Court Opinion

ID: 9797487
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:21:56.800329+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:56:23.387299
License: Public Domain

EDMONDS, P. J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
*137I agree with the majority’s rejection of defendant’s arguments under ORS 163.205 and with its conclusion that the trial court erred by failing to merge the fourth-degree assault convictions into the first-degree criminal mistreatment convictions. I disagree, however, with its decision to remand the entire case for resentencing rather than simply vacating the assault convictions. Although that action is consistent with previous cases, it is inconsistent with our statutory authority.
The fundamental flaw in the majority’s analysis is its failure to read ORS 138.222(5) in its appropriate context. Although we have relied on the statute in the past, we have never examined it to determine whether it authorizes a remand in the circumstances of this case.1 When the statute is read in context, it becomes apparent that the statutory language and purpose authorize us to remand an entire case for resentencing only when there was an error in the original sentence. There is no such error in this case once the judgments for the lesser-included offenses are vacated; the remaining sentences for the primary convictions remain and are error free. It follows that we therefore have no authority to remand under the plain language of the statute.
ORS 138.222(5) provides:
“The appellate court may reverse or affirm the sentence. If the appellate court concludes that the trial court’s factual findings are not supported by evidence in the record or do not establish substantial and compelling reasons for a departure, it shall remand the case to the trial court for resentencing. If the appellate court determines that the *138sentencing court, in imposing a sentence in the case, committed an error that requires resentencing, the appellate court shall remand the entire case for resentencing. The sentencing court may impose a new sentence for any conviction in the remanded case.”
The legislature adopted ORS 138.222 in 1989 as part of the statute that implemented the state felony sentencing guidelines. Or Laws 1989, ch 790. The purpose for that portion of the statute, which was section 21 of the original enactment, was to establish the scope of an appellate court’s authority in reviewing a felony sentence. The first four subsections, ORS 138.222(1) to 138.222(4), describe the specific kinds of sentences that are subject to appellate review and the specific issues that the appellate court may consider. ORS 138.222(5) then describes what the appellate court may do when it reviews a sentence. The first two sentences of the subsection were part of the statute as originally enacted in 1989. The first sentence authorizes the appellate court either to reverse or affirm the sentence, while the second sentence authorizes the court to review the findings supporting the trial court’s decision to depart from the presumptive guidelines sentence and to remand the case for resentencing if those findings are inadequate. Those two sentences are unquestionably limited to appellate review of sentences, and they give authority to remand only if there is an error in the sentence. They give no authority to remand if there is an error in some other aspect of the conviction, such as the failure to merge convictions.
After the enactment of ORS 138.222, we decided State v. Smith, 116 Or App 558, 842 P2d 805 (1992). In Smith, the state conceded that the trial court erred in imposing sentences on a number of the defendant’s convictions under the sentencing guidelines. There was no error in the sentences for the other three convictions, nor were there any other errors in those convictions. The state argued that we should remand all of the convictions — including those in which there was no sentencing or other error — for resentenc-ing to permit the trial court to fashion new sentences that could be equivalent to the original total sentence, thus achieving the court’s original sentencing purpose. We rejected the state’s argument, holding instead that ORS 138.222(5) did not authorize us to permit the trial court to *139impose new sentences for offenses for which it had already imposed lawful sentences. Id. at 560.
The next year, 1993, the legislature amended ORS 138.222(5) to add the third and fourth sentences to the statute. Or Laws 1993, ch 692, § 2. The 1993 amendment requires the appellate court, if it “determines that the sentencing court, in imposing a sentence in the case, committed an error that requires resentencing,” to remand the entire case, not simply the convictions in which the sentencing error occurred, to the trial court. That court may then “impose a new sentence for any conviction in the remanded case.” The legislature thereby granted the appellate courts the authority that they did not have at the time of Smith. The new portions did not alter the subsection’s focus on appellate review of sentences;, they simply permitted a broader remand if the appellate court found error in the sentence imposed.
The text and context of ORS 138.222(5), thus, show that it regulates appellate review of sentences, not of the underlying convictions. That is the purpose of the statute of which subsection (5) is a part. When read in its entirety, the statute requires a remand of the entire case only if the trial court, in imposing the sentence, committed an error that requires resentencing. It necessarily follows that only an error that involves the sentence itself will require resentencing. Here, there was no error in the imposition of sentence of the lesser-included convictions. Rather, the error was in the entry of the lesser-included convictions themselves.
This is where the majority makes its fundamental error. The foundation of its analysis is in the following statement:
“Clearly the sentencing court here erred in imposing a ‘sentence in the case,’ because, as the state has conceded, it should have merged the convictions for fourth-degree assault into the convictions for the greater offenses, and should not have imposed sentences at all for the fourth-degree assault convictions.”
187 Or App at 132. The majority, thus, treats the entry of any sentence, no matter how correct, as error if there was actually error in the entry of a conviction. In this case, for *140instance, the sentences that the court imposed on the fourth-degree assault counts were clearly within its authority and not subject to being questioned on appeal. The problem is not in the sentences but in the convictions. The majority nevertheless concludes that the entry of an improper conviction is an “error in sentencing.” Not only is there nothing in ORS 138.222(5) that supports that conclusion, but the second sentence — which operates as a predicate to the third and fourth sentence and which requires error in the applications of the sentencing guidelines — is directly contrary to it.
After making that fundamental error, the majority concludes that the issue is whether the error in failing to merge the assault convictions is an error that “ ‘requires resentencing.’ ” 187 Or App at 132. The majority is again clearly incorrect. The lesser-included assault convictions no longer exist; there is nothing whatever for the trial court to do with them on remand, let alone enter new sentences. The error in failing to merge the convictions does not “require resentencing.” The majority then describes hypothetical situations in which a change in a person’s sentences could affect the working of the guidelines. Those hypotheticals may be interesting — they may even be deserving of legislative consideration — but they have nothing to do with this case. As we held in Smith, our authority to review sentences is limited to what the statute provides, and the statute, even as amended, does not provide authority to remand so that the trial court may “re-sentence on offenses for which sentences have already been lawfully imposed,” 116 Or App at 560, when there is no sentencing error.
It is at this point that the analysis ought to end. A straightforward reading of the statute permits only one result. No remand for resentencing is authorized under the above circumstances. Nonetheless, the majority uses its hypotheticals as a springboard, contending that the obvious meaning of the statute produces a result that the legislature would not have intended and that the obvious meaning might be unfair either to the state or to the defendant. Essentially, the majority’s argument is that the plain reading of the statute could produce an absurd result. Such an argument is relevant only if neither the text and context of the statute nor its legislative history provides an unambiguous meaning. State *141v. Vasquez-Rubio, 323 Or 275, 282-83, 917 P2d 494 (1996); Duree v. Blair, 179 Or App 534, 542, 40 P3d 540 (2002); Fleetwood Homes v. Van Wechel, 164 Or App 637, 642, 993 P2d 171 (1999). In this case, the statute is clear, and it is not necessary to determine how realistic or frequent the situations that the hypotheticals describe might be; they should play no role in our decision as a matter of law.
The error in this case — failing to merge a lesser-included offense with the greater offense — is an error in entering the conviction, not in imposing the sentence. That is, the conviction on the lesser-included offense is erroneous, without regard to whatever sentence the court may impose on it, because the court does not have the authority to impose any sentence on that offense. Although one effect of an appellate reversal or vacation of fewer than all convictions in a case with multiple convictions may be to eliminate a portion of the total sentence, that is the natural consequence of the reversal; it does not turn the error that required the reversal into an error in imposing sentence.
In short, the words of the statute, read in their context, make it clear that we are to remand the entire case for resentencing only when we reverse because of an error in the original sentencing itself.2 I would hold that our previous practice has been incorrect and that we should not continue to follow it. Rather, consistently with ORS 138.222(5), we should remand the entire case for resentencing only when we determine that the trial court erred in imposing all or part of the original sentence.
Respectfully, I dissent.

