Opinion ID: 852836
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Indiana's Sentencing System Is Unconstitutional

Text: On June 24, 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. ___, 124 S.Ct. 2531, 159 L.Ed.2d 403 (2004). Writing for a 5-4 majority, Justice Scalia declared that Blakely's sentence, enhanced based on various facts found by the sentencing judge, violated Blakely's Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. Id. at ___, 124 S.Ct. at 2538. This decision has cast doubt over the constitutionality of sentencing schemes throughout the country. Blakely pled guilty to second-degree kidnapping involving domestic violence and use of a firearm, a class B felony. Washington state law capped punishment for a class B felony at 10 years. See Blakely, 542 U.S. at ___, 124 S.Ct. at 2535. According to Washington's Sentencing Reform Act, the standard sentencing range for Blakely's crime was 49 to 53 months. Id. The trial court judge imposed a sentence of 90 months  37 months over the standard range  pursuant to a Washington statute that allowed an increased sentence if a judge found substantial and compelling reasons justifying an exceptional sentence. Id. (quoting Wash. Rev. Code Ann. § 9.94A.120(2) (2000)). The Washington trial judge had relied on deliberate cruelty, an aggravating factor enumerated in the statutes. Id. In analyzing the constitutionality of Washington's sentencing scheme, the Court began by reiterating the Sixth Amendment rule announced in Apprendi v. New Jersey: [1] [O]ther than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Blakely, 542 U.S. at ___, 124 S.Ct. at 2536. While many who read Apprendi deduced that statutory maximum meant statutory maximum, the Blakely majority chose to define it as the maximum sentence a judge may impose solely on the basis of the facts reflected in the jury verdict or admitted by the defendant.  Id. at ___, 124 S.Ct. at 2537. The statutory maximum was thus not the 10-year cap on class B felonies, but rather the standard sentencing range under the Washington Sentencing Reform Act. Id. at ___, 124 S.Ct. at 2538. Blakely admitted to the facts of a crime carrying a sentence of 49-53 months, and if there were any additional facts used to increase the sentence, the Court said, Blakely was entitled to have them found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at ___, 124 S.Ct. at 2537-38. Washington's sentencing procedure, to the extent it allowed a judge to increase the sentence above the statutory maximum based on the judge's findings, violated the Sixth Amendment. Id. at ___, 124 S.Ct. at 2538. Whether this represents sound jurisprudence or policy is of no moment for us under the Supremacy Clause, and we cannot see any grounds for sustaining Indiana's sentencing scheme given the Blakely holding. Indiana's sentencing scheme provides a fixed term presumptive sentence for each class of felonies. See Ind.Code Ann. §§ 35-50-2-3 to 7 (West 2004). These statutes also create upper and lower boundaries for each felony sentence. Id. In deciding on whether to depart from the presumptive sentence, the trial judge must consider seven enumerated factors and may consider various other aggravating and mitigating factors. Ind.Code Ann. § 35-38-1-7.1 (West 2004). From the time Indiana adopted its present sentencing arrangement in 1977, we have understood it as a regime that requires a given presumptive term for each class of crimes, except when the judge finds aggravating or mitigating circumstances deemed adequate to justify adding or subtracting years. See, e.g., Henderson v. State, 769 N.E.2d 172, 179 (Ind.2002); Page v. State, 424 N.E.2d 1021, 1022-24 (Ind.1981); Gardner v. State, 270 Ind. 627, 631-36, 388 N.E.2d 513, 516-19 (1979). This flows from the words of the substantive sentencing provisions. The provision applicable to Smylie's crime mirrors those for other classes of felonies: A person who commits a Class D felony shall be imprisoned for a fixed term of one and one-half (1½) years, with not more than one and one-half (1½) years added for aggravating circumstances or not more than one (1) year subtracted for mitigating circumstances. Ind.Code Ann. § 35-50-2-7(a) (West 2004). For Blakely purposes, Indiana's fixed term is the functional equivalent of Washington's standard sentencing range. Both establish a mandatory starting point for sentencing criminals based on the elements of proof necessary to prove a particular offense and the sentencing class into which the offense falls. The trial court judge then must engage in judicial fact-finding during sentencing if a sentence greater than the presumptive fixed term is to be imposed. [2] It is this type of judicial fact-finding that concerned the Court in Blakely. When a judge inflicts punishment that the jury's verdict alone does not allow, the jury has not found all the facts `which the law makes essential to the punishment.' Blakely, 542 U.S. at ___, 124 S.Ct. at 2537 (quoting 1 J. Bishop, Criminal Procedure § 87 (2d ed. 1872)). While the Attorney General has ably defended the statutes on other grounds we discuss below, we see little daylight between the Blakely holding and the Indiana system.
