Court Opinion

ID: 9632848
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:26:15.141745+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:43.076134
License: Public Domain

Opinion by
Chief Justice LAMBERT
Concurring in Part and Dissenting in Part.
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s failure to order re-sentencing of the defendant for the crime of bribing a witness.
The defendant was convicted of twenty-two counts of rape, sodomy, and incest, and of one count of bribing a witness. The jury recommended forty-eight years imprisonment for all convictions, but the trial court imposed a total sentence of ten years. On appeal, this court has vacated all convictions except the conviction for bribing a witness. The vacated convictions will be subject to retrial. Nevertheless, the majority has not required re-sentencing for bribing a witness.
As there is no binding authority on this issue, I have consulted cases from several *162federal circuits regarding disrupted sentencing packages.1 From these decisions it appears to be the practice that, whenever a defendant is convicted of more than one count of a multi-count indictment, the district court fashions a sentencing package in which sentences on individual counts are interdependent. When one or more of the counts is later reversed and others are affirmed, the result is an un-bundling of the sentencing package. These federal circuits have recognized that an “unbundled” sentencing package undermines the district court’s sentencing scheme. Therefore, these cases hold that the entire matter is remanded to the trial court for re-sentencing.
In the case sub judice, the trial court could have sentenced the defendant to forty-eight years, but chose instead to sentence him to ten years. It is obvious that the court looked at the totality of the defendant’s conduct and fashioned a sentence it believed to be an appropriate societal response. Now that most of the convictions have been vacated and are subject to re-trial, the single affirmed conviction for bribing a witness has become magnified and almost certainly more severe than the trial court intended. In such a circumstance, it would be far better to require re-sentencing upon all convictions after re-trial is complete.
In conclusion, I believe that when a sentencing scheme is disrupted on appeal, and some, but not all of the counts are vacated, it is appropriate to allow the trial court an opportunity to formulate a revised sentencing plan so that the final sentence reflects the exercise of informed trial court discretion. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.

. United States v. Shue, 825 F.2d 1111 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 956, 108 S.Ct. 351, 98 L.Ed.2d 376 (1987). Accord United States v. Washington, 172 F.3d 1116 (9th Cir.1998): United States v. Lail, 814 F.2d 1529 (11th Cir.1987); United States v. Rosen, 764 F.2d 763 (11th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 1061, 106 S.Ct. 806, 88 L.Ed.2d 781 (1986): United States v. Busic, 639 F.2d 940 (3rd Cir.1981).