Opinion ID: 2546738
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: I. The BOERNER treatise

Text: ¶ 43 The BOERNER treatise was first cited in a dissent by Justice Utter in State v. Nordby, 106 Wash.2d 514, 520, 723 P.2d 1117 (1986), for the proposition that [a] sentence outside the presumptive sentencing range is appropriate only when the circumstances of the crime distinguish it from other crimes of the same statutory category. ¶ 44 A majority of this court applied this language to exceptional sentences generally in State v. Pennington, 112 Wash.2d 606, 610, 772 P.2d 1009 (1989). [1] However, the Pennington court erred in doing so, and the line of cases built on that authority has merely perpetuated that error. ¶ 45 The sections of the BOERNER treatise cited in Nordby do not suggest that all reasons for imposing an exceptional sentence must relate to the crime itself. Rather, Professor Boerner discusses the problem of distinguishing specific aspects of the crime committed by the defendant from other similar crimes when imposing an exceptional sentence, a process presumably already performed by the sentencing commission in suggesting a standard range: The solution to this potential dilemma is the adoption of the principle that while factors which truly distinguish the crime from others in the same statutory category may justify an exception, those which are inherent in that class of crimes and do not distinguish the defendant's behavior from that inherent in all crimes of that classification may not. See BOERNER, supra, § 9.6, at 9-13. ¶ 46 While Professor Boerner's analysis may be correct, he did not address the issue in the present case: whether factors unrelated to the crime, but related to the defendant, can be used to justify an exceptional sentence. ¶ 47 In context, the citation in the dissent by Justice Utter was appropriate. Justice Utter was discussing whether a vehicular assault on a pedestrian so distinguished the crime from other vehicular assaults as to merit an exceptional sentence. The issue was whether the crime of vehicular assault, and the standard range punishment, already encapsulated the fact that many vehicular assaults are committed against pedestrians. That issue had nothing to do with whether a characteristic of the defendant could be used in the defendant's sentencing under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1981(SRA). See Nordby 106 Wash.2d at 520, 723 P.2d 1117. ¶ 48 But in Pennington this court took the quotation from Justice Utter out of context and without any analysis of the actual BOERNER text. Pennington, 112 Wash.2d at 610, 772 P.2d 1009. A proper reading of the treatise, and of the initial citation of the treatise in our case law, indicates that neither stood for the proposition cited by this court in Pennington.