Court Opinion

ID: 9847689
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:05:15.516258+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:26.937250
License: Public Domain

GOOLSBY, Judge
(concurring):
I, too, would affirm, but for a different reason. The appellant Jeffrey Higgenbottom never argued to the trial court the question he argues here, i.e., that his due process rights were violated because the trial court extended his sentence “solely in retaliation for [Higgenbottom’s] exercise of his statutory right to bring post-trial motions.” Unless an issue is raised to and ruled on by the trial court, the Court of Appeals cannot address it.1 At no point below did Higgenbottom question the *651trial court’s action on any basis whatsoever or attempt to do so. Indeed, his counsel seemed to concede the court had the power to do what it did. Viz.:
[COUNSEL]: Your Honor, I have one brief matter; It’s a motion to reconsider on Jeffrey Higgenbottom----As the court recalls, yesterday you sentenced Mr. Higgenbottom to ... two years in the Department of Corrections, $5,000, suspended upon thirty days or $750 with eighteen months probation and thirty days public service employment. At his request I am waiving his presence and asking for the court to ... reconsider the probationary sentence specifically and reduce that to twelve months.
COURT: [Counsel], Mr. Higgenbottom is lucky. Maybe I ought to reconsider his sentence completely.
[COUNSEL]: I discussed that with him before I came.
COURT: It takes a lot of courage for a lawyer to come back to ask for a reconsideration like that. Since this term of court has not expired and since he is asking for a reconsideration maybe I ought to just reconsider it on my own and extend his sentence ... have hi[m] picked up to do jail time.
[COUNSEL]: I understand that, your Honor. I discussed it with him before he asked for this.
THE COURT: He just about talked himself into jail as it was. No, sir; I’m going to give him twenty-four months probation. We’re going to see if he can do probation. Maybe he’ll be cleaning up his lot again. Since you made the motion to reconsider, I’m denying that motion and I’m reconsidering my sentence and extending his probation to twenty-four months.
Certainly, if counsel felt the trial court lacked authority to do what it did, either because of statute or because of some constitutional prohibition, then was the time to say so.
Moreover, nothing either in the record of the proceedings held on Higgenbottom’s motion or about the tone and tenor of the trial court’s remarks during those proceedings suggests it would have been futile for counsel to have raised the issue now argued to us.

. See State v. Hudgins, 319 S.C. 233, 460 S.E.2d 388 (1995) (a defendant’s claim that the imposition of the death penalty on a seventeen-year old constituted cruel and unusual punishment held procedurally barred where the defendant did not raise the issue in the trial court); State v. Owen, 275 S.C. 586, 274 S.E.2d 510 (1981) (the appellants’ contention that their respective sentences constituted cruel and unusual punishment held procedurally barred because it was not first presented to the trial court); cf State v. McKinney, 278 S.C. 107, 292 S.E.2d 598 (1982) (absent a timely objection during the guilty plea proceeding, the unknowing or involuntary nature of a guilty plea cannot be raised on direct appeal, but must be addressed through the more appropriate channel of post-conviction relief).