Court Opinion

ID: 9746224
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:09:16.666652+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:37:44.582388
License: Public Domain

RAKER, J.,
concurring, in which BELL, C.J., joins:
I join in the opinion of the Court holding that the alleged error in this case does not inhere in the sentence itself and is thus not an illegal sentence within the meaning of Rule 4-*48345(a). Accordingly, the matter may not be raised in a motion to correct an illegal sentence. I write separately to state that if this Court were to reach the merits, I would reverse the judgment of the Circuit Court and remand the case for a new sentencing because I do not believe that the trial judge was aware that he had the discretion to suspend a portion of a life sentence. In this regard, I disagree with the view expressed by Judge Harrell in his concurring opinion.
*47(a) Illegal sentence. The court may correct an illegal sentence at any time.
*48While I subscribe generally to the proposition that trial judges are presumed to know the law and to apply it properly, I do not believe that the record in this case supports that conclusion. Petitioner was sentenced in 1974, two years before this Court made clear in State v. Wooten, 277 Md. 114, 352 A.2d 829 (1976), that trial judges had discretion to suspend a portion of a mandatory life sentence. I do not agree with the concurring opinion’s view that Wooten merely clarified the law as to whether a portion of a life sentence could be suspended. See conc. op. 394 Md. at 57, 904 A.2d at 510. Wooten did much more. When the Court held in Wooten that Md.Code (1957, 1971 Repl.Vol.), Art. 27 § 641A granted sentencing judges discretion to suspend life sentences, it resolved ambiguities in § 641A.1
The Wooten court, focusing exclusively on the language in the first sentence of § 641A, overlooked the ambiguity created by the second sentence of § 641A, which provides as follows:
“The court may impose a sentence for a specified period and provide that a lesser period be served in confinement, suspend the remainder of the sentence and grant probation for a period longer than the sentence but not in excess of five years.”
§ 641A (emphasis added). By providing that probation could be granted for a period of time longer than the sentence, this provision creates a basis for believing that the General Assembly might have intended “sentence” as used in § 641A to *49exclude life sentences, as it would be impossible to grant probation for a period of time longer than a life sentence. The Wooten court made clear that trial judges had discretion to impose a term of confinement other than life when imposing a life sentence.
The Wooten court overlooked another ambiguity in § 641A. It is unclear from the text of § 641A whether it gives a court the power to suspend a portion of a sentence without concurrently imposing probation. The first sentence of § 641A reads as follows:
“Upon entering a judgment of conviction, the court having jurisdiction, may suspend the imposition or execution of sentence and place the defendant on probation upon such terms and conditions as the courts deem proper.”
Id. (emphasis added). This sentence is ambiguous because it could be read to say that (1) a court may suspend a sentence and a court may impose probation, or it could be read to say that (2) a court may suspend a sentence and impose probation, but not one without the other.2 Thus, when the Wooten court held that § 641A gave sentencing judges the power to suspend any portion of any sentence, it resolved this ambiguity as well.
Indeed, this ambiguity was a major focus of the Wooten case. The State argued vociferously before both the trial court and the Court of Special Appeals that § 641A was a *50statute governing probation, and consequently did not grant sentencing judges discretion to suspend portions of sentences unless the suspension was in conjunction with an imposition of probation.3 At the hearing in the trial court on the State’s motion to correct an illegal sentence in Wooten, the following exchange took place between the Assistant State’s Attorney and the court:
“[STATE’S ATT’Y]: Well, your Honor, framing the issue so the Court sees my point of view, I think the issue in this case is can the Court suspend the execution of the sentence.
[COURT]: Well, 641A says, ‘Upon entering a judgment of conviction, ... ’ — which was done — ‘... the Court having jurisdiction, ... ’ — and I had it — ‘... may suspend the imposition or execution of sentence ... ’ and then it goes on.
[STATE’S ATT’Y]: ‘... and place the defendant on probation ... ’
[COURT]: Then it says, ‘The Court may impose a sentence for a specified period ... ’ well, the sentence of life was imposed. ‘... and provide that a lesser period be served in confinement, ... ’
[STATE’S ATT’Y]: Your Honor, you stopped, respectfully
[COURT]: Go ahead.
[STATE’S ATT’Y]: And ‘... suspend the remainder of the sentence and grant probation for a period ... ’ not in excess of five years. Now that was not done in this case, no probation was given in this case, and I went to the Chapter — .”
The State made similar arguments before the Court of Special Appeals. The opinion of the Court of Special Appeals in Wooten stated as follows:
“In sentencing Mrs. Wooten, the court did not place her on probation upon any terms and conditions in suspending a *51part of the time to be spent in confinement. The State suggests, and argued below, that § 641A requires that a defendant be placed on probation when a sentence is imposed for a specified period but a lesser period to be served in confinement is provided by the court.”
State v. Wooten, 27 Md.App. 434, 442, 340 A.2d 308, 313 (1975).
After the Court of Special Appeals rejected this argument, the State, in its brief filed with this Court in Wooten, pointed to another problem created by reading § 641A to grant a sentencing judge unlimited discretion to suspend a portion of any sentence, including a life sentence. The State pointed out that this interpretation of § 641A created a conflict with Md.Code (1957, 1978 Repl.Vol.), Art. 41, § 122(b), which provided that a person sentenced to a life sentence must serve fifteen years of the sentence until being eligible for parole, because the trial judge in Wooten had suspended all but eight years of Wooten’s life sentence.4 In its brief, the State argued as follows:
