Court Opinion

ID: 9688957
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:14:23.883917+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:43.235878
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(dissenting).
State v. Tibbetts, 333 N.W.2d 440 (S.D.1983), and State v. Ford, 328 N.W.2d 263 (S.D.1982), are inapposite as fraud perpetrated on the court was not the issue in those cases. Appellant perpetrated a fraud on the court and should not be the benefactor of his own wrongdoing. We cannot tolerate or condone perjury or misrepresentations made to trial judges to secure more lenient sentences.
Inherently, a court has the power to deal with fraud perpetrated upon it. Were this not so, a court could become a victim of fraud rather than a dispenser of justice. Is the present sentence “unlawful,” “illegal,” or “invalid”? I would hold that the sentence is invalid because of fraud perpetrated upon the trial court and thus I would affirm the trial court and specially join the writing of Chief Justice Wuest.
A trial court, in administrating justice, has heavily affixed unto it great responsibilities in doing the right thing. Inherently, abiding within the trial courts is a power to administer justice so as to promote justice and not defeat its true purposes. One of its most manifest acts is to sentence criminal defendants. Criminal defendants cannot come into a court of law asking for mercy or justice, with a platform of prevarication and deception.
It is a basic demand upon any judge to both interpret and uphold the law. He or she must uphold legal rules that meet certain standards of justice. Legal rules must not be mechanically applied. Justice cannot be blind to realism and, in my opinion, this Court cannot shut its eyes to the fact that this criminal defendant prevaricated to obtain a sentence which the trial judge originally pronounced. Within the inherent power of the trial court, there arose a resentment and righteous indignation because a fraud was perpetrated in a court of law over which he presided. These were legitimate virtues and a correct extension was to rectify an error committed by him by virtue of the fraud perpetrated upon the court over which he presided. The trial court apparently desired to restore a certain righteousness in his courtroom. Bom of a desire to administer justice in a fair, correct, and equal manner, he saw fit to resentence this defendant. Thus, he was fulfilling a role, as he saw his duty, of upholding the law.
At best here, this defendant would proclaim a procedural injustice. He is saying, “You sentenced me once, but you cannot sentence me again.” However, the judge sentenced him from a set of facts which were untrue. Logically, the sentence was based on a false premise created by appellant. Approximately one hour after pronouncement of the original sentence, the trial judge conducted a further hearing and thereupon resentenced the defendant. Time is critical to our considerations in litigation, but in this case, it is extremely critical. This trial judge, immediately after leaving the courtroom, was furnished with facts establishing, at face value, that appellant and his wife had presented sworn, false testimony. Immediately, this trial judge initiated procedures for a hearing to determine if a fraud had been committed in a court of law over which he presided. True facts were then brought forth and, based upon true facts, the trial judge re-sentenced. Sentence was pronounced by virtue of fraudulent misrepresentations of appellant and sentence was withdrawn *405once this fraud was discovered. There is room in the Ford decision for my concept of a “valid sentence.” In Ford, 328 N.W.2d at 267, it was stated: “ ‘[A]s against an unwilling defendant, a valid sentence cannot be increased in severity after he has commenced the serving there-of_’” (Citation omitted.) For collateral support, I refer the reader to a treatise authored by Wayne LaFave and Jerold Israel, Criminal Procedure § 25.2, at 133 (1984), wherein the writers express:
[T]he increase by a trial judge of a previously imposed sentence is not unheard of, and the Supreme Court’s recent teaching that “a sentence does not have the qualities of constitutional finality that attend an acquittal,” grounded in part in the observation that at common law the “trial court’s increase of a sentence, so long as it took place during the same term of court, was permitted,” strongly suggests that conferral of a power to increase would be constitutional. (Citation omitted; footnotes omitted.)
This generic declaration I cannot completely subscribe to, but a fraud perpetrated on a trial judge to obtain leniency would surely be a commonsense exception to the general rule enunciated in Ford.
The doctrine of inherent power of the courts is not unknown in South Dakota jurisprudence. Research reveals, back to 1960, some nine cases wherein the inherent power of the court is enunciated in one way or another. Some twenty-eight cases in this Court, since 1952, collaterally touch upon this doctrine. More pointedly, although not in the exact context of the facts at hand, I urge the reader to refer to the following criminal cases where inherent power of the court is discussed. State v. Means, 268 N.W.2d 802 (S.D.1978); State v. Peterson, 266 N.W.2d 103, 109 (S.D.1978) (citing In re Brown, 64 S.D. 87, 264 N.W. 521 (1936)).*
Lastly, I wish to express that procedural justice is subordinate to substantive justice. If the courts of law devise a standard or rule of justice, it must inordinately follow that these standards or rules of procedure result in a just decision or outcome. We should vault the substantive law and the fair administration of justice in this case over procedural justice which is, in a broad spectrum, a subordinate type of justice.

 In Means, we wrote "a trial judge has an inherent power, as well as a duty, to conduct a fair and orderly trial.” 268 N.W.2d at 808 (emphasis added; footnote omitted). In Peterson, we expressed that the people of the State of South Dakota have a right to the "preservation of an orderly and efficient criminal justice system.” 266 N.W.2d at 109. Additionally, "each branch of the government has the power to accomplish objectives necessarily within that branch's orbit.” Id. (citing In re Brown, 64 S.D. 87, 264 N.W. 521 (1936)). See 20 Am.Jur.2d Courts § 78 (1965), where inherent powers of the court are referred to as those powers "included within the scope of a court’s jurisdiction which a court possesses irrespective of specific grant by constitution or legislation. Such powers can neither be taken away nor abridged by the legislature.” (Footnotes omitted.) See also State v. Becker, 351 Mo. 769, 174 S.W.2d 181 (1943); Ex parte Wetzel, 243 Ala. 130, 8 So.2d 824 (1942); 21 C.J.S. Courts § 86 (1940).