Court Opinion

ID: 9672760
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:59:42.229053+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:18.127129
License: Public Domain

AMDAHL, Chief Justice
(concurring specially).
The majority of the court has determined that a triple upward departure from the presumptive guidelines sentence for one of the three present convictions under the criteria of State v. Stumm, 312 N.W.2d 248 (Minn.1981), rather than the double upward departure of State v. Evans, 311 N.W.2d 481 (Minn.1981), is proper in this matter. I have no disagreement with that determination. I write only to emphasize that it is not only the individual, specific offenses, egregious as each is, which bring the sentence within the purview of Stumm rather than Evans. The tilting of the balance in favor of Stumm is brought about as a cumulative effect. The child, being too small to defend himself or to flee from the abuse, unquestionably suffered a continuing day-to-day reign of fear as well as periodic bone-fracturing physical abuse during the time the defendant lived with the victim and his family. A failure to recognize the situation of the child between episodes of actual physical abuse, as well as the effects of the actual physical abuse, would be a failure to recognize one of the principles of the Guidelines which is to make the sentence proportional to the crime.