Court Opinion

ID: 9766940
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:03:42.381171+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:27.354973
License: Public Domain

GLASSMAN, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur with part II of the majority’s opinion.
In part III of its opinion, the majority holds that when imposing sentence, the trial court may consider, as evidence of an absence of remorse, an accused’s decision to stand trial and put the state to its proof rather than to plead guilty. Because the stark and unmistakable import of this holding is that the accused is penalized for exercising his constitutional right to a trial, I respectfully dissent.
Although generally remorse is an appropriate factor for consideration in sentencing, constitutional difficulties arise when a sentencing authority concludes from an accused’s choice to exercise his fifth, sixth, and fourteenth amendment rights that the individual lacks remorse for the misdeed committed, and considers this factor in sen-*894fencing. In Thomas v. United States, 368 F.2d 941 (5th Cir.1966), for example, the sentencing judge considered as a factor in sentencing the accused’s failure “to come clean and confess his crime” prior to imposition of punishment. Deeming impermissible the conditioning of sentence upon the sacrifice of a constitutional right,1 the Thomas court held the defendant was improperly penalized for exercising his right to a trial and to avoid compulsory self-incrimination. Id. at 945-47; see also United States v. Laca, 499 F.2d 922, 927 (5th Cir.1974). But cf. United States v. Allen, 596 F.2d 227, 231 (7th Cir.1979), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 871, 100 S.Ct. 149, 62 L.Ed.2d 97 (1979).
The Thomas decision properly recognized the constitutional infirmity which results when negative character traits are assigned to an individual convicted of crime merely because that individual has chosen to stand trial, and such traits are considered when sentence is imposed. Both the United States and Maine Constitutions guarantee the accused individual the unfettered right to a public trial at which the state must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and the unfettered right not to be compelled to be a witness against oneself. See U.S. Const, amends. V & VI; Me. Const, art. I, § 6. By considering the decision to put the state to its proof rather than to plead guilty as reflective of a lack of remorse, the sentencing authority is, in fact, exacting a price for the exercise of that choice, and therefore, punishing the individual for choosing to go to trial. To punish a person for exercising a basic constitutional right is a due process violation. See Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357, 363, 98 S.Ct. 663, 668, 54 L.Ed.2d 604 (1978). Moreover, a judicially imposed penalty which needlessly discourages the exercise of the rights not to plead guilty and to demand a trial must be viewed as unconstitutional.2 See United States v. Jackson, 390 U.S. 570, 582, 88 S.Ct. 1209, 1216, 20 L.Ed.2d 138 (1968).
I have no doubt that the result the majority reaches will impermissibly chill the exercise of the right to a trial. The majority opinion sends a loud and clear message to those accused of crime in Maine: your refusal to sacrifice your constitutional right not to plead guilty will be considered a negative factor in an evaluation of your capability of rehabilitation, and you will be sentenced accordingly.3
The majority characterizes the sentencing justice’s comments as reflecting only the court’s disinclination to believe the defendant’s claim of remorse. Even assuming this characterization to be correct, the fact remains that the defendant, merely because of his choice to stand trial, quite possibly was sentenced more harshly than he would otherwise have been. Any doubt as to whether the defendant was punished for exercising his right to trial must be *895resolved in favor of the defendant.4 See Johnson v. State, 274 Md. 536, 543, 336 A.2d 113, 117 (1975); State v. Nichols, 247 N.W.2d 249, 256 (Iowa 1976).
In analogous cases, other courts have expressed a similar concern for protecting the freedom of the choice to stand trial. In State v. Hass, 268 N.W.2d 456 (N.D.1978), the North Dakota Supreme Court vacated a sentence because the sentencing justice took into account the defendant's failure to “take the first step to rehabilitation, which generally includes making a complete admission of his implicity [sic] in the offense and throwing himself on the mercy of the Court.” Id. at 463. The Hass court then reaffirmed the principle:
A person charged with a crime has the absolute right to require the State to prove the charges against him, and his sentence may not be different if he chooses one course from that if he chooses the other. As was said more than four centuries ago:
“A man may plead not guilty and yet tell no lie, for by the law, no man is bound to accuse himself. So when I say, not guilty, the meaning is as if I should say by way of paraphrase, I am not so guilty as to tell you, if you will bring me to trial and have me punished for this you lay to my charge; prove it against me.” John Selden, “Table Talk,”: published by the Selden Society, London, 1927. [Spelling and punctuation modernized.]
State v. Hass, 268 N.W.2d at 964. In State v. Nichols, 247 N.W.2d 249, the Iowa Supreme Court vacated a sentence based in part on a similar impermissible ground. The Nichols court declared:
[T]he fact a defendant has exercised the fundamental and constitutional right of requiring the state to prove at trial his guilt as charged and his right as an accused to raise defenses thereto is to be given no weight by the trial court in determining the sentence to be imposed after the defendant’s guilt has been established.
Id. at 255; see also Johnson v. State, 274 Md. 536, 336 A.2d 113. These cases demonstrate that the proper inquiry in the instant case is not whether the decision to stand trial is indicative of a lack of remorse, but whether the defendant was in any way penalized for that choice. The trial justice’s equation of the defendant’s choice to stand trial with a lack of remorse must be viewed as imposing such penalty.
Furthermore, I cannot subscribe to the logical underpinning of the majority opinion, namely, the decision to plead not guilty and to cross-examine vigorously the witness against you is in any manner probative of a malevolent attitude toward the victim and society. As eloquently stated in Scott v. United States, 419 F.2d 264 (D.C. Cir.1969), in a somewhat different context:
[T]he peculiar pressures placed upon a defendant threatened with jail and the stigma of conviction make his willingness to deny the crime an unpromising test of his prospects for rehabilitation if guilty. It is indeed unlikely that many men who commit serious offenses would balk on principle from lying in their own defense. The guilty man may quite sincerely repent his crime but yet, driven by the urge to remain free, may protest his innocence in a court of law. This realization, indeed, unquestionably accounts for the extreme infrequency with which convicted criminals are in fact prosecuted for perjury committed at their trials.
Repentance has a role in penology. But the premise of our criminal jurisprudence has always been that the time for repentance comes after trial. The adversary process is a fact-finding engine, not *896a drama of contrition in which a prejudged defendant is expected to knit up his lacerated bonds to society.
There is a tension between the right of the accused to assert his innocence and the interest of society in his repentance. But we could consider resolving this conflict in favor of the latter interest only if the trial offered an unparalleled opportunity to test the repentance of the accused. It does not. There is other, and better, evidence of such repentance. The sort of information collected in presen-tence reports provides a far more finely brushed portrait of the man than do a few hours or days at trial. And the offender while on probation or in prison after trial can demonstrate his insight into his problems far better than at trial.
If the defendant were unaware that a proper display of remorse might affect his sentence, his willingness to admit the crime might offer the sentencing judge some guidance. But with the inducement of a lighter sentence dangled before him, the sincerity of any cries of mea culpa becomes questionable. Moreover, the refusal of a defendant to plead guilty is not necessarily indicative of a lack of repentance. A man may regret his crime but wish desperately to avoid the stigma of a criminal conviction.
Id. at 269-71; see also Comment, The Influence of the Defendant’s Plea on Judicial Determination of Sentence, 66 Yale L.J. 204, 210 (1956) [hereinafter cited as Influence of Defendant’s Plea ] (value of guilty plea as gauge of character impaired when defendant realizes such plea may mitigate punishment).
The majority, by employing the fiction that the sentencing justice did not punish Robert Farnham for going to trial, but assigned to Farnham a character trait properly considered in sentencing, indulges in an unfortunate and dangerous elevation of form over substance. Through a game of “semantic gymnastics,” the majority never answers the critical inquiry in the case before us: was Robert Farnham penalized for asserting his rights under both the United States and Maine Constitutions? Because I believe the answer is yes, and to prevent a situation in the future in which individuals accused of crimes in Maine would be judicially coerced to forego their constitutional rights, I would remand for resentencing. The minimal value of a guilty plea in demonstrating remorse does not justify the burden the majority has placed on the constitutional right to a trial.5 See United States v. Grayson, 438 U.S. 41, 58, 98 S.Ct. 2610, 2619, 57 L.Ed.2d 582 (1978) (Stewart, J., dissenting).