“Applying the provisions of [Art. 41, § 122(b) ] to [Wooten], it appears that she will not be eligible for parole consideration until she has served fifteen years of the life sentence imposed by [the trial judge]. Undoubtably she will seek to be released after the expiration of the eight years she was ordered to spend in confinement, or sooner, and will thus place the Commissioner of Corrections in the untenable position of either having to disregard [the trial judge’s] suspension order or to violate the provisions of Article 41, Section 122(b).”
*52The comments made by the Wooten trial court also support the position that the issue of whether § 641A permitted a trial judge to suspend a portion of a life sentence was far from settled prior to our decision in Wooten. In its memorandum opinion in support of its Order denying the State’s motion to correct an illegal sentence, the trial court observed that “the questions presented by the sentencing in this case, as well as in other cases in the state of which this court has been informally advised, need resolution by a definitive appellate decision.” It is difficult to believe that the trial court would express such an opinion if the “definitive appellate decision” on this issue that we ultimately handed down in Wooten were as unremarkable as the concurring opinion claims.
This conclusion that Wooten did more than clarify an unambiguous statute is further reinforced by reference to contemporaneous historical materials outside the Wooten record. In 1974, a joint committee of the Maryland Judicial Conference and the Maryland State Bar Association issued a report proposing detailed reforms to the Maryland criminal justice system. Report on Standards of Criminal Justice (1974). This joint committee consisted of seven members of the Maryland Judicial Conference, nine members of the Maryland State Bar Association, and five faculty members of Maryland law schools. Id., Foreword at 1. In this report, the committee recommended that trial courts generally should have the power to suspend sentences, but that courts should not have such powers for certain serious offenses, including first degree murder and first degree rape. See id., Committee Report on ABA Sentencing Alternatives and Procedures at 21-22. Most germane to present purposes, the committee, in conjunction with its discussion of this proposal, observed the following about the state of Maryland law governing the powers of trial courts to suspend sentences:
“Suspension of sentence and probation is apparently available at present in Maryland as a possible disposition for all offenses, although it has never been tested whether it is available under the sentencing structure for such offenses *53as first degree murder (see Section 413 of Article 27) or rape (see Section 468 of Article 27).
Id. at 21 (emphasis added); see also id., Committee Report on ABA Standards on Probation at 8 (observing that “[t]he present statutory sections governing suspension of sentence and probation at the circuit court level are overlapping and confusing”). That a committee composed of representatives of the Maryland judiciary, bar, and legal academic community would represent Maryland law as being unsettled on this point and advance a proposal to clarify it lends strong support to the claim that a member of the Maryland legal community would not have been aware prior to our decision in Wooten that § 641A granted trial judges unlimited power to suspend portions of sentences.
The revolutionary nature of our opinion in Wooten is further evidenced by the fact that trial judges resisted applying the suspension powers granted by our interpretation of § 641A even after Wooten had been decided. This resistance is amply demonstrated by the facts of this Court’s opinion in Williamson v. State, 284 Md. 212, 395 A.2d 496 (1979). In Williamson, we vacated a life sentence imposed for first degree murder and remanded for resentencing where the sentencing judge refused to recognize his discretion under § 641A to suspend a portion of the defendant’s life sentence. Williamson, 284 Md. at 213-15, 395 A.2d at 496-97. Defendant’s counsel called the sentencing judge’s attention to Wooten, but the sentencing judge flatly refused to consider suspension of a portion of the defendant’s life sentence, expressing his view that the General Assembly did not intend § 641A to apply to life sentences because it undermined the General Assembly’s intention to make first degree murder punishable by life. Id. at 213-14, 395 A.2d at 496. The Court, quite correctly, held that the sentencing judge committed reversible error by abdicating his discretion under § 641A, as interpreted in Wooten. Id. at 215, 395 A.2d at 497. Nonetheless, the sentencing judge’s extreme position is quite telling, as it strains credulity to think that the sentencing judge would so forthrightly *54question the result in Wooten if its holding were as routine as the concurring opinion makes it out to be.
The colloquy between defense counsel and the judge support the finding that the trial judge believed that he had only two options: to impose a life sentence, or to sentence petitioner to a term of incarceration somewhere between eighteen months and twenty one years. When a court must exercise discretion, failure to do so is usually reversible error. See e.g., Maus v. State, 311 Md. 85, 108, 532 A.2d 1066, 1077-78 (1987). The fact that petitioner was called upon to allocute before sentence was imposed has no bearing on the issue before this Court; all defendants have an absolute right to allocute, irrespective of whether the judge has discretion to impose one sentence or another.
Based on the record in this case, if this Court were to reach the merits, I would conclude that the trial judge did not exercise his discretion in imposing the sentence, and therefore, petitioner would be entitled to a new sentencing.
Chief Judge BELL has authorized me to state that he joins in the views expressed in this opinion.

