Court Opinion

ID: 9716619
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:46:06.732059+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:47.274867
License: Public Domain

GARRARD, Senior Judge,
dissenting
I concur with the majority except for its determination that whenever a trial court adjusts a presumptive sentence by suspending a portion thereof, the record should disclose what factors were considered to be mitigating or aggravating circumstances. I respectfully dissent to that determination for two reasons.
Our cases have traditionally held that the trial court need not state reasons when it simply imposes the presumptive sentence prescribed by the legislature. Morgan v. State, 675. N.E.2d 1067, 1073 (Ind.1996); Winfrey v. State, 547 N.E.2d 272 (Ind.1989). Moreover, our decisions have determined that the sentence imposed equals the maximum number of years imposed, even though some portion of that time is ordered suspended. See, e.g. Johnson v. State, 518 N.E.2d 1087 (1988); Thakkar v. State, 644 N.E.2d 609 (Ind.Ct. App.1994). Since the trial court imposed the four year presumptive sentence on Wiggins, it was not required to state aggravating or mitigating factors.
The decision in Morgan, supra, should not alter this result. Although the court in Morgan stated that “[w]hen a trial court decides to adjust a defendant’s sentence by suspending a portion of the sentence, the record should disclose what factors were considered by the judge to be mitigating or aggravating circumstances”, it did so in the context of determining whether the trial court had adequately supported its decision to impose consecutive sentences. Since the imposition of nonmandatory consecutive sentences has traditionally required the court to balance aggravators and mitigators, Reaves v. State, 586 N.E.2d 847 (Ind.1992), Morgan should not be read as broadly as required by the majority.
Secondly, the cases are legion holding that there is no right to a suspended , sentence and the decision to suspend all or a portion of a sentence (except where the legislature has precluded suspension) is a matter of discretion with the trial court. Suspending a portion of a sentence is one of the tools available to the court in attempting to craft a sentence that will lead a convicted person to accept a more socially acceptable way of life. While it may be intuitively correct to assert that the court must have found something in mitigation to cause it to suspend a portion of a sentence, it seems to me that much of the time the court’s focus is simply upon what is likely to cause the person before it to begin leading a law-abiding life. I see no particular benefit in requiring the court to expressly identify some kind of mitigating factors to justify its result, although requiring it to do so may proliferate appellate claims concerning the result.
Therefore, I would not require trial courts to articulate the reasons for sus*13pending all or a part of a defendant’s sentence.