Court Opinion

ID: 9715195
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:57:22.047809+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:32.489726
License: Public Domain

Wachenfeld, J.
(dissenting). In this traffic case, our highest court detours justice upon the circuitous reasoning that (1) Laird’s first sentence was valid, (2) it was completely executed before resentencing, (3) he was denied procedural due process, and (4) his resentencing put him in double jeopardy.
In fact, (1) the first sentence was invalid because it contravened the mandatory legislative direction to assess a more severe penalty; (2) it had not been completely executed since the two-year period for which Laird’s license had been suspended had not yet run; (3) there was no deprivation of due process since the defendant had ample notice and opportunity to be heard; and (4) double jeopardy was not an issue since the second sentence merely corrected an illegal sentence, before its complete execution, by imposing the lawful punishment demanded by the Legislature. e
Much of the majority opinion rests upon what a certain jurist said in 1874, before the automoblie was invented and before traffic became a hazard. His knowledge could not *315help solve the pressing safety problems of today caused by the millions of automobiles on our roads, of which he was oblivious and could not possibly have envisioned. Nothing demonstrates more clearly that the principles of one age are frequently invalidated by the developments of another.
Realistically, we provided in B. B. 8:7-ll that the court “may correct an illegal sentence at any time.”
Here, in substance, a drunken driver, a second offender, a menace to the highway, escapes the penalty imposed on every one else in his class, and the traffic court, by our edict, is prevented from doing what should have been done in the first instance.
The offense was considered so serious by our lawmakers that they deprived our courts of their usual discretion in sentencing.
The severity of the mandatory punishment of a second offender is known to every driver as well as every pedestrian. Laird undoubtedly knew, when he first appeared for sentencing, that he was a second offender. His silence and the deliberate withholding of his actual status materially contributed to the court’s pronouncement of an illegal sentence.
Our decision ratifies the fraud practiced upon the court below and stymies its effort to comply with the law, thus permitting the early return to the highway of a proven menace.
I cannot subscribe to the reasoning or logic, legal or otherwise, bringing about such a result.
The “plainest principles of justice,” the standard set by the majority, clearly call for the affirmance of the judgment below. “Fundamental fairness” should at least occasionally be enjoyed by the public as well as the wrongdoer.
I am to affirm.
For reversal — Chief Justice Weifteaub, and Justices Hehee, Buelifg, Jacobs and Fbafcis — 5.
For affirmance — Justice Wachefeeld — 1.