STATE OF NEW MEXICO, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ZACHERY E. LINDSEY, Defendant-Appellee.
No. 34,814
IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO
March 20, 2017
2017-NMCA-048
HANISEE, Judge.
APPEAL FROM THE DISTRICT COURT OF OTERO COUNTY, Angie K. Schneider, District Judge. Hector H. Balderas, Attorney General, Santa Fe, NM, M. Anne Kelly, Assistant Attorney General, Albuquerque, NM, for Appellant. Bennett J. Baur, Chief Public Defender, Santa Fe, NM, Sergio J. Viscoli, Appellate Defender, Albuquerque, NM, for Appellee.
HANISEE, Judge.
{1} Defendant Zachery Lindsey was convicted of two fourth-degree felonies—shoplifting and conspiracy to commit shoplifting—and sentenced as a habitual offender under
{2} The State’s appeal requires that we address a statute that has yet to be exactingly scrutinized by our appellate courts. To do so, and to ascertain whether the district court erred in suspending the portion of Defendant’s sentence earned by virtue of his status as a habitual offender, we must interpret the phrase “substantial and compelling reasons” as contained in
BACKGROUND
{3} In October 2013 Defendant pled no contest to residential burglary, a third-degree felony, and larceny, a fourth-degree felony, offenses committed in November 2012 when Defendant was nineteen years old. For those offenses, Defendant received a conditional discharge, contingent upon his successful completion of five years’ probation and repayment of up to $1,417 in restitution.
{4} In November 2014 while still on probation, Defendant was apprehended as he ran from a Wal-Mart store in Alamogordo, New Mexico. He was indicted for (1) shoplifting
{5} At sentencing, the prosecutor stated that he was “at a loss as to what to do” regarding Defendant, acknowledging Defendant’s youth but also stating that Defendant “has done poorly on probation” and “is a young person that appears to be on the road to not a good position in life.” The prosecutor suggested that the court “send [Defendant] to [a] diagnostic [center], perhaps as a stop-gap measure, an in-between measure.” Defense counsel asked that Defendant’s sentence be suspended for “compelling reasons,” including Defendant’s youth and that Defendant was by then performing well on probation, paying restitution for his prior offense, gainfully employed, and expecting a child. Undecided, the district judge continued the sentencing proceedings in order to hear from Defendant’s probation officer, Wolf Fielenbach.
{6} At the follow-up hearing, the State reiterated its request for a sixty-day diagnostic commitment. Defense counsel continued to argue for a suspended sentence. Mr. Fielenbach testified that Defendant had done “very well on probation until” he re-offended, but that after spending a couple of weeks in prison Defendant’s probation was reinstated, “mainly for the reason that he can pay off his restitution.” Mr. Fielenbach explained that Defendant had been “on and off of jobs,” making restitution payments difficult, but that Defendant was employed and “doing well” since being back on probation. He also elevated Defendant’s probationary status to “high risk,” meaning that he checked on Defendant once or twice a month and that he usually found Defendant “working in his dad’s shop in the evenings.” Mr. Fielenbach concluded: “I think he’s on the right track.” Defendant’s father and wife also testified on Defendant’s behalf, describing Defendant’s demonstrated commitment to his new employment and family and requesting an outcome that would allow Defendant to “continue on the path that he’s on.”
{7} In final remarks, the prosecutor argued that
{8} The district court—in accordance with
{9} From this judgment, the State appealed.
DISCUSSION
{10} Our inquiry is two-fold. First, what does the term “substantial and compelling reasons” mean as contained in
STATUTORY INTERPRETATION
{11}
A person convicted of a noncapital felony . . . who has incurred one prior felony conviction . . . or conditional discharge . . . is a habitual offender and his basic sentence shall be increased by one year. The sentence imposed pursuant to this subsection shall not be suspended or deferred, unless the court makes a specific finding that the prior felony conviction and the instant felony conviction are both for nonviolent felony offenses and that justice will not be served by imposing a mandatory sentence of imprisonment and that there are substantial and compelling reasons, stated on the record, for departing from the sentence imposed pursuant to this subsection.
