Court Opinion

ID: 9770695
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:19:23.050507+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:19.923040
License: Public Domain

Darrell Hickman, Justice, concurring. I agree with the result reached in this case. However, I must disagree with some of the language in the majority opinion. The majority uses our decision in Collins v. State, 261 Ark. 195, 548 S.W. 2d 106 (1977); cert. denied, 429 U.S. 808, 98 S. Ct. 231, 54 L. Ed. 2d 158, as authority that we retain the power to reduce an excessive sentence caused by passion or prejudice. It may be that we retain that power but I know of no instance where we have exercised it. We have reduced sentences only because of some legal error. See, for example, Giles v. State, 261 Ark. 413, 549 S.W. 2d 479 (1977). Also, the majority is critical of appellant’s use of one of our decisions which was apparently overruled by Osborne v. State, 237 Ark. 5, 372 S.W. 2d 518 (1963). 1 cannot fail to point out that the opinion in Collins also used as authority cases which were just as apparently overruled by Osborne v. State, supra. See Collins, supra at 217. I feel the better appellate practice is to simply reduce an excessive sentence and say so rather than seek some “legal error” as an excuse to reduce a sentence. Searching the wilderness for error does more harm to our system, in my opinion, than an honest admission by an appellate court that a clearly excessive sentence must be reduced as a matter of justice and fairness; or, as I stated in my dissent to Collins, supra, at 228: It is not a matter of clemency to correct an injustice; it is simply the law at work.