Court Opinion

ID: 9712805
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:00:28.348791+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:14.514820
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
Upon consideration of the evidence tending to support the verdict of guilty, I would agree that it is sufficient. The broken glass from the porch window was found on the inside of the house, and the hole was broken immediately above the window lock. When appellant was arrested he held a hammer in his hand which the arresting police officer required him to drop. These additional facts coupled with those recited in the majority opinion are sufficient to convince me that the jury could conclude that appellant broke the window with the intent to enter and steal.
I cannot, however, agree that the enhancement of a basic ten year sentence to the maximum of twenty years would necessarily result if the aggravating circumstances were limited to the single felony conviction for delivery of hashish, the pending rape charge, and the age and retarded character of the victims. The pre-sentence investigation reveals that appellant success*1082fully completed his parole following the drug conviction, that the rape charge was not brought until at least two years after the alleged attack, and the children of the seventy-three year old owner of the house broken into were adults between twenty and thirty-seven years of age, and there is nothing to disclose the level of any impairment. I regard the juvenile court judgment ordering appellant's juvenile record to be destroyed as entitled to its natural force, which is to preclude the use of that record to enhance a subsequent criminal penalty, and while the remaining valid factors favor some enhancement beyond the basic term, I am unable to conclude as does the majority, that they adequately sustain the imposition of the maximum twenty years permissible under the sentencing statute. I am therefore voting to remand this case for a new sentencing hearing from which the prior juvenile record will be excluded from consideration.