Opinion ID: 1265916
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Grounds Stated in Dissent

Text: Those who dissent from this decision suggest that it is necessary to construct a confrontation between legislative intent in the Youthful Offender Act, West Virginia Code § 25-4-1, et seq., and the constitutional rule-making power of this Court. The dissent first grounds its claim on syllabus point 4 of State v. Richards, 206 W.Va. 573, 526 S.E.2d 539 (1999), and State v. Patterson, 170 W.Va. 721, 296 S.E.2d 684 (1982), asserting that this Court has previously determined that if probation is revoked after enrollment in the youthful offender program, the trial court has no option other than to require execution of the sentence applicable to the crime for which probation was granted. Such an assertion gives the cited cases an inappropriately rigid reading. In Richards, the trial court had imposed a harsher sentence after the revocation of sentence than it had imposed beforehand. Although syllabus point four of Richards does not expressly capture the controlling factual circumstances of the case, Richards, read in context, simply prohibits the execution of a harsher sentence after revocation of probation than any sentence earlier imposed but suspended incident to the grant of probation. Patterson is even less persuasive. In that case, the defendant speciously claimed that he was unaware that he might be sentenced to prison if he violated probation. In the Patterson opinion, Justice Harshbarger disposed of that claim based upon the clear evidence in the case that the defendant had been fully advised of the harshest consequences of violating probation. Neither of the cases cited in the dissent truly assist the Court on the facts of this case. The next assertion in the dissent is that by utilizing Rule 35 of the West Virginia Rules of Criminal Procedure to effect a further term of probation for the defendant the majority undertakes to unconstitutionally alter the substantive law enacted by the Legislature specifying penalties for crimes by an improper utilization of the rule-making power vested by the Constitution in this Court to alter the substantive law of the State. There follows a long discussion of the distinction between substantive and procedural law, which proves ultimately unrewarding and largely irrelevant. Stripped to the bone, the dissent argues that once probation is revoked and a sentence ordered executed, the trial courts are without jurisdiction to later grant probation, and that any attempt to utilize Rule 35 of the West Virginia Rules of Criminal Procedure to effect such a result unconstitutionally infringes on the prerogative of the Legislature to define the penalties attached to conviction of particular crimes because such action amounts to an attempted amendment of substantive law. Tying this argument to the Youthful Offender Act by reliance on Richards and Patterson, discussed above, does not cure the fatal defects in the argument which are readily apparent for the reasons next discussed. West Virginia Code § 62-12-3 expressly limits the authority of the trial courts to suspend execution of a sentence and place a defendant on probation to a period ending no more than sixty days after a defendant has actually been imprisoned. On the other hand, Rule 35(b) expressly defines a reduction of sentence to include [c]hanging a sentence from a sentence of incarceration to a grant of probation and provides further that: A motion to reduce a sentence may be made, or the court may reduce a sentence without motion within 120 days after the sentence is imposed or probation is revoked, or within 120 days after the entry of a mandate by the supreme court of appeals upon the affirmance of a judgment of a conviction or probation revocation or the entry of an order by the supreme court of appeals dismissing or rejecting a petition for appeal of a judgment of a conviction or probation revocation. The court shall determine the motion within a reasonable time.... Rule 35(b), W.Va. R.Crim. P. (emphasis added). First, it is readily apparent that West Virginia Code § 62-12-3, allowing a legislatively determined sixty-day period after imprisonment for reconsideration of a sentence, West Virginia Code § 62-12-10, expressly allowing release on probation even after prior probation violations have been declared by the trial court, and Rule 35, expressly treating a change of sentence from incarceration to probation as a reduction of sentence, combine to equip the trial courts, inter alia, with the discretion to set aside an earlier revocation of probation, suspend further execution of the sentence of incarceration, and re-institute a term of probation. There is nothing in the Youthful Offender Act that suggests any legislative intent whatever to deprive the trial courts of that discretion in cases where that sentencing alternative has been utilized. Moreover, nothing in our case lawincluding Richards and Patterson requires such an awkward result. Second, if this Court's treatment of Rule 35 in this case constitutes a constitutionally impermissible intrusion into the Legislature's sentencing powers, then the provisions of Rule 35, allowing reconsideration of sentencing decisions within a variety of one-hundred-twenty-day time limitationsclearly in excess of the sixty day limitations found in West Virginia Code § 62-12-3have been in violation of the constitution since first adopted February 1, 1985, nearly twenty years ago. Either the dissent is dead wrong in its assertion that the application of Rule 35 in this case undertakes a constitutionally impermissible intrusion upon the Legislature's power to define punishments for crimes, or the usage of Rule 35 at any time more than sixty days following actual imprisonment, as provided for in West Virginia Code § 62-12-3, is likewise constitutionally impermissible. I am utterly unable to agree with such a result. Especially in light of the long and stable history of Rule 35 in our jurisprudence, the rule is, in my view, a wholly proper exercise of this Court's constitutional power to promulgate rules for all cases and proceedings, civil and criminal, ... relating to writs, warrants, process, practice and procedure, which shall have the force and effect of law. W. Va. Const. art VIII, § 3. Rule 35 is broad enough in its thrust and intent to permit the trial court in this case to reconsider, within the court's range of discretion, not only the sentencing options in the case, but the underlying decision of whether revocation of probation was appropriate under all of the circumstances, or whether, in the alternative, some change in the prior conditions or term of probation would better serve the public interest. The dissent has manufactured a needless constitutional confrontation, all utterly unnecessary in the circumstances.