Court Opinion

ID: 9711497
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:33:09.019362+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:05.525271
License: Public Domain

SUNDBY, J.
(concurring in part, dissenting in part). I concur in all parts of the majority opinion except that I would remand the case to the trial court for resentencing. The trial court correctly considered at the time of sentencing, a pending sexual assault charge against Von Loh. "At sentencing, pertinent factors relating to the defendant's character and behavioral pattern cannot be immunized by a plea agreement between the defendant and the state .... Evidence of such character and behavior includes unproven offenses, he they uncharged or pending." State v. McQuay, 148 *103Wis. 2d 823, 826-27, 436 N.W.2d 905, 906 (Ct. App. 1989) (citation omitted) (emphasis added). However, a new factor was presented when the defendant informed the trial court by his postconviction motion that he had been tried twice on the sexual assault charge and, in each case, the state was unable to obtain a verdict of guilty. It is fundamentally unfair for the state to charge a person with a crime, be unable to prove the crime, but yet sentence the defendant as if he or she had been convicted of the crime.
"Trial court sentence modification in Wisconsin is restricted to cases in which the sentencing court abused its discretion or in which 'new factors' relevant to the imposition of sentence are present." Comment, Sentence Modification by Wisconsin Trial Courts, 1985 Wis. L. Rev. 195, 205. See also Comment, Wisconsin Sentence Modification: A View From the Trial Court, 1989 Wis. L. Rev. 441. I do not question that the trial court properly exercised its discretion in the original sentencing of Von Loh. However, Von Loh presented a new factor to the trial court which it should have considered in determining whether to modify Von Loh's sentence. "Presence of a new factor does not automatically entitle the defendant to relief; rather, the new information is presented to the court for consideration within the exercise of its discretion." Comment, Sentence Modification by Wisconsin Trial Courts, 1985 Wis. L. Rev. at 206 (footnote omitted).
The Wisconsin Supreme Court first alluded to the new factor basis for sentence modification in Hayes v. State, 46 Wis. 2d 93, 175 N.W.2d 625 (1970). Id. In Hayes, the trial court reduced the defendant's sentence upon learning that the court was misinformed at the time of sentencing as to the defendant's previous criminal record. Three years after Hayes, in State v. *104Foellmi, 57 Wis. 2d 572, 581, 205 N.W.2d 144, 149 (1973), the court adopted the American Bar Association's standards relating to sentencing alternatives and procedures, spelled out in sec. 6.1(a) as follows:
It may be appropriate to authorize the sentencing court to reduce or modify a sentence within a specified time after its imposition or the final resolution of an appeal if new factors bearing on the sentence are made known. . . .
The Foellmi court did not define "new factor," but in Rosado v. State, 70 Wis. 2d 280, 288, 234 N.W.2d 69, 73 (1975), the court stated:
[T]he phrase "new factor" refers to a fact or set of facts highly relevant to the imposition of sentence, but not known to the trial judge at the time of original sentencing, either because it was not then in existence or because, even though it was then in existence, it was unknowingly overlooked by all of the parties.
The Comment suggests that, in practice, the supreme court's working definition of a "new factor" is "facts highly relevant to the imposition of sentence, but not known to the trial judge at the time of the original sentencing, absent competing policy considerations which require that the new facts be excluded from trial court consideration." 1985 Wis. L. Rev. at 218. I see no policy consideration which would require that the trial court exclude from its consideration the fact that the state has been unable to prove the charges which the trial court considered at the time of sentencing.
A review of the sentencing transcript reveals that the trial judge considered the pending sexual assault charge against Von Loh to be highly relevant to the *105imposition of sentence. The trial judge correctly viewed the transcript of Von Loh's preliminary hearing on the sexual assault charge with caution but, nonetheless, observed "that is evidence which suggests that the defendant is a violent person, has the potential for violence, and I think it is relevant." The trial judge also stated: "I need to know whether or not potentially these could have been dangerous situations, and I think that the evidence in the preliminary examination suggests that these may well have been highly dangerous situations to these victims."
In view of the weight the trial court gave to the sexual assault charge against Von Loh, I believe the trial court, to completely exercise its discretion, must consider the fact that the state twice failed to prove the charges against Von Loh.
For these reasons, I would remand the cause to the trial court for reconsideration of Von Loh's sentence.