Opinion ID: 1316266
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The court of appeals misapplied controlling law.

Text: The court of appeals acknowledged that Judge Andrews had identified multiple factors which distinguished Hodari's situation from Williams's: Judge Andrews gave several reasons why she found that the facts of Hodari's case deserved a more severe sentence than the sentence which Williams received. She found that Hodari was a leader of the group. He had been the instigator of the offense and had directed the others during the offense. Williams had acted alone. She noted that Hodari had committed a burglary by forcibly entering a home in the middle of the night; Williams had not committed a burglary. Hodari, unlike Williams, used a weapon. She found that the facts of the kidnapping offense in both cases were similar. Hodari had committed a technical kidnapping and Williams had committed a minimal kidnapping offense. She found that Hodari had engaged in exceptional gratuitous violence to the victims and their property; Williams had not engaged in gratuitous violence. She found that Hodari had a more serious criminal record than Williams. She found that Hodari, unlike Williams, was a dangerous offender.... [48] Moreover, the court of appeals found persuasive the trial court's analysis that Hodari's case is more aggravated ... and deserving of a more severe sentence. [49] Yet the court of appeals disapproved of the trial court's fifty-five year sentence by saying we have approved composite terms of forty years or more only for violent crimes committed by offenders with backgrounds that included habitual criminality or repeated acts of criminal violence. [50] This is the kind of formulaic benchmark sentencing that we rejected in Wentz. It is out of step with both Wentz and Williams II; by pronouncing no more than forty years, the court of appeals has overlooked our discussion of this subject in Wentz, (a case which is not mentioned in the Hodari decision), and the historical starting point language of Williams II. More, the decision of the court of appeals ignores a trio of cases, two decided since Williams II, in which the court of appeals itself upheld sentences substantially in excess of forty years in similar circumstances: Adams v. State, [51] Ross v. State, [52] and Schuenemann v. State . [53] Finally, the holding of the court of appeals pays little or no deference to the statutory range of permissible sentences. The maximum sentence Hodari could have received under the relevant statutes was ninety years and his composite presumptive sentence, if entirely consecutive sentences were applied, with no aggravating factors, was forty-four years. And yet, the court of appeals held that even with all of the aggravating factors present Hodari's composite sentence should be four years less than his potential presumptive one. A review of the superior court's approach shows why that court's decision was not clearly mistaken.