Court Opinion

ID: 9627884
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:58:08.822862+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:52.025145
License: Public Domain

HUNTLEY, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent to Part VI of the majority opinion, wherein the majority affirms the trial court’s imposition of two separate sentence enhancements for use of a firearm during the commission of both the murder and the robbery, pursuant to I.C. § 19-2520.
I.C. § 19-2520E1 prohibits multiple enhanced penalties for crimes which “arose out of the same indivisible course of conduct,” providing that, in such instances, only one sentence enhancement may be given.
I believe it is manifest overreaching for this Court to permit two separate enhancements in the instant case. The factual scenario is not complex. Johns shot and stabbed Price, dragged his body to the sagebrush and then robbed him. This was not a protracted series of events, but a steady, indivisible course of conduct.
The majority concludes that Johns’ conduct leading to his murder conviction and conduct leading to his conviction for robbery are somehow divisible. The majority, as support for this assertion, notes that the trial court concluded that Johns’ conduct contained separate elements constituting two distinct crimes, murder and robbery and, therefore, the acts were “divisible” and the two enhancements were appropriate. It should be obvious that the majority’s argument is a masterful example of circular reasoning in which § 19-2520E is reduced to a mere absurdity. To assume that the existence of the requisite elements for two crimes mandates the conclusion that the two crimes were not committed during the same course of conduct would preclude ever finding that two separate crimes arose out of the same indivisible series of events. If such is true, one wonders why the legislature wasted its time drafting such an ineffectual piece of legislation. I submit the legislature meant what it said when it drafted I.C. § 19-2520E. That is, for crimes which “arose out of the same indivisible course of conduct” only one sentence enhancement may be given.
*884The majority also relies on the fact that Johns returned to Kuna, to Price’s apartment, after murdering Price and took more of Price’s personal belongings. This fact, the majority argues, establishes that the murder and robbery were divisible acts, thereby validating the trial court’s imposition of two separate enhancements for the crimes of murder and robbery. However, any subsequent action by Johns in Kuna could not possibly have constituted “robbery with a firearm” necessary to invoke the enhancement provisions of I.C. § 19-2520, as Johns was not committing robbery at the time he ransacked and stole from Price’s apartment. Robbery is a forcible taking of property from the person: “[RJobbery requires something more than simply a trespass or a taking: the taking must be from the person or presence of the victim as well as from his possession.” Criminal Law, LaFave & Scott, § 94 p. 695 (1972).
Contrary to the majority’s assertions, the evidence shows that the acts of murder and robbery occurred during the same general course of conduct. I would hold that the trial court violated the provisions of I.C. § 19-2520E in imposing a separate enhancement on each sentence, as they arose out of the same indivisible course of conduct. Only one enhancement should have been given.

. I.C. § 19-2520E reads:
19-2520 E. Multiple enhanced penalties prohibited. — Notwithstanding the enhanced penalty provisions in sections 19-2520, 19-2520A, 19-2520B and 19-2520C, Idaho Code, any person convicted of two (2) or more substantive crimes provided for in the above code sections, which crimes arose out of the same indivisible course of conduct, may only be subject to one (1) enhanced penalty. (Emphasis added).