Court Opinion

ID: 9744906
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:22:25.234152+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:53.278389
License: Public Domain

SULLIVAN, Justice,
dissenting.
The defendant here contends that the trial court had no authority to require that his sentence here be served consecutively to that imposed at another time by another court. I agree.
Some background is in order. In Kendrick v. State, 529 N.E.2d 1311, 1311 (Ind.1988), we held: “Trial courts, in the absence of express statutory authority, cannot order consecutive sentences, i.e., the commencement of a sentence cannot, in the absence of express statutory authority, be postponed.” We further held that the authority of the trial court to determine “whether terms of imprisonment shall be served concurrently or consecutively,” granted in Ind.Code § 35-50-l-2(a), was “restrictive. The general authority is limited to those occasions when the court is meting out two or more terms of imprisonment.” Kendrick, 529 N.E.2d at 1312. Accord, Seay v. State, 550 N.E.2d 1284, 1289 (Ind.1990).
As such, the state of the law after Kendrick and Seay was that a consecutive sentence could only be imposed under Ind.Code § 35-50-l-2(a) if the sentence was consecutive to another sentence imposed (i) at the same time and (ii) by the same court.
In 1994, the legislature amended Ind.Code § 35-50-1-2 to provide: “The court may order terms of imprisonment to be served consecutively even if the sentences are not imposed at the same time.” 1994 Ind. Acts. P.L. 164 § 1. We confronted this amendment last year in Weaver v. State, 664 N.E.2d 1169 (Ind.1996). There consecutive sentences had been imposed in violation of Kendrick before the effective date of the 1994 amendment and we found them invalid. In the course of enunciating the result, we said: “Although the legislature essentially overturned the contemporaneity requirement of Seay and Kendrick with the 1994 amendment, the legislation doing so became effective after Weaver’s sentence was imposed. The ... Court acted beyond the scope of its statutory authority.” Weaver, 664 N.E.2d at 1170-71 (footnotes omitted; emphasis supplied).
To me the Weaver language indicates that the 1994 amendment overturned the contemporaneity requirement, i.e., the “same time” requirement, of Kendrick and Seay but not the “same court” requirement. Because the sentence here was imposed consecutive to a sentence imposed by another court, I believe the trial court acted beyond its authority.
SELBY, J., concurs in dissent.