Court Opinion

ID: 9585383
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:59:48.642657+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:41:44.289917
License: Public Domain

DONIELSON, Judge
(specially concurring).
I concur but wish to add certain views of my own. Trial courts are granted wide discretion in sentencing, see State v. Pappas, 337 N.W.2d 490, 494 (Iowa 1983), yet I feel the sentencing courts face an unenviable, no-win position. As to sentencing statements, I think the trial courts are basically damned if they do and damned if they do not.
The policies behind sentencing seem to be at loggerheads. On the one hand, we want judges to consider all the factors in the record and presentence report and be open and frank about their sentencing decisions, see State v. Carey, 306 N.W.2d 740, 742 (Iowa 1981), while, on the other hand, we do not want judges considering any impermissible factors during sentencing, or to be biased or prejudiced. See State v. Messer, 306 N.W.2d 731, 733 (Iowa 1981); State v. Nichols, 247 N.W.2d 249, 256 (Iowa 1976).
The judge in this case clearly stated a legitimate and proper reason for the sentence he imposed and then went on to make comments about the defendant and about his observations of the defendant, his demeanor and conduct in the courtroom and the judge s reaction to the gravity of the crime as it applies to this particular defendant. This particular information is available in our record only because of the judge’s observations and comments. It enables us to grasp the “feel” of a case that cannot be conveyed to us in another way. Appellate courts should not further diminish this type of information in the record, but rather should encourage it. The federal courts have long ago recognized the value of a full and complete discussion of sentencing by a trial judge. See Owens v. United States, 383 F.Supp. 780 (M.D.Pa.1974), aff'd. 515 F.2d 507 (3d Cir.1975), cert. denied 423 U.S. 996, 96 S.Ct. 425, 46 L.Ed.2d 371 (1975); U.S. ex rel. Thompson v. Rundle, 294 F.Supp. 933 (E.D.Pa.1968). See also United States v. Cluchette, 465 F.2d 749, 754 (9th Cir.1972) (“During the course of sentencing, the judge expressed the view that [defendant] had been less than candid in his sworn testimony. We find nothing offensive in the judge’s comments. A sentencing judge cannot put out of his mind the impressions a defendant may give while on the stand and should not try to sentence in a mental vacuum”). State courts have reviewed similar comments made by a trial judge to a defendant at sentencing and found the judge was not biased or prejudiced. See Commonwealth ex rel. Hendrickson v. Myers, 182 Pa.Super. 169, 174, 126 A.2d 485, 487 (1956) (In Myers, the appellate court stated that the trial judge immediately before sentencing said to the defendant:
This Court tried to help you many years ago by placing you on probation when you were charged with burglary as a boy. You committed a serious crime there.... This Court was so anxious to help you and to make a man of you that instead of sending you away, as we might have done, we placed you on probation in charge of Miss Bright, the Probation Officer. We did not hear any more about you after that until this occurrence here. That should have taught you several things. It should have taught you in the first place, that it is *194foolish, it is stupid, it is just plain dumb, to commit crimes. There is nothing gained by it. You are no richer than you were because of these crimes. You haven’t won any respect from anybody. Everybody that knows you will now despise you. They will look down upon you. Everybody of any intelligence, everybody of any standing or decency now looks down upon you as just a stupid, common criminal. Now can you think of anything that could be said in your own favor? I can’t think of anything.

Id.

If appellate courts constantly reverse and remand sentences which contain proper reasons for sentencing which also go on to state other reasons and observations, then sentencing will turn into a ritualistic proceeding. The record on appeal from such proceedings will be so sanitized that we appellate judges may very often be wondering if the sterile record before us contains any of the true reason(s) for the sentencing decision. One can well imagine a small typewritten paragraph included in the bench book that gives the magic words sufficient to avoid reversal on appeal, but sanitized to contain nothing of real feeling and basic substance as to what happened and why.
Rather than forcing trial courts to turn sentencing into a formalistic and hyper-technical proceeding, I believe that if the sentencing judge states proper reasons based on appropriate foundations in the record, then we should not look beyond that point. I see absolutely nothing wrong, and as a matter of fact I think it should be encouraged, in a judge speaking freely, openly and expansively to the defendant, lecture, cajole, empathize, sympathize, show compassion, warmth, and comprehension, show anger, umbrage, ire and indignity. These are human emotions that are meaningful to the person before the court, emotions they understand and can easily comprehend. To go by rote in an emotionless ritual loses its human values and is less effective for the purpose for which the sentence was intended. It is a “showdown” where society, as represented by the judge, confronts a defendant for his antisocial conduct as represented by violation of laws under a constitutional legal system. A ritualistic, meaningless spew of words do not impress on a defendant the gravity nor the importance of this final (or mostly so) confrontation for his violation of his public responsibility. The time of sentencing is a desirable place for the judge to let his feeling be known, if he indeed wishes to do so, and, if not, so be it.
It would be a rare occasion indeed where I would entertain any suggestion that the judge said too much to the defendant at the sentencing confrontation.