Court Opinion

ID: 9731855
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:00:13.744205+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:21.630116
License: Public Domain

OTIS, Justice
(dissenting).
I disagree with the conclusion reached by the majority and would reverse the revocation of appellant’s probation. While the district court possesses broad discretion in these cases, that discretion is by no means unbounded. This decision lies beyond the realm of that discretion because, even accepting that the district court found sufficient evidence of an intentional or inexcusable violation of probation, this is not a case where the “need for confinement outweighs the policies favoring probation.”
We are presented with a nineteen year-old probationer with a drug problem, who had just completed three months in the St. Louis County Jail. The Friday after being released he went to the Eden Housé drug treatment center seeking admission to its rehabilitation program. After confessing to the intake counselor that he was scared, he left all of his belongings at the facility and walked to his girlfriend’s residence where he spent the weekend. He and his mother thereafter made several attempts to enroll him in a treatment program. When these attempts proved unsuccessful, and after heeding the misguided advice of his mother that he wait an extra day, appellant voluntarily returned to the St. Louis County Jail on Thursday, six days after leaving Eden House.
While Eden House at first refused to enroll appellant after the incident, at the revocation hearing a director of one of the facility’s programs testified that appellant would be accepted. In his words “Because we feel a sufficient amount of time has occurred between the date of his last attempt [to enroll] and now, and the jail time that he has received, plus the likelyhood (sic) that he has come to the sense of his own reality with what he faces, we feel he is a better risk than he was just after leaving.”
These facts bespeak the impropriety of revoking appellant’s probation. In reaching this conclusion I subscribe to the majority’s adoption of § 5.1(a) of the American Bar Association’s probation standards, which requires in revocation decisions a balancing of the goals of isolating dangerous individuals from the public, deterring future misconduct, and, where possible, rehabilitating offenders. I would go further, however, and endorse the second part of § 5.1, which provides in part:
[T]he following intermediate steps should be considered in every case as possible alternatives to revocation:
(i) a review of the conditions, followed by changes where necessary or desirable;
(ii) a formal or informal conference with the probationer to reemphasize the necessity of compliance with the conditions;
(iii) a formal or informal warning that further violations could result in revocation.
*253A.B.A. Standards for Criminal Justice, Probation § 5.1(b) (Approved draft 1970).
Moreover, I agree with the committee that recommended these standards when they state:
[T]he fact that violation of a condition is a permissible basis for revocation does not support the idea that revocation should necessarily or automatically follow the establishment of a violation.
* * * [T]his subsection is designed to reject the thesis that revocation should inexorably follow a violation because “the defendant has had his chance” or because of similar generalizations which may not fit the facts. * * * [T]he public is not served by precipitate and automatic imprisonment following what under the circumstances might be either a technical violation or a violation which, though substantial, does not provide the kind of affirmative reasons for imprisonment which are set forth in this standard.
A.B.A. Standards for Criminal Justice, Probation § 5.1, Commentary (Approved Draft 1970).
The district court, by contrast, revoked appellant’s probation with the admonition:
I would never have [placed you on probation in the first place]. * * * You went [to prison] yourself; you had every opportunity that this system could give someone. * * * [Y]ou’ve used it all up behind you.
In my opinion this reproach reflects the “defendant has had his chance” approach rejected by the ABA committee’s standards.
Keeping those standards in mind, it is evident that appellant’s probation should not have been revoked. While the probation violation was not insubstantial, it did not result in harm or in any threat of harm. The violation seems to reflect more a misguided impulse than a calculating or dangerous disposition. This case “does not provide the kind of affirmative reasons for imprisonment set forth in [the ABA] standard.”
Furthermore, all parties acknowledge appellant’s need for drug treatment, that such treatment was available at the time of the revocation hearing, and that sending appellant to the state reformatory will not effectively provide the necessary correctional treatment. Revoking appellant’s probation under these circumstances belies the standards to which the majority purport to adhere.
I would reverse.
ROGOSHESKE, Justice. I join the dissent of Mr. Justice Otis.
WAHL, Justice. I join the dissent of Mr. Justice Otis.