Court Opinion

ID: 9706068
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:30:48.615864+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:18.900623
License: Public Domain

Mahady, J.,
concurring and dissenting. I concur that the re-
lief sought by the State in these appeals should be denied. I write separately, however, to dissent from the majority’s extensive dicta which upholds the constitutionality of the mandatory minimum sentencing provisions involved. The issue is whether the trial court erred in its determination that a legislatively-prescribed mandatory minimum sentence upon conviction violated the defendant’s right of allocution and/or the proportionality clause of Chapter II, § 39 of the Vermont Constitution. In each of the cases below, the sentencing judge refused to be bound by the mandatory sentences provided by the applicable statutes. I would hold that the sentencing judge was correct.
I.
The Vermont Rules of Criminal Procedure provide that “[b]efore imposing sentence the court shall . . . afford counsel an opportunity to speak on behalf of the defendant; and . . . address the defendant personally and ask him if he wishes to make a statement in his own behalf and to present any information relevant to sentencing.” V.R.Cr.P. 32(a)(l)(B)-(C). The rules also provide that “[p]rior to imposing sentence, the court shall afford . . . the defendant and his attorney an opportunity to comment upon any and all information submitted to the court for sentencing.” V.R.Cr.P. 32(c)(4).
These Rules implement the guarantee of Chapter I, Article 10 of the Vermont Constitution “[t]hat in all prosecutions for criminal offenses, a person hath a right to be heard by himself and his counsel.” Moreover, they provide the criminal defendant an opportunity to defend his liberty. Chapter I, Article 1 of the Vermont Constitution requires “[tjhat all men . .. have certain *523natural, inherent, and.unalienable rights, amongst which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty . . . The right of allocution is therefore fundamental.
The right of allocution is also time honored. “As early as 1689, it was recognized that the court’s failure to ask the defendant if he had anything to say before sentence was imposed required reversal.” Green v. United States, 365 U.S. 301, 304 (1961) (citing Anonymous, 3 Mod. 265, 266, 87 Eng. Rep. 175 (K.B.)). Justice Black noted that “[a] rule so highly prized for so sound a reason for so long a time deserves to be rigorously enforced . . . , not merely praised in resounding glittering generalities calculated to soften the blow of nonenforcement.” Id. at 311 (Black, J., dissenting). Accordingly, this Court has deemed it appropriate to “agree with the spirit of Justice Black’s dissent,” stating: “Allocution in Vermont is not to be an empty act.” In re Stevens, 144 Vt. 250, 259-60, 478 A.2d 212, 217-18 (1984).1 Stevens concluded that the defendant must be afforded a “meaningful opportunity ... to address the court, prior to sentencing.” Id. at 260, 478 A.2d at 217 (emphasis in original).
A mandatory sentencing statute, however, effectively denies a criminal defendant the right to defend his liberty at sentencing. At best, the defendant might request the mandatory minimum sentence, but no statement made by way of allocution can alter the mandatory sentence. This procedure does not afford the defendant the “meaningful opportunity” to defend his liberty emphasized in Stevens. Mandatory sentencing provisions such as 23 V.S.A. § 674(c) and 13 V.S.A. § 1028 deny the right of allocution and violate Chapter I, Article 1 of the Vermont Constitution.
II.
Chapter II, § 39 of the Vermont Constitution requires that “all fines shall be proportioned to the offences.” This provision of our state constitution derives from chapter 14 of the Magna Carta. State v. Burlington Drug Co., 84 Vt. 243, 249, 78 A. 882,
*524884 (1911). Although the constitutional provision refers only to “fines,” a contemporaneous authoritative commentator observed that the word “fines” as used therein refers to all forms of punishment. N. Chipman, Reports & Dissertations 134 (1792). Relying on that authority, we have previously held that the word “fines,” as used in this section, denotes all punishments, whether by fine, imprisonment, forfeiture, or disqualification. Burlington Drug Co., 84 Vt. at 250, 78 A. at 884.
In Burlington Drug, we upheld the bond forfeiture there at issue because “the forfeiture of the bond [could not] be said to follow automatically upon a conviction for such an offence.” Id. at 253, 78 A. at 886. By contrast, the mandatory minimum sentences provided by 23 V.S.A. § 674(c) and 13 V.S.A. § 1028 do follow automatically upon conviction.
This state has a long history of concern over disproportionate penalties. The first Council of Censors, mandated by Vermont’s Constitution in 1777 “to enquire whether the Constitution has been preserved inviolate,” Vt. Const. 1777, ch. 2, § 44; see Hartness v. Black, 95 Vt. 190, 194, 114 A. 44, 45 (1921), was particularly active in condemning harsh penalties prescribed by the legislature.2 For example, in 1785 the Council recommended repeal of an act prescribing penalties for “riots, disorders, and contempt of authority” because of
the uncommon severity of the punishments to be inflicted for breaches of said act, and their disproportion to the offenses; it being unjust and impolitic, in the opinion of the Council, as well as contrary to the humanity manifested in the Constitution, to inflict punishments which render a person and his connexions, infamous, and preclude all reformation for crimes which are not infamous in their nature.
Resolutions of the First Council of Censors, No. I, October 5, 1785 (available at Office of Secretary of State). Another resolution recommended repeal of an act which prescribed corporal *525punishment for removing a wolf from a trap because the punishment was “too severe.” Id., No. II.3 A third requested the legislature “to alter the punishment” in an act designed to curtail counterfeiting, since it was “beyond all proportion” to the offense. Id., No. Ill, October 6, 1785. In the 1787 session, the General Assembly voted to accept all of these recommendations.
The proportionality clause has been in the Vermont Constitution since its origin. See Vt. Const. 1777, ch. II, § 24. The members of the first Council of Censors were the contemporaries of the delegates at the Windsor Convention of 1777, which adopted the first Constitution. (Indeed, two members of the first Council, Benjamin Carpenter and Joseph Marsh, were in fact members of the Windsor Convention.) Their understanding of the Constitution should therefore be accorded considerable weight. Proportionality between offenses and penalties was deemed then to be a constitutional value worth protecting. It should still be so today.
By force of the statutes at issue here, a person must go to jail if he operates a motor vehicle without a license under these circumstances or if he assaults a police officer (although the assault may be a mere shove). On the other hand, by way of example, a person need not necessarily go to jail if he commits any of the following offenses for which there is no mandatory sentence that may not be suspended; first degree murder, 13 V.S.A. § 2303; aggravated sexual assault, 13 V.S.A. § 3253; first degree arson, 13 V.S.A. § 502; perjury, 13 V.S.A. § 2901; and assault and robbery, 13 V.S.A. § 608. The disproportionate nature of the mandatory minimum sentences that may not be sus*526pended provided by 23 V.S.A. § 674(c) and 13 V.S.A. § 1028 is readily apparent.4
Of course, sentencing judges may, and do, consider the fact that a license suspension is based upon a conviction for drunken driving or that the person assaulted is a law enforcement officer as aggravating factors when imposing a sentence. Such considerations are both proper and desirable. However, mandatory minimum sentences that cannot be suspended deny defendants their right of meaningful allocution and result in demonstrably disproportionate sentencing structures. As such, they offend the Vermont Constitution and are invalid under our fundamental law.5