(Emphasis added.) Regarding whether “substantial and compelling reasons, stated on the record” support the district court’s suspension of Defendant’s sentence, and particularly the one-year mandatory sentencing enhancements for his being a habitual offender, the State urges us to adopt a restrictive definition of “substantial and compelling” employed in the state of Michigan. See People v. Babcock, 666 N.W.2d 231, 237 (Mich. 2003) (defining “substantial and compelling” as “an objective and verifiable reason that keenly or irresistibly grabs our attention; is of considerable worth in deciding the length of a sentence; and exists only in exceptional cases” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). The State thus maintains that the reasons stated by the district court are deficient, and that employing such a definition would clarify the district court’s failure. Defendant, on the other hand, contends that statutory construction is unnecessary and makes no argument with respect to how we should interpret the term “substantial and compelling.” Instead, Defendant argues simply that barring an abuse of the district court’s discretion, we should affirm. We address this issue in the next section but agree with the State that construction of the phrase “substantial and compelling” is warranted. We nonetheless decline to adopt the State’s proffered definition, concluding it to be inconsistent with our Legislature’s intent.
{12} “Statutory interpretation is an issue of law, which we review de novo.” State v. Duhon, 2005-NMCA-120, ¶ 10, 138 N.M. 466, 122 P.3d 50. “The primary goal in interpreting a statute is to give effect to the Legislature’s intent.” State v. Davis, 2003-NMSC-022, ¶ 6, 134 N.M. 172, 74 P.3d 1064. “We begin the search for legislative intent by looking first to the words chosen by the Legislature and the plain meaning of the Legislature’s language.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). “When a term is not defined in a statute, we must construe it, giving those words their ordinary meaning absent clear and express legislative intention to the contrary.” State v. Tsosie, 2011-NMCA-115, ¶ 19, 150 N.M. 754, 266 P.3d 34 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). “The application of the plain meaning rule does not, however, end with a formalistic and mechanistic interpretation of statutory language.” Davis, 2003-NMSC-022, ¶ 6. “The legislative history of the statute, including historical amendments, and whether it is part of a more comprehensive act, is instructive when searching for the spirit and reason the Legislature utilized in enacting the statute[.]” Id. (citation omitted); see also State v. Gutierrez, 2007-NMSC-033, ¶ 31, 142 N.M. 1, 162 P.3d 156 (explaining that courts may also be guided by a statute’s legislative purpose when construing the statute).
The Term “Substantial”
{14} As a starting point for interpreting undefined terms contained in a statute, “[o]ur courts often use dictionary definitions to ascertain the ordinary meaning of words that form the basis of statutory construction inquiries.” State v. Chavez, 2016-NMCA-016, ¶ 8, 365 P.3d 61, cert. granted, 2016-NMCERT-001, 370 P.3d 474. The term “substantial” has many definitions, most of which tend to fall into one of two categories: qualitative or quantitative. Qualitative definitions focus on the existential characteristic of the thing being described, i.e., whether it is real or not. See Black’s Law Dictionary 1656 (10th ed. 2014) (defining “substantial” as “[r]eal and not imaginary; having actual, not fictitious, existence” as illustrated by the phrase “a substantial case on the merits“); The Random House Dictionary of the English Language 1418 (unabridged ed. 1971) (defining “substantial” as “of real worth, value, or effect” as illustrated by the phrase “substantial reasons” and providing “immaterial” and “ethereal” as antonyms of “substantial“). By contrast, quantitative definitions are concerned with expressions of amounts and sizes of the things being described. See Black’s Law Dictionary 1656 (defining “substantial” as “[c]onsiderable in amount or value; large in volume or number” as in “substantial support and care“); Random House Dictionary 1418 (defining “substantial” as “of ample or considerable amount, quantity, size, etc.” as in “a substantial sum of money“). What all of these definitions—whether qualitative or quantitative—reveal is that “substantial” is an inherently subjective term, one that is innately inexact.
