Court Opinion

ID: 9687662
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:41:22.292761+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:29.801910
License: Public Domain

NIERENGARTEN, Acting Judge
(concurring specially).
I concur with the decision but add some words with respect to the dissent.
The sentence imposed by the trial court has precipitated the dissent. On no other issue has there been disagreement among the members of the panel.
The statutory and case law controlling the sentence has been fully covered by the decision and will not be repeated here.
Running like a thread throughout the dissent, however, is the notion that it is somehow unfair not to allow appellant to choose his punishment or, at least, some of its terms.
What is overlooked is that with an impressive record of mixing drinking with driving, appellant has now been found guilty of feloniously causing the death of two totally innocent people. And, once again, the cause of the tragedy was his driving while drinking.
Consistent with the fairness argument of the dissent is the claim that appellant should have the right to demand a certain sentence. But who shall determine whether probation or an executed sentence shall be the more onerous? To that question there is a simple answer: almost anyone other than defendant.
It is interesting to note that in the cases cited in the dissent on this point the court made the decision. And in State v. Sutherlin, 341 N.W.2d 303, 306 (Minn.App.1983), the court observes that “[a] defendant has no right to insist on any limitation of probationary jail time. This determination is entirely discretionary with the trial court. Minn.Stat. Sec. 609.135, subds. 1 and 4.”
Clearly, the appellant is not the one who should decide the onerous issue (and, consequently, the sentence for a crime he committed).
While I agree that our jail and prison system should do what it can to rehabilitate its inmates, I am not much concerned with the “scale of intrusiveness, or embarrassment, or economic cost” to appellant because of the sentence for the crime he committed. Nor do I believe it is this court’s function to cure his alcoholism.
Society did not commit the crime; the appellant did. And it offends no sense of *527fairness or justice that he should pay the penalty society exacts here by virtue of its statutes and case law.