Court Opinion

ID: 9736642
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:01:39.819966+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:07.892771
License: Public Domain

KELLEY, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
Defendant was adjudged guilty on • his plea of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree. Minn.Stat. § 609.342(d) (1980).1 The legislature provided for a sentence in that statute for this crime up to 20 years imprisonment. Under the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines, the presumptive sentence is 43 months imprisonment. Under the Guidelines, if the trial court imposes a sentence of more than 45 months, the judge must file a departure statement. The trial court sentenced the defendant to 15Ó months in prison and filed a departure statement. In my opinion, the departure was justified and the sentence imposed should stand.
It is unnecessary to detail the egregious,, outrageous and brutal criminal assault upon the victim in further detail than set forth in the majority opinion. The majority agrees departure was justified; but I part with the majority on the extent of the permitted departure. While we did hold in State v. Evans, 311 N.W.2d 481 (Minn.1981) that a trial judge may generally make an upward departure not to exceed twice the length of the presumptive sentence, we noted there and in State v. Stumm, 312 N.W.2d 248 (Minn.1981) that in rare cases more than a double departure in duration of sentence might be justified. In my view, this is such a rare case.
The victim was a young mother in the security of her home with her three teenage daughters. The defendant broke into her home, awakened her, compelled her to engage in the most degrading sexual perversions for a period of 2 hours, and threatened her not only personally with a knife but also that if she did not submit, he would go upstairs and do the same thing to her teenage, sleeping daughters. In my view, the trial court correctly characterized defendant’s actions as constituting “a horrendous crime” in which the victim was subjected to “great cruelty.” Moreover, even after defendant completed an in-patient alcohol treatment at St. Paul Ramsey Hospital and after he had entered a plea of guilty, he continued to deny his act and to refuse to admit he had any sexual problems necessitating treatment.
The sentence, as modified by this court today, may result in defendant being released as early as 5 years from the date of its imposition. The sentence as imposed by the trial judge would provide a minimum of 8Vs years.2 Considering the egregious con*702duct here involved, the cruelty and coercion practiced by the defendant, the policy of the legislature in recognizing this crime as one of the most serious in the criminal code, I would defer to the trial court and affirm the sentence imposed.

. Originally, the defendant was charged with three counts of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree, three counts of criminal sexual conduct in the second degree and one count of burglary. Pursuant to a plea agreement entered into by his counsel and the prosecutor, defendant pled guilty to one count of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree and the other charges were dismissed.

. For each 2 days “good time” spent in confinement, the sentence is reduced by 1 day. In effect, this means that the sentence actually imposed can result in a sentence of only two-*702thirds of its length. Minn.Stat. § 244.04 (1980).