{15} Other jurisdictions agree. See Utilicorp United, Inc. v. United States, 21 Cl. Ct. 453, 466-67 (Cl. Ct. 1990) (explaining that because “substantial is a subjective term, . . . [a]sking this Court to draw a bright line between substantial and significant or between substantial and essential is an unrealistic and illogical request[,]” and observing that “[i]f the regulations had been intended to be interpreted as narrowly and restrictively as suggested . . . then it seems a definition of the word ‘substantial’ would have also been provided“); City of Spokane Valley v. Dirks, No. 33140-III, 2015 WL 6395654 at *4, 19-20, 190 Wash. App. 1041, ___ P.3d ___ (describing “substantial” as a “subjective term[,]” making a perfunctory reference to a dictionary definition of “substantial” as meaning “being largely but not wholly that which is specified[,]” and rejecting a constitutional vagueness challenge to a city zoning ordinance’s adult establishment regulations that defined “adult arcade establishment” as meaning a commercial premises where showing adult movies is a “substantial part of the premises activity” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). While the State points to the Michigan case and its use of expressions such as “keenly or irresistibly grab our attention[,]” “considerable worth[,]” and “exists only in exceptional cases[,]” we conclude that our law is less amenable to restrictive interpretation.1 Babcock, 666 N.W.2d at 237 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
The Term “Compelling”
{17} In addition to “substantial,” the Legislature required that the district court’s reasons also be “compelling,” so we next address the proper construction of that term as well. As with defining “substantial,” the challengingly subjective nature of the word “compelling” renders somewhat futile our effort to apply common dictionary definitions. That is because whichever such definition we might select would still require subjective, case-by-case, fact-specific analysis due to the subjective qualifiers in available definitions. See Random House Dictionary 300 (defining “compelling” as “requiring acute admiration, attention or respect“); see also Fields, 528 N.W.2d at 179 (relying on Webster’s New World Dictionary Third College Edition to define “compelling” as “irresistibly or keenly interesting, attractive, etc.; captivating” (internal quotation marks omitted)). In our view, whether reasons are “compelling” depends upon the overall facts of a given case, including the particular criminal behavior the prosecution is designed to address, the history of a given defendant’s efforts to comply with what is required of him or her in a law-abiding society, and the court’s considerations of the factors in the defendant’s life that lend themselves to a possibility of successful rehabilitation in a non-incarcerative environment. In other words, because there can be no formulaic expression of how a district court is to undertake such quintessentially factual determinations,
{18} Our holding thus declines to excessively restrict by degree the primary decisional autonomy vested in district courts regarding the suspendability of mandatory sentences under
{19} The 2002 Amendment, while evincing the Legislature’s acknowledgment that imposing a mandatory prison sentence on a second-time non-violent offender may not be in the interest of justice, did not grant district courts unfettered discretion to suspend a habitual offender’s sentence. Rather, it opted to “regulate or restrict the circumstances in which courts may suspend sentences,” as our Supreme Court has acknowledged is properly within the Legislature’s purview. State v. Mabry, 1981-NMSC-067, ¶ 18, 96 N.M. 317, 630 P.2d 269. The Legislature restricted district courts’ discretion to suspend or defer a sentence to a limited set of cases, specifically those where the defendant has no more than one prior conviction and where both the instant and prior convictions are for non-violent felony offenses. And in instances where district courts were authorized to suspend mandatory habitual offender enhancements, the Legislature regulated district courts by requiring them to articulate a factual rationale, supported by “substantial and compelling reasons,” as to just why justice would not be served by a sentence of imprisonment. Yet the State would now have us effectively impose additional restrictions that would diminish further the circumstances under which a district court may suspend a habitual offender’s sentence, namely “only in exceptional cases.” See Babcock, 666 N.W.2d at 237 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Because we assume that “[t]he Legislature knows how to include language
{20} We hold that
Abuse of Discretion
{21} The State, relying on three distinguishable Florida cases involving downward departure sentences rather than a habitual offender enhancement, argues that the district court’s reasons for suspending Defendant’s sentence were not “substantial and compelling” and thus the district court abused its discretion, and erred, when it suspended the habitual offender sentence. We disagree.
