Court Opinion

ID: 9562493
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:30:18.185398+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:22.769340
License: Public Domain

HALL, Justice
(dissenting):
I respectfully dissent.
While the actual legal basis for the majority’s conclusion that a defendant is entitled to full disclosure of the presentence report relied on by the sentencing court is not completely clear, the ruling seems to rest, at least impliedly, on constitutional underpinnings, and more particularly on the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This conclusion appears to have been derived from the holdings in several recent United States Supreme Court opinions referred to in the majority opinion. I am of the opinion that none of these cases stands for the proposition urged by the majority.
It is my belief that the controlling case addressing the matter of due process ramifications of presentence report disclosure is that of Williams v. New York.1 Therein, the trial court, following defendant’s conviction on a charge of murder, disregarded the jury’s recommendation of life imprisonment and ordered the death penalty, based on information extraneous to the trial and inadmissible for jury consideration. This information was summarized by the trial court from the bench prior to sentencing. While not challenging the accuracy of the information, the defendant objected to its use on due process grounds. In upholding the court’s discretionary use of the additional information relied on, the Supreme Court observed:
Tribunals passing on the guilt of a defendant have always been hedged in by strict evidentiary procedural limitations. But both before and since the American colonies became a nation, courts in this country and in England practiced a policy under which a sentencing judge could exercise a wide discretion in the sources and types of evidence used to assist him in determining the kind and extent of punishment to be imposed within limits fixed by law. . . . In a trial before verdict the issue is whether a defendant is guilty of having engaged in certain criminal conduct of which he has been specifically accused. Rules of evidence have been fashioned for criminal trials which narrowly confine the trial contest to evidence that is strictly relevant to the offense charged. ... A sentencing judge, however, is not confined to the narrow issue of guilt. His task within fixed statutory or constitutional limits is to determine the type and extent of punishment after the issue of guilt has been determined.2
It is to be noted that the challenge in Williams dealt with the court’s use of extraneous information, not with any failure to disclose it. Later decisions,3 however, have extended the rationale of Williams to cover not only those cases wherein outside information was used, but also those in which that information was denied the defendant, beyond a brief statement of its general import prior to sentencing. Such an extension is clearly warranted. Where a defendant’s guilt has been determined, and punishment has been fixed by law, subject only to the trial court’s election among discretionary sentencing alternatives (or, as in the present case, between incarceration and release on probation), those adversary proceedings guaranteed by the Constitution, *1252and generally garnered under the heading of Due Process, are at an end. Defendant has had full benefit of due process, and has been found guilty. The discretionary imposition of sentence creates no further rights, either to bind the court with evidentiary restrictions or to demand full access to sentencing information prior to sentence pronouncement. As observed by Chief Justice Crockett in his dissenting opinion, defendant has no right to probation, and while some procedure is needed to prevent improper reliance on wholly spurious and false information,4 complete disclosure of a pre-sentence report is not required.
Neither am I persuaded that the decisions relied on by the majority to establish the contrary position are properly applicable in this case, nor that they “seriously undermine, if not overrule” Williams. The opinion in Townsend v. Burke,5 rendered prior to the Williams decision, rested on the grounds that the defendant was sentenced on the basis of patently false information, relied on by the court (in a very flippant manner) in sentencing, while defendant was without counsel. Townsend was decided while the rule announced in Bute v. Illinois6 was still in effect, to wit, denial of counsel in noncapital cases constituted denial of due process only where overreaching or prejudice resulted. The court’s observation that, had defendant had counsel present, the information summarized from the bench might have been challenged, was a means of showing that denial of counsel had prejudiced defendant, not an edict that all sentencing information must be placed at defendant’s disposal.
No more dispositive of the Williams rule is the case of Kent v. United States,7 a 5-4 decision holding that a District of Columbia statute8 permitting a juvenile court to waive exclusive jurisdiction and remit an accused to the district court required a hearing and defense access to social records relied on by the court in reaching its decision. It is noteworthy first that the case dealt only collaterally with due process considerations; it focused primarily on the statute itself. More important, however, is the fact that the waiver procedure was a pre-conviction matter, and determined whether or not the accused would receive the benefits of juvenile process or be subjected to full adversary proceedings. Such a holding cannot be regarded as controlling in a case such as the one before this Court, where conviction has been arrived at in full compliance with defendant’s constitutional rights, and only the imposition or waiver of legally-prescribed punishment remains to be determined by the court.
The Supreme Court took pains to point out that Williams had no bearing in the case of Specht v. Patterson,9 which presented a “radically different situation.”10 That case involved the application of the Colorado Sex Offenders Act11 to an individual convicted of a sex offense. The Court observed that the Act, which prescribed a procedure in the nature of a civil conviction, involved further fact-finding and evidence — it “makes one conviction the basis for commencing another proceeding under the Act to determine whether a person constitutes a threat of bodily harm to the public, or is an habitual offender or is mentally ill.”12 The statute having imposed such further proceedings, they ought to be dispatched with full due process rights, including disclosure of information to the accused. *1253Neither Williams nor the instant case involves such circumstances.
Gardner v. Florida13 limits the Williams holding to noncapital cases on the strength of intervening holdings of the Supreme Court bearing on the imposition of the death penalty, holding that such capital cases call for disclosure hearing, etc. In distinguishing Williams, the main opinion14 carefully noted that not only was it decided prior to later rulings regarding the death penalty, but that it involved a case wherein (as in the case before this Court) the information relied on by the court was stated to defendant from the bench. No such disclosure was made in the Gardner case.
The above decisions seem clearly to establish that the procedure used by the court below in the present case did not violate defendant’s constitutional rights. A substantial majority of state courts seem to concur, as they do not mandate the full disclosure of presentence reports on constitutional grounds.15
It is enlightening to note, moreover, that the federal court system has adopted a codified procedure for disclosure of presentence reports.16 Under that procedure, the court, while it is generally expected to reveal the contents of the report, may withhold, at its discretion, any part thereof which the court, for reasons of safety, confidentiality, etc., believes should not be revealed, and may, if it believes it necessary, withhold the entire report, merely summarizing the information contained therein on which the court will rely. Comment and hearing on the information so elicited is likewise discretionary. The action of the court below, viewed in light of such guidelines, would have been unimpeachable.
I join in Chief Justice Crockett’s concerns regarding the practical impact of the majority ruling on the future use of the pre-sentence report. Any time that a discretionary procedure, designed to benefit an accused, is beset with procedural obstacles, the likelihood of its being foregone in the interest of simple judicial economy is greatly increased. In the vast majority of cases, this will result only in detriment to the individual whose rights the majority opinion seeks to protect.
For the foregoing reasons, I would affirm the trial court’s actions.