. Unless otherwise noted, all subsequent statutory references herein shall be to Md.Code (1957, 1971 Repl.Vol.), Article 27A.

. Technically speaking, the ambiguity here arises because the scope of "may” is ambiguous. It could be that "may” was intended to modify each clause of the conjunction in the first sentence of § 641 A, so that, if clarified, it would read as follows:
"Upon entering a judgment of conviction, the court having jurisdiction, may suspend the imposition or execution of sentence, and may place the defendant on probation upon such terms and conditions as the courts deem proper.”
§ 641A (alterations in italics). Clarified in this way, it is clear that
§ 641A gives a court the power to suspend a sentence without concurrently imposing probation.
"May” as used in § 641 A, however, could also have been intended to modify the conjunction itself. If understood in this way, then § 641A gives a court permission to suspend a portion of a sentence and concurrently impose probation, but does not give the court permission to do one without the other.

. Ironically, the position taken by the State in Wooten is in marked contrast to the position taken by the State in the case sub judice. In its brief, the State baldly asserts that "[cjontrary to Pollard’s contention, even prior to Wooten, the applicable statutes clearly and unequivocally provided for suspension of all, or a portion of, any life sentences.”

. At the time, subsection (b) read in full as follows:
"No person who has been sentenced to life imprisonment shall be eligible for parole consideration until he shall have served fifteen years or the equal of fifteen years when considering the allowances for diminution of period of confinement provided for in Article 27, § 700 and Article 27, § 638C, of the Annotated Code of Maryland. Prisoners serving terms of life imprisonment shall only be paroled with the approval of the Governor.”
Md.Code (1957, 1978 Repl.Vol.), Art. 41 § 122(b).