. Were the defendant to confess to the crime of which he was convicted, the court noted, he would jeopardize his chances of successfully pursuing appellate and post-conviction remedies, and would be admitting to the commission of perjury at his trial. Thomas v. United States, 368 F.2d at 945.

. Although there might be limited instances in which the state interest is so compelling as to justify such chilling effect, see, e.g., Sherbert v. Venter, 374 U.S. 398, 406, 83 S.Ct. 1790, 1795, 10 L.Ed.2d 965 (1963) (first amendment area), no such interest is asserted or can be envisioned here.

. The fifth and fourteenth amendments of the Unitéd States Constitution, as well as article I, § 6 of our state constitution, secure "the right of a person to remain silent unless he chooses to speak in the unfettered exercise of his own will, and to suffer no penalty ... for such silence.” Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 8, 84 S.Ct. 1489, 1493, 12 L.Ed.2d 653 (1964); see also State v. Libby, 410 A.2d 562 (Me.1980). The term "penalty" is not restricted to the fine or punishment context, but includes the imposition of any sanction making assertion of the privilege costly. See Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609, 614-15, 85 S.Ct. 1229, 1232-1233, 14 L.Ed.2d 106 (1965); see also United States v. Jackson, 390 U.S. at 582, 88 S.Ct. at 1216 (statute assuring no death penalty for those who plead guilty unconstitutional for inevitable effect of such statute is to discourage assertion of rights under fifth and sixth amendments).

. The majority assigns significance to the fact that the sentencing justice did not base the sentence “solely " on the defendant’s election to go to trial. See ante at 890-891 (emphasis added). I find this consideration irrelevant. An impermissible factor crept in to the sentencing decision. The quantitative role the impermissible factor played in such decision does not detract from the nature of the constitutional violation.

. The majority’s reliance on the American Bar Association’s Standards for Criminal Justice standard 14-1.8 (2d ed. 1980) [hereinafter cited as Standards ] is misplaced. The standard the majority cites goes no further than to recognize that a court may grant sentencing concessions to an individual who has shown potential for rehabilitation by entering a guilty plea, if, and only if, the court is convinced that such plea is motivated by genuine feelings of contriteness or by consideration for the victim or victims. The proposition that a court may look disfavorably upon an assertion of remorse merely because the defendant has chosen to stand trial neither necessarily nor logically follows. The above cited standard does not stand for the general proposition that a guilty plea is indicative of feelings of remorse, and a not guilty plea is not. The commentary to standard 14-1.8(a) amply demonstrates this point:
A reduction in sentence following a guilty plea is consistent with the rehabilitation theory of criminal punishment only if such a plea is indicative of remorse for prior criminal acts. Although a guilty plea may at times be motivated by repentance, more often it would seem to represent exploitation by the accused of the prosecutor’s and the court’s reaction to such a plea. If a defendant who acknowledged his guilt were aware that the plea could not influence the extent of punishment, then perhaps his action might reflect a renunciation of criminal propensities. But the very fact that a defendant realizes a guilty plea may mitigate punishment impairs the value of the plea as a gauge of character.
Standards, supra, commentary to standard 14-1.8(a)(i), at 14.46 (quoting Influence of Defendant’s Plea, supra, at 210).