Court Opinion

ID: 9588086
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:29:53.028958+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:46:26.150081
License: Public Domain

*203Judges Arnold and Whichard
concurring.
The evidence at the sentencing hearing showed the following:
A police officer investigated a call regarding a suspicious car. He approached the car and asked two of the four occupants to get out. He then received a call reporting a robbery at a nearby Fast Food Store. The occupants of the car heard the call; and two of them, including defendant, ran. It is not clear from the record whether it was known at the time that defendant was one of the occupants who ran. It would appear that it was not. Investigation established that the person who robbed the store pulled a knife with a three inch blade, ordered the store clerk to step back, took $55.00 from the cash register, and left.
The following day defendant voluntarily surrendered himself at the police station, signed a statement confessing to the robbery, and assisted the police by returning to the crime scene to look for the money and the knife he had lost when he ran from the police car. Defendant had no prior record of criminal convictions. Affidavits and character witnesses indicated that he was a person of good character and reputation in the community in which he lived and worked.
The court found no factors in aggravation of punishment. It found four mitigating factors as follows: (1) defendant had no prior record of criminal convictions, (2) prior to arrest defendant voluntarily acknowledged his wrongdoing in connection with the offense, (3) defendant had been a person of good character and reputation in his community, and (4) defendant made a complete confession and assisted the police in an investigation. Despite those mitigating factors, the court had no choice but to impose a minimum sentence of fourteen years.
The mitigating factors in the case would seem to have called for exercise of prosecutorial discretion by the acceptance of a plea to a lesser charge. They also call into question the desirability of mandatory minimum sentences which remove all possibility of exercise of judicial discretion, regardless of the mitigating circumstances presented.