Court Opinion

ID: 9844666
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:06:26.127528+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:39.828914
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
dissenting:
Justice McDevitt’s opinion recites the history of John Hooper, beginning with his abandonment by his parents at a young age, placed by some unknown and unnamed person in various foster homes until at the age of fifteen years he was adopted by the Hoopers. He became addicted to alcohol as a teenager, and for medical reasons (probably alcoholic addiction) was dis*610charged from the Navy at the age of twenty or twenty-one. Thereafter he married, and later attempted to shoot his wife; he was sentenced to a workhouse for the criminally insane for three and one-half to fifteen years, and served three. He married again, but that marriage lasted only a few months. Hooper, at his own volition, sought alcoholic rehabilitation six different times, none of which were successful. He is now taking extensive medication for a heart ailment. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter in having killed Bill Davis with a pistol, and was sent to prison for a fixed thirty year term; he is now serving that term.
John Hooper’s life story is a tale of tragedy. Is his fixed thirty year sentence imposed solely because of the final criminal act of manslaughter or is it because of past actions for which he has paid the penalty? And is the sentence which was imposed, even though it was within the limits of the law, unnecessarily severe for this particular person with his particular sociological background? Does Idaho society as a whole gain satisfaction in knowing that this now fifty-year-old man will in all likelihood be housed, fed, clothed, and medicated at taxpayer’s expense until he is eighty years old? Were not other lesser sentences available which would have considered, for example, that after ten, twelve, or fifteen years of confinement, he is found no longer addicted to alcohol, and found to be rehabilitated to the extent that he can again be part of society? Is it reasonable to have Hooper locked up for a full thirty years, with the result that there can be no commutation of that sentence, and no chance of parole?
This appeal asks that this Court reduce the sentence — to something in line with reason. Our opinion says: “No, upon reviewing the record, we cannot say the trial court abused its discretion.” But, we do not define for the reading public what is an abuse of discretion, other than inferentially, “In exercising discretion, the most fundamental requirement is reasonableness.” 119 Idaho 606, 608, 809 P.2d 467, 469.
Hooper’s fixed sentence in this case for me turns the clock backward to just shy of thirty years ago to another thirty year sentence awarded to a defendant whose crimes in the eyes of most reasonable persons was far more abhorrent and heinous than those attributable to John Hooper. That defendant, as with this defendant, had a “background of having lived with a cruel stepfather who eventually chased him away from his home at the age of eight years; he further presented background of living with various relatives who cared little for his moral and social development; he had only a first grade education; he was married at the age of seventeen years to a girl who was thirteen years of age, from whom he was divorced.” State v. Ledbetter, 83 Idaho 451, 452-53, 364 P.2d 171, 172 (1961). The thirty year sentence to the penitentiary was appealed, the defendant urging that it was a severe abuse of discretion based on passion and prejudice. This Court did not declare that the sentence was an abuse of discretion, but did “conclude that the sentence is extreme, and, it is hereby reduced to a period of fifteen years.” 83 Idaho at 453, 364 P.2d at 173. That was the unanimous decision of the Court, all of whom were personally known to me, and before whom I argued a number of times. All were well respected for their judicial ability and temperament, and, to my mind on a par with this Court’s membership of today.
In conclusion, it is suggested that “abuse of discretion,” which was in my recollection, a terminology not much, if ever, used in earlier days, is now greatly overworked, at least as concerns appellate courts passing judgment on the handicraft of lower courts. A trial judge makes a ruling, passes sentence, and I presently see no benefit in appellate court cliche usage of abuse of discretion, which is purely a generality, other than for Judge Burnett having added some specificity thereto, which he did in Sheets v. Argo-West, Inc., 104 Idaho 880, 887, 664 P.2d 787, 794 (Ct.App.1983):
‘Discretion’ has been defined as a power or privilege to act unhampered by legal rule. Black’s Law Dictionary, at 553 (rev. 4th ed. 1968). However, ‘judicial discretion’ is a more restrained concept. Lord Coke is said to have defined *611judicial discretion as an inquiry into ‘what would be just according to the laws in the premises.’ Id. Judicial discretion ‘requires an actual exercise of judgment and a consideration of the facts and circumstances which are necessary to make a sound, fair, and just determination, and a knowledge of the facts upon which the discretion may properly operate.’ 27 C.J.S. Discretion at 289 (1959). Discretion which violates these restraints is discretion abused.
(Emphasis added.) Judge Burnett’s definition of discretion is sound and equates evenly with Justice McDevitt’s observation that the most fundamental element of discretion, and the exercise thereof, is reasonableness. The “standard” by which we should be guided is also found in the passage from Judge Burnett’s opinion, namely, is the sentence imposed just? Does it comport with ideas and ideals of justice?
The incarceration of John Hooper for a thirty year fixed term is not a reasonable sentence, not reasonable as to him, and not reasonable as to Idaho taxpayers who will be paying his board, room, and medical bills for those 360 months.