Court Opinion

ID: 9791937
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:20:41.026415+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:39.477442
License: Public Domain

MACY, Justice,
specially concurring.
I concur in the majority opinion to the extent that it holds Appellant’s sentence for burglary must run concurrently to his sentence for interference with a peace officer, and I join in Chief Justice Urbigkit’s specially concurring opinion. I would also hold that an increase in Appellant’s original sentence — on the basis of his conduct subsequent to the original sentencing — violates the Wyoming Constitution.
In North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969), the United States Supreme Court sought to protect criminal defendants from vindictive sentencing after a retrial. As the majority opinion in this case states, the Supreme Court held:
[Wjhenever a judge imposes a more severe sentence upon a defendant after a new trial, the reasons for his doing so must affirmatively appear. Those reasons must be based upon objective information concerning identifiable conduct on the part of the defendant occurring after the time of the original sentencing proceeding.
Pearce, 395 U.S. at 726, 89 S.Ct. at 2081 (emphasis added). In United States v. DiFrancesco, 449 U.S. 117, 136, 101 S.Ct. 426, 437, 66 L.Ed.2d 328 (1980), the Supreme Court stated that the difference between the imposition of a sentence after a retrial and the imposition of a sentence after an appeal was no more than a “ ‘conceptual nicety’ ” (quoting Pearce, 395 U.S. at 722, 89 S.Ct. at 2079).
Regardless of whether this case presents a situation which falls within the purview of the dicta in DiFrancesco, I believe a significant difference exists between sentencing after retrial and sentencing after this Court has reversed a portion of a defendant’s conviction and remanded the case to the district court for resentencing. If a defendant appeals a conviction and sentence and receives a new trial, “the slate has been wiped clean.” Pearce, 395 U.S. at 721, 89 S.Ct. at 2078 (emphasis in original). Hence, the Pearce decision sought to protect defendants from vindictive sentencing after they appeal and receive new trials. It does not preclude the imposition of a greater sentence but simply states that, because the trial judge previously sentenced a defendant for conduct occurring before the date of the original sentencing, the imposition of a greater sentence must be supported by evidence of additional conduct which occurred after the pronouncement of the original sentence. When a *1219trial judge is directed to resentence a defendant without retrial, the judge should be placed in the same position as he was in at the time of the original pronouncement of sentence. The slate has not been “wiped clean,” and it is unfair to subject a defendant to a greater sentence after he has prevailed on appeal. A contrary rule will certainly chill the right to appeal criminal convictions.