Court Opinion

ID: 9633686
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:56:42.819289+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:55:47.572727
License: Public Domain

DURHAM, Justice
(dissenting).
The majority opinion accurately describes the federal due process standards applicable to a challenge for vagueness.1 I disagree with the conclusion that the statute in question meets those standards.
Utah Code Ann. § 76-3-201 (Supp.1983) sets forth the only guidance the legislature has provided for determining which of three possible mandatory terms (five, ten, or fifteen years) should be imposed on a defendant convicted of aggravated sexual assault. It says:
(5) If a statute under which the defendant was convicted mandates that one of three stated minimum terms must be imposed, the court shall order imposition of the term of middle severity unless there are circumstances in aggravation or mitigation of the crime. Prior to or at the time of sentencing, either party may submit a statement identifying circumstances in aggravation or mitigation to dispute facts in the record or the probation officer's report, or to present additional facts. If the statement is in writing, it shall be filed with the court and served on the opposing party at least four days prior to the time set for sentencing. In determining whether there are circumstances that justify imposition of the highest or lowest term, the court may consider the record in the case, the probation officer’s report, other reports, including reports received pursuant to section 76-3-404, and statements in aggravation or mitigation submitted by the prosecution or the defendant, and any further evidence introduced at the sentencing hearing.
(6) The court shall set forth on the record the facts supporting and reasons for imposing the upper or lower term.
(7) The court in determining a just sentence shall be guided by sentencing rules regarding aggravation and mitigation promulgated by the Utah Judicial Council.
*561.....2
(9) The court shall state the reasons for its sentence choice on the record at the time of sentencing. The court shall also inform the defendant as part of the sentence that if the defendant is released from prison, he or she may nonetheless be on parole for a period of ten years.
(10) If during the commission of a crime described as child kidnapping, rape of a child, or sexual abuse of a child, the actor causes substantial bodily injury to the child, and if the charge is set forth in the information or indictment and admitted by the actor, or found true by a judge or jury at trial, the actor shall, notwithstanding any other provision of law, be sentenced to the aggravated mandatory term in state prison.
The issue is whether the statute adequately defines the penalties applicable to aggravated sexual assault.
The statute defining the crime of which this defendant was convicted says that “[ajggravated sexual assault is a felony of the first degree punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for a term which is a minimum mandatory term of 5, 10, or 15 years and which may be for life.” Utah Code Ann. § 76-5-405 (Supp.1983). The statute provides no further direction for determining which of the three minimum terms should be imposed, with the exception of Utah Code Ann. § 76-3-201(5), which requires the imposition of the term of middle severity “unless there are circumstances in aggravation or mitigation.” Even that exception is singularly unhelpful to the sentencing judge, however, because the crime of aggravated sexual assault always requires proof of an aggravating circumstance. Therefore, although the definitional portion of the statute purports to make the term of middle severity available for the crime of aggravated sexual assault, subsection 76-3-201(5) appears to make it unavailable. It is likely that the legislature intended that the court rely, in determining the sentence, upon an aggravating factor different from the one that made the assault itself an aggravated one, but such an intent is impossible to discern from the statutory language. These two provisions are incapable of being logically construed together, and the statute is therefore ambiguous on its face regarding the intended penalty for aggravated sexual assault.
In addition to the inconsistency referred to above, the statute is ambiguous in other ways. It does not tell the sentencing judge what the legislature intended the mandatory sentence to be when there are both aggravating and mitigating circumstances, rather than none. This is an example of such a case; the violence and number of the crimes would certainly qualify as aggravating circumstances, but the only evidence offered at the sentencing hearing was of circumstances in mitigation. We may not look to the statute to understand which of the three mandatory sentences was intended in such circumstances, for no guidance is provided.
