Court Opinion

ID: 9677205
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:46:08.128689+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:18:53.975534
License: Public Domain

Josephine Linker Hart, Judge, concurring. Alexander Hamilton rightly argued that “[t]o avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them. . . .” The Federalist No. 78 (June 1788). After all, a judge, and by implication a court, is “not a knight-errant roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.” Benjamin N. Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process 141 (1921). Accordingly, we, the court of appeals, must adhere to the true holdings of our supreme court when that court has made an unequivocal pronouncement concerning the relevant law. See Freeman v. Con-Agra Frozen Foods, 70 Ark. App. 306, 27 S.W.3d 762 (2000), rev’d on other grounds, 344 Ark. 296, 40 S.W.3d 760 (2001). However, the law is ever-changing, and, in my view, these restraints do not and should not prevent a judge from interjecting respectful commentary in order to shape the developing law. Inasmuch as I conclude that the trial court’s actions were consistent with the present law, I cannot agree with appellant that this matter should be reversed. However, because I believe that the precedent by which we are bound is not consistent with the sense of justice or social welfare, I respectfully offer this concurrence. I write separately to express my opinion concerning our sentencing guidelines that are available only to those defendants who either enter pleas of guilty or no contest or are permitted to have a bench trial, Ark. R. Crim. P. 31.1, and the effect these guidelines have on a defendant’s rights as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. As explained in the majority opinion, appellant challenged the constitutionality of Ark. Code Ann. § 16-90-803 (Supp. 1999), which establishes the method for determining the presumptive sentences for criminal defendants whose pleas of guilty are accepted by the trial court. Specifically, appellant cites United States v. Jackson, 390 U.S. 570 (1968), and argues that the aforementioned statute is unconstitutional because it encourages him to waive his fundamental right to a trial by jury as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment and made applicable to the respective states by the Fourteenth Amendment. The State counters by citing Pickett v. State, 321 Ark. 224, 226, 902 S.W.2d 208, 209 (1995), in which our supreme court held that “[t]he sentencing guidelines do not burden the fundamental right to a jury trial. ...” Although the State is correct that in this case and commensurate with the law in its current form the trial court should be affirmed, this case, nonetheless, reveals a number of disturbing facets in the law that should not go unaddressed. The genesis of the sentencing guidelines for those criminal defendants who enter pleas of either guilty or nolo contendere is Act 532 of 1993, which is currently codified at Ark. Code Ann. § 16-90-803. In Section 1(B) of the Act, the Arkansas General Assembly stated that “the purpose of establishing rational and consistent sentencing standards is to seek to ensure that sanctions imposed following conviction are proportional to the seriousness of the offense of conviction and the extent of the offender’s criminal history. ...” These sentences, of course, are generally less severe than the various sentences that the General Assembly has sanctioned for the various crimes enumerated throughout the criminal code. For example, in this case, appellant’s sentence under the sentencing guidelines would have been twenty-two years’ imprisonment; however, his sentence under the criminal code was 240 years’ imprisonment. To state this sobering fact is to expose the fallacy in the law. Accordingly, these presumably “proportional” sentences are available only to those criminal defendants who are found guilty by some means other than a jury. See Ark. Code Ann. § 16-90-803(b)(4). Therefore, it would be logical to conclude that criminal defendants would endeavor to have their cases disposed of by some means other than a Sixth Amendment-sanctioned jury trial. The Sixth Amendment provides, inter alia, that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a . . . trial, by an impartial jury of the state. ...” This constitutional right can be waived, Schick v. United States, 195 U.S. 65 (1904); however, it is permissible for the government to impose a rule that this waiver be subject to the approval of both the government and trial court, Singer v. United States, 380 U.S. 24 (1965). Commensurate with that authority, Arkansas has adopted Ark. R. Crim. P. 31.1, which provides that “[n]o defendant in any criminal cause may waive a trial by jury unless the waiver is assented to by the prosecuting attorney. . . .” Thus, a defendant does not have an absolute right to elect a non-jury trial even if his action of waiving a jury trial was guided by his attempt to obtain the benefits of the sentencing guidelines. Accordingly, the government, for apparently any reason, can deny a defendant’s request for a non-jury trial and have a criminal defendant subjected to a potential sentence that is something other than the “proportional” sentence endorsed by Act 532. Stated differently, Ark. R. Crim. P. 31.1, together with Act 532, operates to ensure a dual criminal-justice system that provides unfettered discretion to the government to select those criminal defendants who should be exposed to greater punishments and those defendants who should be exposed to lesser punishments. While I agree that it is inevitable that in a system that encourages negotiated pleas, a criminal defendant will be faced with the possibility of less severe punishment in consideration for a waiver of a constitutional right to a jury trial, Corbitt v. New Jersey, 439 U.S. 212, 220-221 (1978), I see no need to codify two different types of sentencing schemes for the State to successfully negotiate a plea bargain. In fact, to do so unnecessarily invites legal challenges and appears strange. After all, if the sentence given to a criminal defendant who negotiated a plea bargain or is found guilty by a trial judge is “proportional,” does the sentence for the criminal defendant who is found guilty by a jury lack proportion? Furthermore, could this doublespeak, which is so apparent when one views our sentencing laws as a whole, be clarified if the jury was made aware of the more “proportional” sentence? After all, would the policy reasons that undergird Act 532 — proportionality and uniformity — also be furthered by the jury’s awareness of the sentencing guidelines? What is the compelling reason for the principle that a judge, who is acting in the capacity of a finder-of-fact by determining a sentence, should be more informed about what the legislature considers as being a “proportional” sentence than a jury when undertaking precisely the same task? If there is no significant reason, then is it not fair to say that there is no rational basis for treating criminal defendants who either negotiate a settlement or are allowed to have their case tried before the trial judge differendy from those defendants who are forced to have their case tried before a jury? Regretfully, that avenue has been successfully blocked by Pickett, 321 Ark. at 226, 902 S.W.2d at 209, which in effect stated that the defendant in that case was not entitled to the “proportional” sentence “because the statutory minimum [was] ten years, and a trial court should not give an instruction that incor-recdy states the law.” In any event, the current state of the law simply does not permit this court to reverse the jury’s sentence. The jury sentenced a person commensurate with the laws that they undoubtedly thought expressed the General Assembly’s assessment as to what would be a proper punishment without knowing that, in fact, their legislature had determined that another sentence would be more “proportional.” This legally-sanctioned process will deprive individuals of personal liberties and can result in a vast difference in the sentence imposed by the jury and the court. Justice Cardozo opined: I think that adherence to precedent should be the rule and not the exception. . . . [However,] when a rule, after it has been duly-tested by experience, has been found to be inconsistent with the sense of justice or with the social welfare, there should be less hesitation in frank avowal and full abandonment. Cardozo, supra at 149-150. Here, the Pickett principle has been tested, and inconsistencies with simple justice and social welfare are plain. However, we are bound by that principle, and, accordingly, I concur.