Court Opinion

ID: 9750026
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:13:57.682153+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:01.692243
License: Public Domain

POPOVICH, Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent from that portion of the Opinion wherein the Majority rules that the sentencing court abused its discretion in relying upon appellant’s low intelligence quotient in imposing sentence.
In my view, the lower court did not abuse its discretion; rather it is the Majority which has installed blinders on the court’s view of reality.
Of necessity the sentencing court must consider, among other factors, the intellectual capacity of the offender. The Majority cannot, it writes, find any cases pertinent to the issue as though this were an issue of first impression. There are no cases because it has always been the law, beyond cavil, that the sentencing court take into account an offender’s mental background and his propensity to commit crime, his responsibility to society and his ability to control his actions, how best to improve his intelligence quotient and what his rehabilitative needs are.
All of these factors were considered by the sentencing court in a colloquy that covered almost 40 pages of transcript.
Although, admittedly, the sentence could be considered harsh, that does not mean that the sentence was ill-considered. And we must not, either, lose sight of the fact *24that this young man shot, at close range, another human being with the intent to kill. It was a senseless, primitive act, an act not surprisingly perpetrated by one of low intelligence.
As the sentencing court stated,
THE COURT: The marginal intelligence gives me a great deal of concern. I mean, he has the ability to do what he did, his intelligence is low, which means that his judgment might be poor which means that he would pose a danger under similar circumstances that would not only fuel the wrong but compound it because he doesn’t have the ability, the natural intelligence to control himself. You tell me what do I do? He’s more explosive than if he had the intelligence. He needs some real extensive type of training to—
* $ $ * * *
THE COURT: To get those traits out of him and to improve his intelligence quotient. How do we do that? We can't keep him out, he needs a lot of time to do that, so the strictures are that he has to be put into a structured environment, and there maybe we can rectify his conduct. That’s why we call it correctional institution. They correct the conduct, but he has a long road to hoe with the inability to comprehend his wrong, and his wrong was grave because it almost took somebody’s life, loss of property and life.
Sentencing Transcript, p. 14.
Perhaps the Majority, had it comprised the sentencing court, would have imposed a less severe sanction, but for it to say that the sentencing court abused its discretion is to turn upside down and inside out the sentencing scheme of this Commonwealth.