The Attorney General argues that Indiana's sentencing statutes establish a system of ranges for felony convictions, within which a judge can work in fashioning a sentence. The State also asserts that the fixed term presumptive sentence is merely a guidepost for judges operating within the ranges. (Appellee's Resp. Pet. Transfer at 6.) According to the State, Indiana's sentencing statutes do not violate Blakely because the statutory maximum is the upper limit of the range, rather than the presumptive sentence. ( Id. at 6-7.) We find ourselves unable to embrace this plausible contention for two reasons. First, the Blakely majority rejected a nearly identical argument, saying that the relevant `statutory maximum' is not the maximum sentence a judge may impose after finding additional facts, but the maximum he may impose without any additional findings. Blakely, 542 U.S. at ___, 124 S.Ct. at 2537. Indiana's felony sentencing statutes provide fixed terms and allow departures only if aggravating or mitigating factors are found. [3] Ind.Code Ann. §§ 35-50-2-3 to 7 (West 2004). These factors are assessed by the judge alone. Ind.Code Ann. § 35-38-1-7.1 (West 2004). If the trial court adds or subtracts from the standard fixed term, the judge must: 1) identify all significant aggravating and mitigating factors; 2) specify the findings of fact and reasons which lead the court to find such factors; and 3) articulate that the aggravating and mitigating factors were evaluated and balanced in determination of the sentence. Trowbridge v. State, 717 N.E.2d 138, 149 (Ind.1999). Second, the State's argument runs contrary to the interpretation of the Indiana statutory scheme as articulated and implemented by our trial and appellate courts over parts of four decades. Because the judge has to find additional facts to impose a sentence higher than the presumptive sentence, the presumptive sentence is the relevant statutory maximum. See Blakely, 542 U.S. at ___, 124 S.Ct. at 2537. The State also points to the Blakely Court's disapproval of a sentencing system that allows a judge to rely on a probation officer's report to increase a defendant's maximum potential sentence dramatically without warning the defendant either at the time of the indictment or the plea. Blakely, 542 U.S. at ___, 124 S.Ct. at 2542. (Appellee's Br. Resp. Br. of Amicus Curiae Marion County Public Defender Agency at 9-10.) It contends that Indiana's regime does not allow what Justice Scalia called an unexpected increase [4] in as much as defendants are aware of the maximum sentence that can be imposed for any given felony, namely, the range listed in the sentencing statutes. Fatal to this assertion is the fact that Washington's system gave similar notification. Washington's statutes theoretically informed defendants that a sentence may be increased to a statutory upper limit if substantial and compelling reasons justify an exceptional sentence. Wash. Rev. Code Ann. § 9.94A.120(2) (2000). [5] This upper limit in Washington, ten years for a class B felony, still allowed a sentence to balloon from the statutory maximum based on judicial fact-finding. [6] The increase was unexpected in one important sense, namely that the aggravators used to support a departure from the presumptive are not charged in the indictment. See McCormick v. State, 233 Ind. 281, 119 N.E.2d 5 (1954) (charging information need only contain essential elements of crime to notify defendant of what crime is charged). The Court was apparently unconvinced that this notification problem is remedied by any awareness by the defendant of the upper limit. See Blakely, 542 U.S. at ___, 124 S.Ct. at 2538-42.