{22} “Sentencing is reviewed for an abuse of discretion.” State v. Vasquez, 2010-NMCA-041, ¶ 41, 148 N.M. 202, 232 P.3d 438. “An abuse of discretion occurs when the ruling is clearly against the logic and effect of the facts and circumstances of the case. We cannot say the [district] court abused its discretion by its ruling unless we can characterize [the ruling] as clearly untenable or not justified by reason.” State v. Rojo, 1999-NMSC-001, ¶ 41, 126 N.M. 438, 971 P.2d 829 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). In the context of sentencing, we afford district courts broad latitude in imposing sentences within the restrictions adopted by the Legislature. See State v. Lavone, 2011-NMCA-084, ¶ 9, 150 N.M. 473, 261 P.3d 1105 (explaining that “a district court must consider many factors when it makes a sentencing determination, and the court is given broad discretion to fashion a sentence appropriate to the offense and the offender” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)); State v. Clah, 1997-NMCA-091, ¶ 19, 124 N.M. 6, 946 P.2d 210 (explaining that “[w]ithin the limitations of the provision prescribing the punishment for a particular offense, the [district] court has discretion to structure the sentence to best fit the defendant and the crime“). New Mexico courts have long recognized that “[r]ead in their entirety, the sentencing statutes evidence a legislative intent that the [district] court have a wide variety of options by which to sentence.” State v. Sinyard, 1983-NMCA-150, ¶ 7, 100 N.M. 694, 675 P.2d 426. District courts are granted such broad discretion by the Legislature “because there are so many intangible and imponderable factors entering into such a decision.” State v. Serrano, 1966-NMSC-166, ¶ 12, 76 N.M. 655, 417 P.2d 795 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). As our Supreme Court has explained, “[t]hese matters, which are to be considered in connection with the prior record of the accused, are of such nature that the problem of probation must of necessity rest within the discretion of the judge who hears the case.” Id. (quoting Utah v. Sibert, 310 P.2d 388, 393 (Utah 1957) (internal quotation marks omitted)). In other words, sentencing decisions involve myriad factors and should be left to the sound discretion of trial judges who are in the best position to assess and weigh whether justice will be served by a sentence of imprisonment or probation.
{23} Here, the record indicates that the district court relied heavily on the recommendation of Defendant’s probation officer, Mr. Fielenbach, in reaching its decision to suspend Defendant’s sentence. He testified that Defendant “has been doing well” and was “on the right track.” He also explained that Defendant had obtained steady employment, which would enable Defendant to pay restitution per the terms of Defendant’s prior probation, and that he was checking on Defendant regularly. The district court’s judgment included the finding that “Defendant is
{24} Additionally, the district court explained at the hearing that suspending Defendant’s sentence was warranted because “justice is better served by getting [Defendant] on probation and having [Defendant] do what [he is] supposed to do as a requirement of [his] probation.” The record makes clear that the ongoing payment of restitution by Defendant was the specific term of probation with which both Mr. Fielenbach and the district court were particularly satisfied. Thus we understand the district court’s suspension of Defendant’s sentence to be a recognition of two important considerations: (1) the purpose and benefits of probation, see State v. Baca, 1977-NMCA-030, ¶ 10, 90 N.M. 280, 562 P.2d 841 (explaining that probation serves the general purposes of “education and rehabilitation. Probation assumes the best interests of the public and the offender will be served [and that] the offender can be rehabilitated without serving the suspended jail sentence“); and (2) the primacy and importance of our state’s policy regarding paying restitution. See
{25} We decline to adopt a seldom-attainable standard where to do what is expected (i.e., comply with the terms of probation) would rarely be enough. To do so would be to remove the possibility of reward for that which should be incentivized. Here, it is telling that the State itself expressed hesitation and uncertainty regarding imposition of the mandatory prison sentence in this case. It was the State that proposed sending Defendant to the diagnostic center for sixty days “as a stop-gap measure, an in-between measure,” as the prosecutor described it. However,
{26} As this Court has previously explained, “[j]udicial discretion is a discretion guided by law, caution, and prudence; it is an equitable determination of what is just and proper under the circumstances.” State v. Madrigal, 1973-NMCA-116, ¶ 33, 85 N.M. 496, 513 P.2d 1278 (omission, internal quotation marks, and citations omitted). “It is not a mere whim or caprice, but an honest attempt, the exercise of power and duty, to see that justice is done.” Id. (omission, internal quotation marks, and citation omitted). We conclude that the district court in this case properly considered myriad factors and made an honest attempt to see that justice is done under the particular circumstances of this case. We do not mean to say that the capability of a defendant to pay restitution is, alone, always a sufficient reason to suspend a habitual offender sentence. Or that compliance with probation, stable employment, and expectant parenthood—either individually or when aggregated—necessarily constitute “substantial and compelling reasons” for suspending a sentence in every case. However, given the facts of this case, we cannot say that the district court’s decision to suspend Defendant’s habitual offender sentence was “clearly untenable or not justified by reason.” Rojo, 1999-NMSC-001, ¶ 41 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).
{27} Because the district court complied with the requirements of
{28} IT IS SO ORDERED.
J. MILES HANISEE, Judge
WE CONCUR:
JAMES J. WECHSLER, Judge
M. MONICA ZAMORA, Judge