75 N.J.L. 400 | N.J. | 1907
The opinion of the court was delivered by
The petitioner is confined in the state reformatory under a sentence of the Camden Special Sessions upon a conviction for breaking and entering. He claims his freedom upon the ground that the sentence was invalid — first, because at the time it was imposed he was under the age of sixteen years, and second, because it is indeterminate, and therefore illegal. The -commitment under which he is held is merely a copy of the sentence of the court, and does not disclose his age. The statute authorizes the courts to sentence to the reformatory such male prisoners as they think proper, between the ages of sixteen and thirty, not known to have been previously sentenced to a state prison or penitentiary in this or any other state or country, and further enacts that the court shall not fix or limit the duration of sentence, which, however, is not to exceed the maximum term provided by law for the crime. No minimum sentence is authorized. It may be terminated by the managers of the reformatory upon terms and in the manner provided by the act. Pamph. L. 1901, p. 231, §§ 7, 9, 10, 11. By the act to establish and regulate the state home for boys (Pamph. L. 1900, p. 176) a justice of this court or a judge of the Court of Common Pleas is authorized, in ease a boy under sixteen is sentenced to jail or the state prison, to commit him to the state home for boys. Neither act prevents the court from sentencing offenders of any age to the state prison.
The second question mooted is one of great importance. The return shows on its face that the sentence was, in accordance with the act relating to the management of the reformatory, a general sentence to that institution without specifying any term. We are thus confronted with the question as to the validity of the act itself. It is assailed as invalid because it authorizes a sentence which is cruel and unusual in that it is uncertain in duration and not proportioned to the offence, and because it delegates to the board of managers of the reformatory a power properly belonging to the judiciary in that they are authorized to discharge the prisoner before the expiration of the maximum term of imprisonment allowed by
The objection that the term of imprisonment is not fixed is untrue in fact. The term is fixed by the statute at the maximum term, and a sentence to the reformatory is in effect a sentence by the court for that term. It is clearly within the power of the legislature to prescribe the term of imprisonment and leave no discretion to the court. Nothing is left to judicial discretion in the punishment of murder in the first degree. But in fact the act leaves the punishment entirely to the’ discretion of the court, for it may either sentence to the reformatory for the maximum term or to the state prison for that or a shorter term, as before the passage of the act, and if in any individual case the punishment is out of proportion to the offence, that is the result of the exercise of judicial discretion, and not of a statutory requirement. Our constitution does not, like the constitution of some of the states, require that the punishment should be proportioned to the offence, and we see no reason why the legislature may not commit the extent of the imprisonment to the courts, as it always has, and in establishing a new penal institution fix the terms upon which prisoners shall be received therein.
The objection that the statute confers judicial powers upon the board of managers fails for the same reasons. The judicial power is exercised by a sentence to the reformatory for the maximum term. The shortening of that term or the change of the place of imprisonment may well be left to the managers, or to the managers and the governor, as a matter of prison discipline. Such was undoubtedly the beneficent intent of the legislature, and we see no constitutional objection upon the ground that it interferes with the judicial power.
Nor do we think the act of 1901 interferes with the prerogative to grant pardons. A discharge from imprisonment is not the equivalent of a pardon. Even if it were, the question does not now arise since the section authorizing a discharge is clearly severable from the section fixing the term at the maximum, and if the power to discharge given to the board
Legislation of a similar character in some of our sister states has been uniformly sustained. People v. Superintendent of Reformatory (1894), 148 Ill. 413, 420; 36 N. E. Rep. 76; George v. People (1897), 167 Ill. 447; 47 N. E. Rep. 741, 746; Commonwealth v. Brown (1896), 167 Mass. 144; 45 N. E. Rep. 1; Murphy v. Commonwealth (1899), 172 Mass. 264; 52 N. E. Rep. 505; Miller v. State (1898), 149 Ind. 607; 49 N. E. Rep. 894.
The prisoner should be remanded.