. 337 U.S. 241, 69 S.Ct. 1079, 93 L.Ed. 1337 (1949).

. Id., at 246-247, 69 S.Ct. at 1082-1083.

. See, e. g., Specht v. Patterson, 386 U.S. 605, 87 S.Ct. 1209, 18 L.Ed.2d 326 (1967), and Gardner v. Florida, 430 U.S. 349, 97 S.Ct. 1197, 51 L.Ed.2d 393 (1977), discussed infra.

. See discussion of Townsend v. Burke, 334 U.S. 736, 68 S.Ct. 1252, 92 L.Ed. 1690 (1948), and Rule 32, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, infra.

. Cited supra.

. 333 U.S. 640, 68 S.Ct. 763, 92 L.Ed. 986 (1948).

. 383 U.S. 541, 86 S.Ct. 1045, 16 L.Ed.2d 84 (1966).

. D.C.Code § 11-914 (1961).

. Cited supra.

. Id., 386 U.S. at 607, 87 S.Ct. at 1211.

. Colo.Rev.Stat.Anno. §§ 39-19-1 to 10 (1963).

. Specht v. Patterson, cited supra, 386 U.S. at 606, 87 S.Ct. at 1211.

. Cited supra.

. No opinion was concurred in by a clear majority of the court, and six were finally published.

. See generally 40 A.L.R.3d, Anno: Presen-tence Report Disclosure, § 3a, pp. 696-699.

. Rule 32(c)(3), Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.