The State argues that we may make sense of this sentencing statute by looking under its direction to the “sentencing rules regarding aggravation and mitigation” promulgated by the Judicial Council. Those “rules,” however, do not eliminate the ambiguity in the penalty provisions of this statute. At the time this defendant was sentenced, the only “rules” available from the Judicial Council were lists of the types of aggravating and mitigating circumstances that should properly be considered by trial judges in indeterminate sentence decisions. Those lists were published with the instruction to trial judges that the factors in aggravation and mitigation should be used in deciding whether to follow or depart from sentencing recommendations also developed and promulgated by the Council. The sentencing recommendations were contained in a “disposition matrix” which compared a defendant’s “criminal history assessment” score with the degree of the offense of which he had *562been convicted. See Appendix I. The criminal history assessment score was based on factors related to ability to function in the community and risk of recidivism, and the degree of the offense, of course, was taken from the statute. These recommendations obviously were intended to assist sentencing judges in deciding whether or not to incarcerate; they have no relevance where incarceration is mandatory. Furthermore, because the legislature has failed to provide a statutory distinction (as opposed to a sentencing judgment) between a five-year minimum and a fifteen-year minimum aggravated assault, the Council’s general disposition matrix for indeterminate sentencing is unusable in the context of the mandatory sentencing system.
Since the recommended disposition matrix has no relevance to sentencing in the context of minimum mandatory terms, sentencing judges are left with nothing but the lists of aggravating and mitigating circumstances standing alone. See Appendix II. And those lists, as I have pointed out, were designed to be used as justification for departing from dispositional recommendations also developed by the Judicial Council within the framework of indeterminate sentencing options provided by the legislature. In the case of the minimum mandatory sentencing system, the legislature has not identified (except for the case with no factors in aggravation or mitigation) the conduct which requires, respectively, minimum terms of five years, ten years, or fifteen years. Thus, the Judicial Council has not developed any dispositional principles which tell trial judges generally when five, ten, or fifteen years is appropriate. See Appendix III. Given the absence of a legislative determination of what acts merit each of the penalties, and given the irrelevance of the traditional criminal history assessment process, it seems unlikely the Judicial Council could ever do so with any objective legitimacy.
In addition to the foregoing, I am not convinced that the Judicial Council has the constitutional power to promulgate sentencing rules which would in effect decide what the penalty should be for aggravated sexual assault. While I see no problem in the Council’s promulgating nonbinding guidelines which can be helpful to trial judges by requiring them to identify, consider carefully, and articulate the factors in an individual case which cause them to follow or depart from the guidelines, the legislature has attempted to impose on the Council a very different function in the case of minimum mandatory sentences. The legislature has in effect asked the Judicial Council to be responsible for setting criminal penalties.
The Utah Judicial Council is a creation of article VIII, section 12 of the Utah Constitution. The entirety of its scope of authority is set forth in the following language: “A Judicial Council is established, which shall adopt rules for the administration of the courts of the state.” The development of nonbinding guidelines for improving the uniformity and fairness of sentencing practices appears to be consistent with the constitutional grant of authority. Deciding when persons convicted of the same offense should receive one of three different minimum mandatory terms, however, does not by any stretch of the imagination involve the “administration of the courts.”
I conclude that it is impossible to determine from the statute which of the three available minimum sentences the legislature intended the courts to apply to these crimes. The statute is therefore vague on its face. Furthermore, the legislature has attempted to require the Judicial Council to do that which it may not constitutionally do, namely, to provide the specificity regarding penalties which the statute lacks. We have, however, held in State v. Bishop, 717 P.2d 261 (Utah 1986), that the legislature has the power to impose minimum mandatory sentences in general. I believe that the statute is clear in expressing a legislative intent to impose at least the minimum term described on persons convicted of aggravated assault.3 Therefore, *563the portion of the statute setting forth the lowest possible mandatory term is sufficiently definite to notify sentencing judges of the penalty applicable to the crime. Likewise, the lowest mandatory term provision does not rely for its construction or enforcement upon an unconstitutional enlargement of the powers of the Judicial Council. I believe that portion of the statute is therefore valid.

. The defendant in this case relies only on federal constitutional principles.

. Subsection (8) provides for a resentencing within 120 days of commitment upon motion of the Court or upon recommendation of the Board of Pardons. It does not allow, however, for a sentence other than as prescribed by law. Thus there still must be a minimum mandatory sentence for a crime such as aggravated sexual assault.

. It is well established that ambiguities in criminal statutes must be resolved in favor of lenity; therefore, we may not look to either of the two harsher options in this statute. See, e,g,, *563Simpson v. United States, 435 U.S. 6, 14-15, 98 S.Ct. 909, 914, 55 L.Ed.2d 70 (1978).