Court Opinion

ID: 9709792
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:54:53.21646+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:51.512148
License: Public Domain

Sievers, Chief Judge,
concurring in part, and in part dissenting.
I wholeheartedly concur in the opinion and decision of my colleagues, except that portion which remands this matter to the district court for resentencing. From that portion of the majority opinion, I find I must respectfully dissent. The majority’s reasoning is that by announcing separate minimum and maximum sentences, without any differential between the minimum and maximum terms imposed, the district court violated the indeterminate sentencing statute.
The majority assumes, first, an intent to impose an • indeterminate sentence by the trial judge and, second, that the indeterminate sentencing statute of necessity requires a differential between the minimum and maximum terms imposed. In the first instance, given the sentences imposed, it *503is difficult for me to attribute to the trial judge an intent that Wilson have the benefit of the indeterminate sentencing statute. In the second instance, I find nothing in the indeterminate sentencing statute which requires a differential between the minimum and maximum, although such a differential obviously makes sense if there truly is to be an indeterminate sentence. I believe that the trial judge intended flat sentences, rather than indeterminate sentences, and that he saw these sentences as the way to ensure that Wilson would do all of the time he was sentenced to do — except for such good time as he might earn while imprisoned. I can find no evidence that a flat sentence is prohibited by Nebraska sentencing statutes, and thus there is no basis to remand.
The majority concludes that it is “uncertain as to what sentences were intended by the district court. ” I do not have that problem — the trial judge clearly intended that it would be a long time, as it should be, before Wilson would again draw a breath of free air. I would affirm the sentences imposed by the district court.