Court Opinion

ID: 9565450
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:21:29.693121+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:39.308930
License: Public Domain

MILLER, Justice,
dissenting:
I dissent because today’s opinion approving a one-hundred-year sentence mocks Article III, Section 5 of the West Virginia Constitution: “Penalties shall be proportioned to the character and degree of the offence.” It also ignores our prior cases, in which we held similar sentences to be disproportionate.
I.
The defendant, Bobby Ross, II, was a scant nineteen years of age at the time of this incident. He had no adult felony or misdemeanor record. He had been arrested as a juvenile, but had been convicted only for destruction of property. His conviction for attempted aggravated robbery was based solely on the victim’s claim that he asked for money and threatened to stab her. No knife or other weapon was found on the defendant, even though the police were outside the victim’s apartment when the defendant emerged and apprehended him after a short chase. The victim suffered no physical harm. For this crime, he received a sentence of one hundred years.
II.
The majority at least acknowledges the existence of the proportionality principle, *583citing State v. Vance, 164 W.Va. 216, 262 S.E.2d 423 (1980),1 and recites our general test contained in Syllabus Point 5 of State v. Cooper, 172 W.Va. 266, 304 S.E.2d 851 (1983):
“Punishment may be constitutionally impermissible, although not cruel or unusual in its method, if it is so disproportionate to the crime for which it is inflicted that it shocks the conscience and offends fundamental notions of human dignity, thereby violating West Virginia Constitution, Article III, Section 5 that prohibits a penalty that is not proportionate to the character and degree of an offense.”
It then proceeds to make this statement: “The fact that lengthy sentences have been imposed for the crime has not, standing alone, in the past served as a circumstance which shocks the conscience of the Court or society. See, e.g., State v. Martin, [177 W.Va. 758, 356 S.E.2d 629 (1987)].” 177 W.Va. at 758, 356 S.E.2d at 629.
This conclusion is simply untrue. If the majority had read Cooper, instead of merely citing it, it would have found that we held “this sentence shocks our sense of justice and is on its face grossly disproportionate[.]” 172 W.Va. at 272, 304 S.E.2d at 856-57. (Emphasis added). Cooper involved a nineteen-year-old who, along with a companion, attacked an intoxicated man. After knocking the victim down and hitting him several times, they made off with his wallet and credit cards. As a result of the attack, the victim was rendered unconscious and required several stitches. The defendant had a single prior arrest for intoxication. The judge gave him a forty-five-year sentence, which we vacated as being disproportionate. The factual similarities between Cooper and this case are apparent, except this defendant received a sentence more than twice as harsh.
Similarly, the majority does not discuss, although it does cite, State v. Buck, 173 W.Va. 243, 314 S.E.2d 406 (1984). This omission is for an obvious reason. Buck does not support today’s result. The defendant in Buck was twenty-three when he and his companion robbed a store of approximately $1,200 after striking the proprietor on the head with a tire iron. He had no adult criminal record, but did have a rather substantial juvenile record. He was given a seventy-five-year sentence. We ruled that the sentence “violated our constitutional provision which requires penalties to be proportioned to the character and degree of the offense.” 173 W.Va. at 248, 314 S.E.2d at 411.2
I am not aware of any aggravated robbery sentence of one hundred years which has been challenged on proportionality grounds and approved by this Court. Had the defendant in this case been convicted of first-degree murder, our most severe crime, the life sentence would enable him to be eligible for parole in ten years unless the jury declined to recommend mercy.3 Even if he were sentenced to life for recidivism, he would be eligible for parole in fifteen years.4
The longest aggravated robbery sentence to withstand a proportionality challenge was seventy-five years in State v. Glover, 177 W.Va. 650, 355 S.E.2d 631 (1987). The defendant had severely beaten and robbed the victim and left him lying in a ditch where he almost died. The defendant had a twenty-year felony record including convictions for two malicious assaults, arson, and receiving stolen property. In short, the defendant in Glover committed an especially violent aggravated robbery and had a lengthy felony record which involved crimes of violence.
*584The sentencing judge in this case advanced no concrete reasons why he believed a one-hundred-year sentence was appropriate. His remarks were a compendium of discursive, subjective observations not unlike the same judge’s remarks set out in Appendix A to State v. Cooper, supra. In State v. Houston, 166 W.Va. 202, 273 S.E.2d 375 (1980), we required that reasons be given on the record to justify the sentence when it is attacked on proportionality grounds.5 Houston was not followed here. At the very least this Court could have remanded the case for an appropriate sentencing record.
Some sixty years ago, a more enlightened court, in upholding a twenty-five-year sentence for aggravated robbery in State v. Newman, 108 W.Va. 642, 647-48, 152 S.E. 195, 197 (1930), made these observations:
“An excessive punishment, instead of being a deterrent, often results in the generation of an angry public contempt of justice because of its severity, and does not reform the criminal who perceives injustice towards himself. The best course for the courts is to adapt the duration of the punishment to the prisoner’s guilt, keeping in view his character and susceptibility to reformation as an ingredient. 1 Kerr’s Whart. Crim. Laws, §§ 12, 22. These general observations are here made because some of our courts too often impose such severe and excessive punishments as are calculated to bring the administration of justice into public disfavor.”
Today’s majority opinion not only ignores these sensible observations, but compounds its failure by refusing to accept its own prior precedents. Regrettably, harshness and injustice are today’s victors.

.Syllabus Point 8 of State v. Vance, supra, states:
"Article III, Section 5 of the West Virginia Constitution, which contains the cruel and unusual punishment counterpart to the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution, has an express statement of the proportionality principle: ‘Penalties shall be proportioned to the character and degree of the offence.’"

. On remand and subsequent resentencing, the defendant received a thirty-year sentence, which this Court upheld. State v. Buck, 178 W.Va. 505, 361 S.E.2d 470 (1987).

. See W.Va.Code, 62-12-13(a)(5) (1988).

. See note 3, supra.

. Syllabus Point 2 of State v. Houston, supra, states:
"Where the defendant desires to challenge the length of his sentence for robbery by violence, he is entitled to do so by a timely motion to the trial court made within the time period provided by W.Va.Code, 62-12-3, for suspending a sentence, and an appropriate record shall be made to provide the factual basis for the sentence.”