Court Opinion

ID: 9737795
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:34:35.985892+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:01.310374
License: Public Domain

PIVARNIK, Justice,
dissenting in part and concurring in part.
I must respectfully dissent from the majority opinion wherein it holds under Issue V, that the trial court improperly gave a consecutive sentence to the defendant in his conviction for being an accessory to the charge of robbery while armed. I differ with the majority in its interpretation of the language in the statute of commission of crimes at the “same time” as apparently giving definition to that language to mean that the acts must be done simultaneously. It is true that we have held that a person has committed all of the elements of the crime of conspiracy sufficient for conviction for same prior to the time the crime was committed or even in the event the crime is never completed. In the context here, though, that does not mean the conspiracy has totally ended and is in the time frame of a different time from that of the continuing process that results in the commission of the crime. Our duty is to interpret statutory language to give practical meaning to the words and phrases used therein and not to technically strain them out of proportion to their common usage and obvious intent. When the legislature used the language “same time,” it was obviously referring to acts that were all related to each other and were all components of a series of events that were the same. The defendant and his cohorts here, planned this crime, went to the scene they had determined, and committed the crime while they were armed. This was a continuing process and the conspiracy, the acts moving in the direction of the crime, and the actual commission of it were no more than events along the route. To set aside the conspiracy as some act that had been completed and removed from this route for purposes of interpreting this stat-. ute, is unrealistic when applied to the facts here as well as when applied to the practical meaning of the statutory language used by the legislature.
*885I think the trial judge had authority to give a consecutive sentence as he decided to do here and we should affirm him in that judgment.
I concur in all other issues in the majority opinion.
GIVAN, C. J., concurs.