Court Opinion

ID: 9630297
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:07:47.807621+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:36.066730
License: Public Domain

HARTZ, Judge (specially concurring in part and dissenting in part). I concur in the affirmance of the conviction and join in the portions of the majority’s opinion addressing defendant’s challenges to his conviction. I respectfully dissent, however, with respect to the remand for resentencing. I agree with the thrust of the majority’s discussion of the potential problems with enhancing a defendant’s sentence because of perjury during trial. In particular, I agree that it is impermissible to enhance a sentence solely “for the purpose of saving the Government the burden of bringing a separate and subsequent perjury prosecution.” United States v. Grayson, 438 U.S. 41, 53, 98 S.Ct. 2610, 2617, 57 L.Ed.2d 582 (1978). I also agree that it would be impermissible to infer perjury solely from the defendant’s having testified and been convicted. On the other hand, I do not agree fully with the majority’s discussion of its three “safeguards.” With respect to the first safeguard, the majority indicates that the sentencing court must articulate factors relating to rehabilitation in addition to the defendant’s perjury. Grayson does not impose such a requirement; nothing in that opinion suggests that the sentencing judge noted any additional factors relating to rehabilitation. It should suffice that perjury is considered only insofar as it helps assess the defendant’s prospects for rehabilitation. As for the second safeguard, I think it should be permissible for a sentencing judge who was not present at the defendant’s trial to consider the defendant’s perjury during trial. There is nothing unusual about a sentencing judge considering a defendant’s misconduct even though the judge did not personally observe it. The sentencing judge should be permitted to consider reliable sources of information other than his or her own senses. With respect to the third safeguard, a witness, including a defendant, may commit perjury by testifying to lack of memory as well as by testifying to a specific event. Therefore, I would not impose, as the majority apparently does, a strict requirement that the sentencing judge could not enhance a sentence because of defendant’s testifying to a failed or uncertain memory. Neither Grayson, nor due process, nor public policy requires the rigid safeguards set by the majority. In my view the trial judge acted within his discretion in enhancing defendant’s sentence. A district court’s findings in support of an enhanced sentence need not be in writing. See State v. Bernal, 106 N.M. 117, 119, 739 P.2d 986, 988 (Ct.App.1987). At sentencing, the judge said the following: You’ve impressed me with the fact that you probably did just about anything you could get away with the last eleven years. Lying and stealing and cheating and breaking the law has just been a habit of yours for eleven years. Now you’re going to have to break the habit or you’re going to have to probably spend a lot of the rest of your life behind bars. * * * I certainly agree with you on one thing. Putting you in the penitentiary is not going to help you any. It’s not going to help your alcohol problem. It’s not going to help restitution. It’s not going to get you rehabilitated, because you certainly need rehabilitation. You need help. You need to get out there on your own two feet and learn how to be a useful citizen. * * * I’m going to take a chance with you, but I’m not going to let you get too far away. I’m going to have * * * one arm on the rope that we turn you loose with. * * * What I’m going to do is, sentence you to the New Mexico State Penitentiary for a year and a half and I’m going to find aggravating circumstances and add six months onto it, which is two years, that’s the maximum I can give you under the jury verdict. * * * Those aggravating circumstances are: your refusal up to this point to admit that you’ve done anything wrong, the lying under oath that the jury’s already found, * * * your consistent refusal to admit any wrongdoing. * * * Then I’m going to suspend that jail sentence, with the exception of what you’ve already spent in jail * * * and I’m going to put you on probation for five years which is the maximum time I can put you on probation. * * * If you violate any part of [the conditions of probation], you’d be subject to having your probation revoked and sent to the New Mexico State Penitentiary. * * * You’re not going to take advantage of the leniency of the Court. Because that’s what I consider leniency, in the form of trying to help you, maybe, as a last chance of keeping you out of the penitentiaiy for a life time. Because that’s where you’re headed. You know that, don’t you? * * * It’s all back on your shoulders. It’s up to Darrin James. The trial court then enhanced defendant’s sentence of imprisonment by six months for a total term of two years, but suspended all but the twelve days already served and ordered that defendant be placed on probation for a period of five years. The trial judge considered defendant’s perjury at trial for precisely the proper purpose. He viewed defendant’s trial testimony as simply the latest example of an eleven-year history of “lying and stealing and cheating and breaking the law” — engaging in wrongdoing and then refusing to accept any responsibility. The trial judge thought that defendant needed a lengthy period of probation in order to rehabilitate himself but felt that defendant required a stiff sentence hanging over his head to induce him to straighten himself out. The enhancement of the sentence was clearly for rehabilitative purposes. If the judge had intended to punish defendant for perjury, I doubt that he would have suspended the sentence. My view is not changed by the trial judge’s statements referring to the jury’s decision that defendant had lied, including his statement (made immediately before sentencing, in response to the prosecutor’s expressing disagreement with defense counsel’s characterization of defendant’s testimony): “The jury found that he lied. I mean twelve people sitting up there listening to the evidence found that he lied. I don’t know what the big problem is. Obviously he lied. They found him guilty. We don't have to make that decision, the jury did that.” First, I see no reason for the sentencing judge not to rely on a jury’s determination that the defendant lied at trial, at least so long as the circumstances of the trial make clear that to reach its verdict the jury must have decided that the defendant was lying. See Commonwealth v. Thurmond, 268 Pa.Super. 283, 288-89, 407 A.2d 1357, 1360 (1979) (given nature of testimony, verdict established that defendant had lied). Second, even if reliance on the jury verdict is improper, I doubt that the trial judge so relied. Because the sentencing judge himself presided over the trial, I would find it remarkable for him to have relied on the jury’s verdict if he did not himself think that defendant had lied under oath. The thrust of his remarks at sentencing compels the conclusion that the judge personally believed that defendant had lied and felt reinforced in that belief by the verdict of the jury, which, given the nature of defendant’s testimony, necessarily implied that the jury also believed that defendant had committed perjury. Third, I would hold that defendant waived any claim that the sentencing judge improperly failed to make his own determination of whether defendant committed perjury. Defense counsel made no objection at sentencing to the judge’s reference to the jury’s having decided that defendant committed perjury. A timely objection could have enabled the judge to cure any problem by stating that he personally found that defendant had perjured himself. In the absence of a timely objection, I would hold that the issue was not preserved for appeal.