Court Opinion

ID: 9852887
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:38:19.657097+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:36.346358
License: Public Domain

ANDERSON, PAUL H., Justice
(concurring).
I join the majority opinion with one exception. I would remand for resentenc-ing in light of our opinion rather than simply affirm on the ground that the record contains sufficient evidence to justify the district court’s significant upward sentencing departure.
The appellant, Pedro Maldono Rodriguez, Jr., has committed some very bad acts and made some unwise choices for which the district court has sentenced him to serve 338 months (28.17 years) in prison. This sentence is a significant upward departure from what the sentencing guidelines require.1 We have now held that the *686sentencing fact-finding jury properly found that there were aggravating factors that support an upward departure in Rodriguez’s sentence. But, we have also concluded that there were errors, albeit harmless errors, that were part of the process used in reaching this result. It is possible that upon remand the district court may still impose the same sentence notwithstanding these errors, and I conclude that if it did so such a sentence would be legal under our decision. Nevertheless, I am not convinced that upon remand, the district court would reimpose the same sentence or should do so. Therefore, in light of the district court’s substantial upward departure and the errors that occurred during sentencing, I would remand for re-sentencing in light of our holding, rather than affirm the court’s sentence.

. The 120-month upward durational departure imposed in this case is substantially greater than the upward durational departures imposed by other district courts in cases involving the major controlled substance crime aggravating sentencing factor. See State v. Osborne, 715 N.W.2d 436, 439 (Minn.2006) (imposing a 225-month sentence, *686which was a 67-month upward departure from the presumptive 158-month sentence); State v. McIntosh, 641 N.W.2d 3, 8 (Minn. 2002) (imposing a 122-month sentence, which was a 24-month upward departure from the presumptive 98-month sentence).