 We have previously remanded cases for resentencing, after reversing at least one conviction and affirming others, even though there was no dispute about the sentences themselves. At first we expressly relied on ORS 138.222(5). See, e.g., State v. Wrisley, 138 Or App 344, 909 P2d 877 (1995), rev den, 327 Or 521 (1998); State v. Morales, 137 Or App 616, 905 P2d 256 (1995); State v. Taylor, 133 Or App 503, 892 P2d 697, on recons, 134 Or App 501, 895 P2d 357 (1995). More recently we have remanded without citing any authority for doing so. See, e.g., State v. Russell, 185 Or App 488, 60 P3d 575 (2002), rev den, 335 Or 402 (2003); State v. Moore, 185 Or App 229, 58 P3d 847 (2002). In accordance with the statute, we routinely remand the entire case for resentencing when all of the convictions are valid but there was an error in imposing the sentence on one or more of them. See, e.g., State v. Llanos-Martinez, 185 Or App 597, 60 P3d 1099 (2003); State v. Pettigrew, 185 Or App 313, 59 P3d 594 (2002).

 If we were to reverse all of a defendant’s convictions on the merits, any remand would be for a new trial, not for resentencing. The fact that we reverse or vacate only some convictions on the merits and affirm others does not make that reversal a basis for resentencing on the convictions that we affirm.