Court Opinion

ID: 9681948
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 08:01:52.360248+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:36.717258
License: Public Domain

SPAIN, Justice,
dissenting in part.
Respectfully, I dissent from so much of the majority opinion as vacates the consecutive sentences and remands the cases for resentencing. I concur wholeheartedly with affirming the convictions of both defendants and with affirming the sentences fixed for each offense. I also agree that the trial judge erred in not instructing the jury that it could recommend consecutive or concurrent sentencing as to each charge with every other charge. However, I contend that his failure to do so is not reversible error inasmuch as any such recommendation by the jury is not binding on the trial judge in any event. Even if the jury had been given the opportunity to, and had recommended that all the sentences of each defendant should run concurrently, the trial judge was completely free to disregard the recommendations and order all sentences to run consecutively, as he did here. This being true, how does the failure to give the jury the opportunity to make a recommendation become reversible error?
It also strikes me as extremely ironic that the majority sets aside the trial judge’s sentences because the jury might have recommended some concurrent sentencing when here we know beyond any doubt that the jury recommended that, at the very least, two sentences would run consecutively as to each defendant. If this had not been so, they obviously would not have checked the “consecutively” block on the verdict forms. Moreover, we also know beyond any doubt that the jury did not recommend that all sentences would run concurrently for each defendant, since they did not cheek the “concurrently” block available on the form. Nonetheless, this is precisely the sentence which the majority ends up imposing on each defendant. Are we really trying to discern the jury’s true intention? Is this actually “truth in sentencing”?
STEPHENS, C.J., and WINTERSHEIMER, J., join in this dissent.