Case ID: mont_260/html/0389-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "JUSTICE GRAY", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

STATE OF MONTANA, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. JOHN LEE McGUIRE, Defendant and Appellant.
    No. 93-070.
    Submitted on Briefs August 12, 1993.
    Decided October 4, 1993.
    50 St.Rep. 1132.
    260 Mont. 389.
    860 P.2d 150.
    For Defendant and Appellant: Jeannette Ellen Berry, Berry & Bordy, Bozeman.
    For Plaintiff and Respondent: Joseph P. Mazurek, Attorney General, Micheál S. Wellenstein, Ass’t Attorney General, Helena: A. Michael Salvagni, Gallatin County Attorney, Marty Lambert, Chief Deputy Gallatin County Attorney, Bozeman.
   JUSTICE GRAY

delivered the Opinion of the Court.

John McGuire appeals the sentence imposed by the Eighteenth Judicial District Court, Gallatin County, following conviction for one count each of felony theft and burglary. We affirm.

The procedural facts relevant to this appeal are set forth in State v. McGuire, No. 92-534 ([50 St.Rep. 1122], 860 P.2d 148), (McGuire I). Subsequent to sentencing in Flathead County, McGuire was sentenced on the Gallatin County theft and burglary convictions to concurrent terms of ten and twenty years imprisonment, respectively, with five years suspended. The District Court’s sentence contained no reference to the Flathead County sentence and did not expressly provide that it would run concurrently with that previously imposed sentence.

The issue on appeal is whether the District Court erred in sentencing McGuire on the Gallatin County charges.

McGuire correctly notes that the court in Flathead County expressly made its sentence consecutive to the one to be imposed in Gallatin County. He also correctly argues that, pursuant to § 46-18-401(1)(a), MCA, his Gallatin County sentence is consecutive to the Flathead County sentence because it was not expressly ordered to run concurrently. On that basis, McGuire contends that the sentences are ambiguous because they run consecutively to each other and neither has a definite commencement date.

While McGuire argues that the Gallatin County sentence was invalid and illegal, any ambiguity resulting from the combined effects of the Flathead and Gallatin County sentences was removed by our decision in McGuire I. There, we determined that the court in Flathead County exceeded its sentencing authority under § 46-18-401, MCA, by ordering its sentence to be served consecutively to one not yet imposed. We modified that sentence and judgment, striking the portion providing for consecutive sentences.

McGuire concedes that § 46-18-401(1)(a), MCA, authorizes the District Court in Gallatin County to make its sentence consecutive to the one imposed by the court in Flathead County. Under that statute, the court imposing the second sentence has the discretion to make the sentences concurrent; failure to expressly do so results in consecutive sentences. McGuire I, 860 P.2d at 149.

It is clear that the District Court in Gallatin County had the statutory authority, but no affirmative duty, to merge its sentence with the one imposed in Flathead County; it declined to do so. McGuire asserts no actual error by the District Court in Gallatin County in exercising its discretion under, or in otherwise applying, § 46-18-401(l)(a), MCA.

We hold that the District Court did not err in sentencing McGuire on the Gallatin County charges. The effect of McGuire I and this case is that the Gallatin County sentence will run consecutive to the sentence imposed in Flathead County, as modified by this Court in McGuire I.

Affirmed.

CHIEF JUSTICE TURNAGE, JUSTICES HARRISON, TRIEWEILER and WEBER concur.