Court Opinion

ID: 9545035
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:04:59.336395+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:13:55.528872
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent. The main opinion quotes the trial court as. saying “I sentence you to serve a term in the Utah State Prison not to exceed one year.” The court’s full sentence was that the defendant “be sentenced to imprisonment in the Utah State Prison for a term not to exceed one year, the last four years of the ‘not to exceed 5 years contemplated by statute is hereby suspended as an act of mercy * * *.’ ” The opinion goes on to say such added language was “apparently inserted some time after it (the signed, official sentence and commitment) was first made, with a different typewriter.” This ignores the official record and deletes something that no one objected to. It amounts to our revision of an official record by way of conjecture and apparency. The so-called apparence of falsification of a record signed by the trial court, if true would be the subject for doing something about the trial court which has not made any such assertion.
The sentence clearly was void and needed correction. At the behest of the defendant himself, it was corrected by another judge, after the former and sentencing judge, for some reason or another, did not choose to resentence the defendant.
The main opinion attempts to justify its conclusion by saying the second judge who corrected the obviously void sentence of the first, expressed the opinion that he could change the sentence to S years in the state prison, but had no right to correct the sentence as to the institution where the sentence should be . served. This writer can *19find nothing in the record where the judge said precisely this.
The main opinion, says that “In view of the difficulty and uncertainty this sentence has given rise to * * * it is necessary and proper to look to the background circumstances disclosed by the record to see what was intended and what the ends of justice demand.” In the first place everyone admits the original sentence to he as void as a 15-man football team. As to what the trial court “intended,” this cannot 'validate an obviously void sentence, and this record hardly reflects what the judge “iri-'tended,” except to spare the defendant the admitted displeasure of county jailers and fellow inmates, generated by the defendant himself as a troublemaker — his letters of penitence and claims of illegal conviction to the contrary notwithstanding.
As to the main opinion’s assertion that we look at the record to see what the ends of justice demand: The appellant himself offered in evidence the report of the Probation Department to show that he had been done injustice in these prior cases, although he had spent a third of his life in prison. If he chooses to introduce such record, he must take the bad with the good. He was fined $50 for petit larceny in a local police court; he says he met two fellows whom he did not know, in a local tavern, who gave him $50 to pass what he knew were bad checks, endorsing them as “Larry I.’James.” There were four other similar checks. In 1947 he spent 2' years arid 6 months in an Oregon prison for robbery; he enlisted in the marines in February, 1951, and was discharged less than 5 months later as an undesirable; there is a pending charge in Oregon as of 1952 for assault with a dangerous weapon; he served 5 years for housebreaking in Oregon dating from early 1953; he was charged twice with receiving stolen •property; in 1959 his bond was revoked in a case involving resisting arrest and being drunk; he was convicted of burglary in Montana, in 1960, and spent 7 months in jail, and has.a record of half-dozen more arrests in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana, apparently still pending. He was successful in having 3 convictions reversed by Circuit Courts, not Supreme Courts. He was married to a woman in 1951 after meeting her in a bar, which marriage failed because of his commitment to Oregon State Prison, after which he thought his wife had obtained a divorce. In 1958 he married another, lived with her lt/2 months, not recalling her maiden name, but whom he labeled as a nut, and he doesn’t know yet whether this marriage has been dissolved. In 1960 he maintained a common-law marriage with a woman after meeting her in a bar, who bore him a child. He conceded at the hearing on his petition for resen-tencing that he had been disciplined in prison for gambling.
Reasons for reciting the statements above simply are to justify the trial court’s action *20in resentencing the defendant: 1) Defendant asked that the Probation record be admitted, offering it as “Exhibit A,” 2) it appears that this Court, in substituting its discretion for that of the trial court’s, must have ignored or discounted this report and 3) the report itself fully would justify the trial court in its discretion to resentence defendant to the indeterminate term required under the statute, particularly in light of the fact the judge who originally sentenced the defendant, saw fit not to re-sentence him, even though the record reflects that he indicated he would, were a point made of the illegality of the sentence.
I do not agree with the main opinion’s conclusion that if one is sentenced to the wrong place he cannot be resentenced if he has served time illegally. Taxpayers might be interested in such case. The question, of course, that poses itself is: what happens if a defendant is sentenced to the wrong place, serves half the time specified and asks for resentencing to the right place? This is a matter for the legislature.
The remand in this case, in my opinion, is beyond the authority of this Court, substitutes our “discretion” for that of the trial court with respect to resentencing after a void sentence, is not our business, is an abuse of our own discretion and strictly is a matter for the legislature, the trial court and the Board of Pardons to determine under present legislation.