State v. William T. Liepe
A-7-18 (080788)
SUPREME COURT OF NEW JERSEY
Argued March 12, 2019 -- Decided August 6, 2019
PATTERSON, J.
This syllаbus is not part of the Court‘s opinion. It has been prepared by the Office of the Clerk for the convenience of the reader. It has been neither reviewed nor approved by the Court. In the interest of brevity, portions of an opinion may not have been summarized.
State v. William T. Liepe (A-7-18) (080788)
Argued March 12, 2019 -- Decided August 6, 2019
PATTERSON, J., writing for the Court.
The Court reviews consecutive terms of incarceration imposed on defendant William T. Liepe for convictions arising from a motor-vehicle accident he caused when driving while intoxicated.
After drinking six to ten beers, defendant drove his Ford Explorer south on Cologne Avenue in Mays Landing at approximately 1:00 p.m. Travelling at about forty-five miles per hour, defendant struck the rear end of a Honda Accord waiting to make a left turn. The car was driven by a thirty-five-year-old man, M.G., who was driving his eleven-year-old son, M.J.G., and a nine-year-old family friend, R.S., to a softball game. The collision sent the Honda into the northbound lane, where it was struck by a Cadillac Escalade driven by a woman who was taking her mother, R.V., and her two children on a shopping trip. The second collision sent the car into the parking lot of the softball field.
The accident killed R.S. M.J.G. was permanently paralyzed from the waist down as a result of the accident. He is confined to a wheelchair and will require continuous medical care for the rest of his life. M.G. also sustained very serious injuries: he broke many bones, had injured organs, and required a forty-five day hospitalization with multiple surgeries. The driver of the Cadillac and her children were unharmed in the accident; however, R.V. sustained back and neck injuries.
Defendant was tried before a jury and was convicted on all counts. The trial court considered the aggravating and mitigating factors under
The Appellate Division affirmed defendant‘s convictions but vacated his sentence and remanded for resentencing. 453 N.J. Super. 126, 142 (App. Div. 2018). The Appellate Division observed that defendant would be ineligible for parole until he reached the age of eighty-nine and found that sentence “shocking to the judicial сonscience.” Id. at 133, 135. The Appellate Division “discern[ed] from the [trial] judge‘s decision to impose consecutive terms that he believed Carey required consecutive terms -- a conclusion the Court expressly rejected” in Carey. Id. at 136. The Appellate Division also construed the holding of Carey to be limited to cases in which a defendant‘s conduct killed more than one victim, and thus determined Carey to be inapplicable to a single-fatality case such as this. Id. at 140-41. The Appellate Division stated that defendant‘s sentence “has not been shown to be in accord with any other sentence imposed in similar circumstances” and opined that this disparity impairs “the overarching Yarbough goal that there be uniformity in sentencing.” Id. at 142. In support of that contention, the Appellate Division attached an appendix in which it “synopsized all available post-Carey decisions . . . identifying sentences imposed in multiple-victim vehicular homicide cases.” Id. at 139 n.5, 142-45.
The Court granted the State‘s petition for certification. 235 N.J. 295 (2018).
HELD: The trial court properly applied the factors identified in Yarbough for the imposition of consecutive sentences, and defendant‘s sentence is consistent with the principles stated in Carey and does not shock the judicial conscience. The Court reverses the Appellate Division‘s judgment and reinstates the sentence that the trial court imposed.
1. Appellate review of a sentencing determination is limited to consideration of: (1) whether guidelines for sentencing established by the Legislature or by the courts were violated; (2) whether the aggravating and mitigating factors found by the sentencing court were based on competent credible evidence in the record; and (3) whether the sentence was nevertheless clearly unreasonable so as to shock the judicial conscience. The sentencing provisions of the New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice are based on notions of proportionality and focus on the gravity of thе offense. In Yarbough, the Court provided guidance to trial courts determining whether to impose concurrent or consecutive terms of incarceration, 100 N.J. at 636-37, and identified guidelines for that decision, id. at 643-44. (pp. 15-18)
3. Nothing in the trial court‘s determination in this case suggests that it reached its decision through the application of a presumption, contrary to the Appellate Division‘s suggestion. 453 N.J. Super. at 135-36. The court deemed the impact оf defendant‘s conduct on both R.S. and M.J.G. to be the “worst consequences imaginable,” and observed that the impact of defendant‘s conduct on M.G. to be “extremely serious.” To the trial court, the imposition of concurrent sentences for defendant‘s offenses would not ensure accountability. The trial court considered the fairness of the aggregate sentence, taking into account defendant‘s age. It properly viewed its primary obligation, however, not to ensure that defendant would live long enough to be released on parole, but to craft a sentence warranted by the offenses. The Court finds no deviation from the Code‘s sentencing objectives in the trial court‘s determination, and accordingly finds no error. Nor does the Court find the sentence imposed by the trial court to shock the judicial сonscience. The Court has never imposed on a trial court the obligation to demonstrate that a sentence comports with sentences imposed by other courts in similar cases. The Yarbough guidelines promote proportionality not by a comparative analysis of the sentencing practices of different courts, but by focusing the trial court on the “facts relating to” the defendant‘s crimes. Carey, 168 N.J. at 423; see also Yarbough, 100 N.J. at 643-44. Here, the trial court properly focused on the case before it, and on the devastating impact of defendant‘s crimes. (pp. 24-27)
The judgment of the Appellate Division is reversed, and the sentence imposed by the trial court is reinstated.