The foregoing conclusion about the unconstitutionality of Indiana's present sentencing system hardly nullifies the entire arrangement. We have historically rescued constitutional portions of statutes, if possible, when other portions are held unconstitutional. See, e.g., State v. Barker, 809 N.E.2d 312 (Ind.2004); State v. Kuebel, 241 Ind. 268, 172 N.E.2d 45 (1961). We have adopted the severability test enunciated in Dorchy v. Kansas: A statute bad in part is not necessarily void in its entirety. Provisions within the legislative power may stand if separable from the bad. But a provision, inherently unobjectionable, cannot be deemed separable unless it appears both that, standing alone, legal effect can be given to it and that the legislature intended the provision to stand, in case others included in the act and held bad should fall. [7] It is apparent that Indiana's sentencing system runs afoul of the Sixth Amendment not because it mandates a fixed term sentence for each felony, but because it mandates both a fixed term and permits judicial discretion in finding aggravating or mitigating circumstances to deviate from the fixed term. A constitutional scheme akin to ours could take one of two forms: (1) our present arrangement of fixed presumptive terms, modified to require jury findings on facts in aggravation, or (2) a system in which there is no stated fixed term (or at least none that has legally binding effect) in which judges would impose sentences without a jury. The U.S. Supreme Court, in its most recent installment in this Sixth Amendment saga, applied Blakely to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. ___, 125 S.Ct. 738, 746, 160 L.Ed.2d 621 (2005). The Court's solution was to sever and excise a portion of the sentencing statute that made the sentence indicated by the Guidelines range mandatory unless the trial court found aggravating or mitigating circumstances not adequately considered by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. This excising produced an arrangement like the second option described above. Blakely had explicitly sanctioned such regimes. Blakely, 542 U.S. at ___, 124 S.Ct. at 2540 (indeterminate sentencing by judges and parole boards not a violation of Sixth Amendment). Our conclusion about severability leads to an outcome more like the first choice mentioned above. In excising only the minimal portions of the existing statute necessary to comply with Blakely, we are much influenced by the fact that the overarching theme of Indiana's 1977 sentencing reform was a legislative decision to abandon indeterminate sentencing in favor of fixed and predictable penalties. The 1977 act assigned to judges the task of imposing penalties stated as a fixed term of years and created a structure for setting those penalties that is far more definitive than the scheme it replaced. We conclude that the first option listed above is probably more faithful to the large objectives of the General Assembly's 1977 decisions. We thus hold that the sort of facts envisioned by Blakely as necessitating a jury finding must be found by a jury under Indiana's existing sentencing laws.
Having concluded that Indiana's system for enhanced sentences contravenes Blakely, we turn to a closely related issue posed by Smylie. When sentencing a defendant on multiple counts, an Indiana trial judge may impose a consecutive sentence if he or she finds at least one aggravator. [8] Ortiz v. State, 766 N.E.2d 370 (Ind.2002); Morgan v. State, 675 N.E.2d 1067 (Ind.1996). A defendant does have the right to the exercise of a trial court's discretion. [9] Certainly, where a judge finds that aggravating and mitigating circumstances are in equipoise, we have required concurrent sentences, Marcum v. State, 725 N.E.2d 852, 863-64 (Ind.2000), just as we have where the court has not found any aggravating circumstances at all. Hansford v. State, 490 N.E.2d 1083, 1094 (Ind.1986). But our statutes do not erect any target or presumption concerning concurrent or consecutive sentences. Where the criminal law leaves sentencing to the unguided discretion of the judge there is no judicial impingement upon the traditional role of the jury. Blakely, 542 U.S. at ___, 124 S.Ct. at 2540. We find no language in Blakely or in Indiana's sentencing statutes that requires or even favors concurrent sentencing. See generally, Blakely, 542 U.S. ___, 124 S.Ct. 2531, 159 L.Ed.2d 403 (2004); Ind. Code Ann. § 35-50-1-2 (West 2004). The trial court's sentencing of Smylie to consecutive terms after finding an aggravating circumstance did not increase the sentence above the statutory maximum for each offense. See State v. Abdullah, 372 N.J.Super. 252, 858 A.2d 19, 39 (App.Div. 2004) certification granted (Although the imposition of consecutive terms ... increase[s a] defendant's punishment, [it does] not increase the penalty above what the law provides for the offense charged.). [10] There is no constitutional problem with consecutive sentencing so long as the trial court does not exceed the combined statutory maximums.
The trial court sentenced Smylie to two years for each count of class D felony child solicitation, six months above the standard fixed term. The aggravating factors used to enhance the sentence were not submitted to the jury or admitted by Smylie. The enhancement cannot be imposed without jury findings. We reverse and remand for a new sentencing on these counts, should the State elect, with the intervention of a jury. The trial court's order of consecutive sentences is not defective, and we affirm it.