Court Opinion

ID: 9721784
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:09:19.783179+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:28.679499
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority opinion fashions an appellate remedy for the State which is forbidden by the protection of Article I, Section 14 of the Indiana Constitution against jeopardy of second punishment. The record *1022shows that appellant pleaded guilty to burglary and attempted theft; the trial court then accepted that plea, conducted a sentencing hearing, and upon giving aggravating effect to his previous convictions, sentenced him to a twenty year term of imprisonment. Appellant is now in the process of serving that sentence. As I understand it, the majority opinion contemplates that he will now be returned to the trial court, the charge will be amended to include the habitual offender allegations, and he will be subjected to a new sentencing hearing, the purpose of which will be to produce a new and greater sentence. This cannot be done.
It is the settled general law that a court cannot increase a sentence after the defendant has begun to serve it. Ex Parte Lange v. United States, (1874) 18 Wall. 163, 21 L.Ed. 872. Exceptions to the rule exist where the defendant applies for review or reconsideration of his sentence, Ledgerwood v. State, (1892) 134 Ind. 81, 33 N.E. 631, and where the sentence itself is illegal. Vawter v. State, (1972) 258 Ind. 168, 279 N.E.2d 805. Neither of these exceptions applies here. Appellant has made no application regarding his sentence, and the twenty year sentence is a valid statutory sentence for the crime of burglary. Any error of the judge in assessing whether the State's proposed amendment would in terms of Ind.Code § 85-8.1-1-5(c) "prejudice the substantial rights of the defendant" is simply that, an error which may be said to have led to an erroneous judgment or sentence. Erroneous sentences partially served, like erroneous acquittals, and unlike illegal or void sentences, resulting from regular and deliberative judicial processes, are insulated from legal attack by the State by reason of the policy of our Indiana Bill of Rights.