Opinion ID: 2348618
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Suspended sentences as predicate offenses

Text: The defendant also asserts that suspended sentences do not qualify as predicate offenses because § 12-19-21 requires a defendant actually to serve time in prison before the statute can be applied. We disagree. The United States Supreme Court recently stated that [a] suspended sentence is a prison term imposed for the offense of conviction. Once the prison term is triggered [by a probation violation], the defendant is incarcerated not for the probation violation, but for the underlying offense. Alabama v. Shelton, 535 U.S. 654, ___, 122 S.Ct. 1764, 1770, 152 L.Ed.2d 888, 898 (2002). Thus, when a defendant is found to be a probation violator, the trial justice has the discretion to lift the suspended portion from the previously imposed term of imprisonment. See Hampton v. State, 786 A.2d 375, 382 (R.I.2001) (observing that the trial justice lift[ed] the suspension on the full fifteen-year sentence previously imposed on [the defendant]). Since the habitual offender statute merely requires a person to have been at least twice convicted and sentenced to serve a term in prison and that a suspended sentence is the imposition of a term of imprisonment which is then suspended, the trial justice was correct when he ruled against defendant on this issue. Indeed, to adopt defendant's interpretation would lead to an absurd result in which a defendant might have prior felony convictions but because the resulting sentences of imprisonment were suspended, the state would be precluded from seeking to enhance the sentence of an additional felony conviction.