Court Opinion

ID: 9514453
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 22:49:39.502617+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:17.762164
License: Public Domain

SABERS, Justice
(dissenting).
[f 32.] I dissent on Issue 1 as the trial court improperly enhanced the oral sentence. The trial court orally sentenced the defendant to concurrent sentences for rape and kidnapping. Fifteen minutes later, in violation of Bucholz, 403 N.W.2d at 402-03 and Ford, 328 N.W.2d at 266-68, the trial court improperly enhanced the concurrent sentences by making them consecutive. The fact that the trial court originally intended consecutive rather than concurrent sentences, and made a mistake at the oral sentencing, is immaterial 'under Bucholz and Ford. In Ford, we held that it was too late for the trial court to modify an oral sentence once the prisoner suffers some confinement in the custody of a sheriff. 328 N.W.2d at 267. As noted in the majority opinion, supra at note 1, immediately after sentencing, Lykken was permitted to wait for his counsel in the custody of two officers from the sheriffs office. Here, as in Ford, it was simply too late for the court to alter the oral sentence. Similarly, in Bucholz, this court held that the brevity of a one-hour lapse between the initial sentencing and the illegal resen-tencing was immaterial when the defendant was already in the custody of a sheriff. 403 N.W.2d at 403.
[¶ 33.] Although I am not adverse to overruling Sieler (see my dissent at 1996 SD 114 at ¶¶ 25-33, 554 N.W.2d at 483-85), it may not be necessary to do so because the issue in that case was not whether his sentence was illegally increased, but rather whether his parole was illegally enhanced or increased. Id. at ¶ 10, 554 N.W.2d at 480.
[¶ 34.] I also write specially in relation to ¶ 4, to point out that habeas corpus reaches jurisdictional error, constitutional error, all “causes” listed in SDCL 21-27-16(1) through (7) and other illegal detentions, including those resulting from failure to comply with “substantive statutory procedure.” Black v. Class, 1997 SD 22, ¶ 34, 560 N.W.2d 544, 552 (Sabers, J., concurring specially) (collecting cases).