Court Opinion

ID: 9793934
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:55:20.693776+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:08:13.850632
License: Public Domain

BUSSEY, Presiding Judge
(specially concurring) :
I am in accord with the view of Judge Simms that the imposition of a 1,500 year sentence does not violate the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and that the imposition of such a sentence is not excessive. Judge Simms makes it crystal clear that in light of the Pardon and Parole Board Rules, filed with the Secretary of State, for the purpose of considering appellant for parole, the sentence imposed is treated as a life sentence.
Judge Brett asserts that “there is no possible way for the sentence to be satisfied, unless upon defendant’s death his embalmed body is placed upon the cell bunk for the balance of the 1,500 years.” There are many instances in which persons sentenced to the penitentiary have died prior to completing the sentence imposed, and I am not aware of any instance in which the embalmed body was kept in the prison cell until the sentence imposed was satisfied. This argument is as specious as the assertion that a 1,500 year sentence would not have been imposed on a “white man.” There is not one scintilla of evidence in the record to support this conclusion. Even Judge Brett’s dissent concedes that the appellant should be “taken off the streets permanently.”
I believe the jury, like this Court in the past and as presently constituted, was col- or-blind. Whether this offense had been committed by a white man, a black man, or by one of my Indian brothers, and the same sentence imposed, I would have no hesitation in concurring in the opinion of Judge Simms.