Court Opinion

ID: 9860738
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:31:15.339538+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:26:34.907552
License: Public Domain

PIVARNIK, Justice,
concurring in result only.
I concur in the holding of the majority that the post-conviction proceeding was correct in concluding as a matter of law that there was no possibility of consecutive sentences as a result of Kendrick's plea of guilty since no other charge or sentence was before the sentencing court at that time. It is also clear Kendrick chose to plead guilty in a knowing and voluntary manner.
The problems Kendrick complains of here arose in subsequent sentencings by another court in the same county where sentences in that court were made consecutive to the sentence in the instant cause. The propriety of the actions in the other court are not before us in this cause. I therefore take issue with the majority when it attempts to resolve problems articulated by Kendrick that arose in the subsequent sentencings. I also disagree with the analysis and disposition the majority predicts in the subsequent sentencings. I do not find the language in IC 85-50-1-2(a) to be as restrictive as the majority finds it to be. There is nothing in § (a) that gives rise to the majority's statement: "The general authority is limited to those occasions when a court is meting out two or more terms of imprisonment." The court of ap*1313peals, in Frazier v. State (1987), Ind.App., 512 N.E.2d 215, 216, stated:
The statute provides that the court shall determine whether terms of imprisonment shall be served consecutively. There must, of course, be at least two terms of imprisonment involved before there is anything for the statute to operate upon. We believe the language employed by the legislature necessarily presupposes that when the critical (second) sentence is imposed so as to invoke the statute, the other sentence(s) must already have been imposed or at least, must be imposed contemporaneously therewith.
In Frazier, the sentencing judge ordered Frazier's ten (10) year sentence for burglary, a class C felony, to be served consecutively to whatever sentence the judge was to impose in another case. The Frazier court held there could not be imposition of consecutive sentencing when at the time the sentence was imposed the defendant had pleaded guilty but had not yet been sentenced on the other offense. That is not the situation here. Kendrick had been sentenced on the instant charge and there was at that time no other sentence for the trial court to make this sentence consecutive to. In the subsequent sentencing, the sentence in the instant cause did exist. I do not interpret § (a) to prohibit the trial court there from making that sentence consecutive to the one imposed by Judge Tran-berg in the instant cause. I fear all of this is dicta in the majority opinion and in this concurring opinion since the issue will not be before us unless it is raised in the subsequent sentencing received by Kendrick in the other court in the county. In view of the fact the majority raised the issue, however, I feel I must respond to it in this manner. I concur in the result the majority has reached.
GIVAN, J., concurs.