 Our adoption of the Black dissent in Green makes it clear that the right of allocution under the Vermont Constitution is more extensive than that guaranteed by the federal Constitution.

 The Council of Censors were elected first in 1785 and in every septenary therefter until 1869. In addition to its task of reviewing the constitutionality of legislation, the Council drafted constitutional amendments that were later adopted by constitutional convention.

 At the same time, the Council of Censors foresaw the fact, obvious in our district courts, that many assaults on police officers would be prosecuted as simple assaults or as offenses of disorderly conduct only. The Council observed that such penalties when prescribed by the legislature “have a direct tendency to prevent the execution of the laws” as a result of the “punishment [being] too severe in their nature for the crimes . . . .” For the same reason, many cases of driving under suspension are prosecuted under traffic tickets for driving without a license, an offense for which the maximum penalty is a fine of $100.

 The majority, disregarding the advice of this Court to the Bar, State v. Jewett, 146 Vt. 221, 225-27, 500 A.2d 233, 236-37 (1985), disposes of this issue relying primarily upon federal precedents and ignoring state materials. In doing so, it denigrates the primacy and independence of our own state constitution as expressed in State v. Badger, 141 Vt. 430, 447-49, 450 A.2d 336, 346-47 (1982). See Linde, E Pluribus — Constitutional Theory and State Courts, 18 Ga. L. Rev. 165 (1984).

 The United States Supreme Court has recently upheld under a separation-of-powers challenge the scheme of mandatory federal sentence guidelines promulgated under the 1984 Sentencing Reform Act. Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361, 109 S. Ct. 647 (1989). The federal guidelines were not challenged on either of the grounds at issue in the instant case. The Idaho Supreme Court has held that mandatory minimum sentences do violate the separation of powers provision of the Idaho Constitution. State v. McCoy, 94 Idaho 236, 486 P.2d 247 (1971).