Court Opinion

ID: 9513607
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 22:38:19.915482+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:05:56.345255
License: Public Domain

VANDEWALLE, Chief Justice,
concurring in the result.
[¶ 14] I concur in the result reached in the majority opinion. Although Berger was sentenced to one year in “County Detention” the trial court ordered that nine months be suspended for one year, that 30 days credit be given for treatment, and that 60 days be served on electronic monitoring. ■ The sentence further provided that defendant was placed on supervised probation for one year.
[¶ 15] The North Dakota statutes do not define “probation.” Under N.D.C.C. § 1-02-02, words used in statute and not otherwise defined therein, are to be understood in their ordinary sense unless a contrary intention plainly appears. The term “probation” is defined by Black’s Law Dictionary, Seventh edition to mean: “A court-imposed criminal sentence that, subject to stated conditions, releases a con-*642vieted person into the community instead of sending the criminal to jail or prison.” Electronic monitoring is authorized by N.D.C.C. § 12.1-32-07(3)(f) as a condition of probation. It may have been considered “County Detention” by the trial court for purposes of the sentence, but Berger was not in jail or prison and was released into the community, albeit with restraints. Under these circumstances, I agree with the majority that we should apply the rationale in State v. Drader, 432 N.W.2d 553 (N.D.1988) and subsequent cases. That rationale gives the defendant the benefit of the doubt as to a sentence which is not certain or free from ambiguity and we resolve the sentence in favor of liberty, in this instance by concluding Berger’s probationary period began July 10, 2000.
[¶ 16] This definition of probation, applied for the purpose of this case, does not affect our decision in cases such as Davis v. State, 2001 ND 85, 625 N.W.2d 855, holding that a defendant’s failure to successfully complete a sex offender program while in prison amounted to a willful violation of a condition of probation. Section 12.1-32-02(1), N.D.C.C., specifies that a person convicted of an offense “must be sentenced to one or a combination of the following alternatives.” Those alternatives include, among others, imprisonment and probation. Nothing requires the alternatives cannot be imposed simultaneously. However, unless, as in Davis, the trial court provides to the contrary in the sentence, the period of probation would not begin to run until after the term of imprisonment under the common definition of the term “probation.”
[¶ 17] SANDSTROM, J., concurs.