Opinion ID: 852509
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sentencing Options for Probation Violations

Text: Prewitt's appeal turns on the subsection of the Code that governs the disposition of probation violations. It says: If the court finds that the person has violated a condition at any time before termination of the period, and the petition to revoke is filed within the probationary period, the court may: (1) continue the person on probation, with or without modifying or enlarging the conditions; (2) extend the person's probationary period for not more than one (1) year beyond the original probationary period; or (3) order execution of all or part of the sentence that was suspended at the time of initial sentencing. Ind.Code Ann. § 35-38-2-3(g) (West 2007). The trial court ordered execution of a portion of Prewitt's suspended sentence under subsection (g)(3) and modified Prewitt's conditions of probation under subsection (g)(1) by ordering Prewitt to enter Richmond State Hospital upon his release. Because the subsections in section 3(g) are connected by the word or, Prewitt contends that the trial court can order only one of the three alternatives, relying on the commonplace proposition that or is a word normally meant to convey disjunctive choices. The best evidence of legislative intent is surely the language of the statute itself, and courts strive to give the words in a statute their plain and ordinary meaning. A statute should be examined as a whole, avoiding excessive reliance upon a strict literal meaning or the selective reading of individual words. Sales v. State, 723 N.E.2d 416 (Ind.2000). The Court presumes that the legislature intended for the statutory language to be applied in a logical manner consistent with the statute's underlying policy and goals. B.K.C. v. State, 781 N.E.2d 1157 (Ind.Ct.App.2003). Whereas the disjunctive or normally expresses a legislative intent that only one of the enumerated options is permitted, we have recognized that this normal interpretation of the disjunctive should not be followed rigidly in all cases. For example, in Dague v. Piper Aircraft Corp., 275 Ind. 520, 418 N.E.2d 207 (1981), we interpreted a product liability statute of limitations that used the disjunctive or as if the statute had instead used the conjunctive and. Id. at 211. In doing so, we stated, the term `or' should not be given its ordinary meaning when such an application flies in the face of a clearly contrary legislative intent. . . . Moreover, we are at liberty to make minor substitutions of words where necessary to give vitality to the legislative intent. Id. Likewise, in Ind. Dept. of State Rev. v. Stark-Wetzel & Co., 150 Ind.App. 344, 276 N.E.2d 904 (1971), the Court of Appeals held that the word and should not be interpreted in a conjunctive sense, citing a widely-accepted rule of statutory construction: [T]he courts have the power to change and will change and to or and vice versa, whenever such conversion is required by the context, or is necessary to harmonize the provisions of a statute and give effect to all of its provisions, or save it from unconstitutionality, or, in general, to effect the obvious intention of the legislature. Id. at 910. This is an approach of some antiquity. See, e.g., State v. Myers, 146 Ind. 36, 44 N.E. 801 (Ind.1896) ([w]here the legislative sense is plain, the exact grammatical construction and propriety of language may be disregarded. In obedience to this rule, courts have frequently interpreted `and' as meaning `or,' and vice versa.). The context and historic practice within which the legislature wrote subsection 3(g) leads us to reject Prewitt's argument. Judicial practice in Indiana has been to authorize creative and case-specific sentences for offenders in the probationary context, striving to provide the most effective sentences possible. For example, Ind. Code § 35-38-2-2.3 explicitly provides trial courts with many combinable options for fashioning appropriate conditions of probations for defendants. We cannot postulate a reason the legislature would grant trial courts discretion to combine conditions when first placing a defendant on probation but not when sentencing a defendant after a probation violation. If anything, the legislative message of recent decades has been to encourage judicial flexibility. This very portion of the Code was twice amended in response to judicial decisions holding that the statute constrained the sentencing judge in one way or another. For example, after our Court of Appeals held in Hoage v. State, 479 N.E.2d 1362 (Ind.Ct.App.1985), that probation could not be extended beyond a crime's statutory maximum sentence, the legislature added Ind.Code § 35-38-2-3(g)(2) permitting courts to impose on probation violators a probationary period up to one year greater than the original probationary period. 1991 Ind. Acts 3008. More recently, the General Assembly reacted to an appellate decision holding that judges disposing of probation violations could order executed time only for the whole of a suspended sentence rather than for part of it. This holding rested on just two words in subsection 3(g)(3), which then provided that a judge could order execution of  the sentence that was suspended. Stephens v. State, 801 N.E.2d 1288, 1292 (Ind.Ct.App.2004) (emphasis added). We disagreed, holding that the words the sentence did not preclude courts from ordering execution of a portion of a previously suspended sentence. Stephens v. State, 818 N.E.2d 936 (Ind.2004). The legislature subsequently confirmed our reading of the breadth of its intent by amending subsection 3(g)(3) to provide explicitly that courts could order execution of all or part of a suspended sentence. 2005 Ind. Acts 1329. Just as we interpreted Ind.Code § 35-38-2-3(g)(3) broadly in Stephens to effectuate the legislature's intent to provide judges with flexibility in response to probation violations, so also do we interpret the entire subsection broadly to give effect to that intent. [F]or probation to be a viable option for Indiana judges, judges must have the ability to move with alacrity to protect public safety when adjudicated offenders violate the conditions of their sentences. . . . The statutory scheme . . . reflects the Legislature's intent that trial courts have the flexibility both to use and to terminate probation when appropriate. Stephens, 818 N.E.2d at 941-42. We do not perceive the word or in this statute as reflecting a legislative decision to put revocation decisions in a straightjacket. Accordingly, we hold that Indiana Code § 35-38-2-3(g) permits judges to sentence offenders using any one of or any combination of the enumerated options. This serves the public interest by giving judges the ability to order sentences they deem to be most effective and appropriate for individual defendants who violate probation.