Court Opinion

ID: 9847088
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:53:36.098949+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:00.753865
License: Public Domain

Andersen, J.
(concurring)—I agree with the holding of my fellow judges in this case, including the holding that the suspension of sentence statute1 does give the trial judge the right to suspend this defendant’s sentence should that judge in the exercise of his discretion decide to do so.
I do not, however, agree with that portion of the opinion which reasons that the legislature chose not to restrict the trial judge’s discretion in cases such as this one. To my view, the right to suspend the sentence of a defendant who has been adjudged to be a habitual criminal, exists only because of an entirely unintended consequence of an amendment to the suspension of sentence statute enacted by the 1957 legislature.
In the present case the outcome is the same whether the legislative action was intentional or inadvertent; but if this is a gap in the law as a result of legislative inadvertence, as I perceive it to be, then it merits prompt correction by that body. It is the purpose of this separate concurring opinion to direct what I believe to have been a legislative oversight to the attention of the legislature so that it may be corrected by the legislature, if it desires to do so.
Courts, of course, have no inherent authority to suspend or defer the imposition of sentence on their own; the only authority they have in that regard is such authority as has been granted them by the legislature.2
As to a few particularly heinous offenses, none of which are pertinent to the present case, the authority to suspend *129imposition of sentence has never been granted.3 Other than as to such offenses, however, statutes relating to suspension and deferment of sentence have been increasingly liberalized over the years.4
Originally, the legislature only permitted sentences to be suspended where the convicted persons were “under the age of twenty-one years”.5 Then in 1921, it was provided that suspended sentences could be given to “any person never before convicted of a felony or gross misdemeanor”.6 Finally, by a 1957 amendment to the suspended sentence statute, the legislature extended authority to the courts to suspend sentences of “any person,” and this is now the law.7
As to the defendant in the present case, there is nothing in the statutory law which prohibits a judge from granting him a suspended sentence and inasmuch as the 1957 amendment to the suspended sentence statute permits the suspension of sentence for “any person” (see footnote 7), the trial court does have such discretion. Nevertheless, I do not believe the legislature ever intended that a trial court should have the discretion to suspend the sentence of a person adjudged to be a habitual criminal. My reasons are these!
Since shortly after the turn of the century, it has been a part of the statutory law of this state that persons such as the defendant who have been charged by a prosecuting attorney with being a habitual criminal, and who have *130been proved to have had the requisite prior convictions, “shall be punished by imprisonment in the state penitentiary for life.”8 By the terms of another statute, the Board of Prison Terms and Paroles is further admonished that- in such cases “the duration of confinement shall not be fixed at less than fifteen years” and, further, that the board “shall retain jurisdiction over such convicted person throughout his natural life unless the governor by appropriate executive action orders otherwise.”9 Habitual criminal statutes, such as our own, do not create a distinct offense but impose a heavier punishment for the latest offense because of the earlier ones.10
Our State Supreme Court has held that our habitual criminal statute is “sound in principle and sustained by reason.”11 The public policy behind this state’s habitual criminal law is simply this:
Aside from the offender and his victim, there is always another party concerned in every crime committed—the state; and it does no violence to any constitutional guarantee for the state to rid itself of depravity when its efforts to reform have failed.
State v. Le Pitre, 54 Wash. 166,168,103 P. 27 (1909).
Society has a right to protect itself against repeated depredations by persons who have demonstrated time and time again that they cannot or will not be reformed by the criminal justice system. To this end, the state legislature has enacted statutes providing that persons found to be habitual criminals by reason of repeated convictions of .certain felonies shall be sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole for 15 years and then with lifetime parole supervision following that. It makes no sense at all *131for another statute to permit this entire habitual criminal procedure to be circumvented by the simple expediency of allowing a trial judge to suspend the sentence of a person found by the jury or other trier of the fact to be a habitual criminal. There is nothing in the legislative history of the 1957 amendment to the suspension of sentence statute that even suggests that such an anomaly was ever intended by the legislature, yet that is precisely what the literal language of the 1957 amendment permitted.
It is easy enough to see how such an error could creep into an amendment to that statute adopted during a busy legislative session. The suspension of sentence statute, by its terms, relates to suspending sentences for crimes. Changes in that statute could therefore have been thought not to relate to the habitual criminal statute which is well understood to create a status and not a crime.12 However, when a habitual criminal is sentenced, he or she is sentenced for the underlying crime (auto theft in this case) but with the enhanced penalty provided by the habitual criminal statute, so the suspended sentence statute is directly pertinent.13
I am satisfied the legislature never intended to permit a trial judge to suspend the sentence of one adjudged to be a habitual criminal; and if mistake it was, and I believe it to have been, it is up to the legislature to correct the language of its own enactment. This court cannot do so in the face of the statutory language presented.14

State ex rel. Woodhouse v. Dore, 69 Wn.2d 64, 69, 416 P.2d 670 (1966); State v. Butterfield, 12 Wn. App. 745, 747, 529 P.2d 901 (1974).

This state’s suspension of sentence statute has always specifically provided that sentences could not be suspended where the conviction is for murder, burglary in the first degree, arson in the first degree, robbery, carnal knowledge of a female child under the age of 10 years or rape. Laws of 1905, ch. 24, § 1, p. 49; Laws of 1909, ch. 249, § 28, p. 896; Laws of 1921, ch. 69, § 1, p. 204; Laws of 1949, ch. 76, § 1, p. 172; Laws of 1957, ch. 227, § 1, p. 889; Laws of 1967, ch. 200, § 7, p. 1009.

The. history and changes in the suspended and deferred sentence statutes are admirably summarized in the opinion for the court by Hill, J. in State v. Davis, 56 Wn.2d 729, 355 P.2d 344 (1960).

Laws of 1909, ch. 249, § 28, p. 896.

Laws of 1921, ch. 69, § 1, p. -204.

Laws of 1957, ch. 227, § 1, p. 889; RCW 9.92.060.

Laws of 1909, ch. 249, § 34, p. 899; RCW 9.92.090.

RCW 9.95.040(3).

Graham v. West Virginia, 224 U.S. 616, 623, 56 L. Ed. 917, 32 S. Ct. 583 (1911); State v. Miles, 34 Wn.2d 55, 62, 207 P.2d 1209 (1949). See also 5 R. Anderson, Wharton’s Criminal Law and Procedure § 2218 (1957); and 39 Am. Jur. 2d Habitual Criminals and Subsequent Offenders § 2 (1968).

State v. Le Pitre, 54 Wash. 166, 168, 103 P. 27 (1909).

State v. Tatum, 61 Wn.2d 576, 578, 379 P.2d 372 (1963); State v. Nixon, 10 Wn. App. 355, 359, 517 P.2d 212 (1973). The consideration of a habitual criminal as a status, rather than a crime, is more than just a difference in nomenclature. If being a habitual criminal were a crime, the statute would run afoul of such federal and state constitutional provisions as those prohibiting double jeopardy.

State v. Tatum, 61 Wn.2d 576, 379 P.2d 372 (1963); State v. Nixon, 10 Wn. App. 355, 517 P.2d 212 (1973).

See Lappin v. Lucurell, 13 Wn. App. 277, 291, 534 P.2d 1038 (1975).