Is a Concurrent Sentence?
In criminal law, a defendant is sometimes found guilty of two or more separate crimes during one trial. In some cases, a judge allows the defendant to serve jail time for all of these crimes at the same time. This phenomenon is known as a concurrent sentence. For example, suppose that John Doe is tried and convicted of attempting to rob a convenience store. Assume that he is also found guilty of assault because he punched the store clerk during the attempted robbery. The judge may sentence him to three years in jail for the attempted robbery and two years for the assault. If the judge permits John to serve this jail time as a concurrent sentence, he would serve both sentences simultaneously. This means that John would spend a total of three years in jail for both crimes.