CHIEF JUSTICE RABNER and JUSTICES LaVECCHIA, ALBIN, FERNANDEZ-VINA, SOLOMON, and TIMPONE join in JUSTICE PATTERSON‘S opinion.
A-7 September Term 2018
080788
State of New Jersey,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
William T. Liepe,
Defendant-Respondent.
On certification to the Superior Court, Appellate Division, whose opinion is reported at 453 N.J. Super. 126 (App. Div. 2018).
Argued March 12, 2019 -- Decided August 6, 2019
Jennifer E. Kmieciak, Deputy Attorney Generаl, argued the cause for appellant (Gurbir S. Grewal, Attorney General, attorney; Jennifer E. Kmieciak and Sarah E. Elsasser, Deputy Attorney General, of counsel and on the briefs).
Jill R. Cohen argued the cause for respondent (Jill R. Cohen, on the briefs and William T. Liepe, pro se, on the supplemental letter brief).
JUSTICE PATTERSON delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this appeal, we review consecutive terms of incarceration imposed on defendant William T. Liepe. Defendant was convicted of one count of first-
After a jury convicted defendant, the trial court imposed three consecutive terms of imprisonment: a twenty-year term for aggravated manslaughter; a seven-year term for one count of aggravated assault; and a five-year term for another count of aggravated assault. Defendant was sentenced to an aggregate term of thirty-two years’ incarceration, with a parole ineligibility period of twenty-seven years.
Defendant appealed. The Appellate Division affirmed defendant‘s convictions but vacated his sentence and remanded for resentencing. State v. Liepe, 453 N.J. Super. 126, 142 (App. Div. 2018). It held that the trial court abused its discretion in imposing consecutive terms and that defendant‘s
We hold that the trial court properly applied the factors identified in State v. Yarbough, 100 N.J. 627 (1985), for the imposition of consecutive sentences, and that defendant‘s sentence is consistent with the principles stated in State v. Carey, 168 N.J. 413 (2001). We do not share the Appellate Division‘s view that the trial court misapplied those principles, or that defendant‘s sentence shocks the judicial conscience. Accordingly, we reverse the Appellate Division‘s judgment and reinstate the sentence that the trial court imposed.
I.
A.
We derive our summary of the facts from the record of defendant‘s trial and sentencing.
On the morning of April 10, 2011, defendant, then fifty-eight years old, drove his Ford Explorer to a bar in Egg Harbor City, where he drank two beers. He proceeded to a second location, unidentified in the record, and drank between four and eight additional beers.
At approximately 1:00 p.m., defendant drove south on Cologne Avenue in Mays Landing. Ahead of defendant‘s car in the southbound lane was a
M.G. intended to take a left turn from Cologne Avenue into the driveway of the softball field, but he paused before turning because of traffic in the opposite lane. According to a statement that he later gave to a police officer, defendant briefly took his eyes off the road to look at the softball field. Defendant‘s Ford Explorer, traveling at about forty-five miles per hour, collided with the rear of M.G.‘s Honda Accord, sending the Honda into the northbound lane. There, the Honda was struck by a Cadillac Escalade driven by a woman who was taking her mother, R.V., and her two children, ages fifteen and two, on a shopping trip. The second collision sent M.G.‘s car into the parking lot of the softball field. Defendant‘s car traveled off the road and crashed into a tree.
The accident killed R.S., the nine-year-old passenger in M.G.‘s car. The eleven-year-old passenger, M.J.G., was permanently paralyzed from the waist down as a result of the accident, and is confined to a wheelchair. Because of the injuries that he sustained in the accident, M.J.G. will require continuous medical care for the rest of his life.
The driver of the Cadillac and her children were unharmed in the accident; however, the driver‘s mother, R.V., tore her rotator cuff and sustained back and neck injuries that continued to cause pain at the time of her testimony at defendant‘s trial.
B.
1.
Defendant was indicted for first-degree aggravated manslaughter1 and second-degree vehicular homicide, based on the death of R.S. He wаs also
Defendant was tried before a jury. The State presented the testimony of law enforcement officers, medical professionals, witnesses to the April 10, 2011 accident, and an employee at the bar where defendant drank beer on the morning of the accident. It offered opinion testimony by experts in accident reconstruction, pharmacology, and toxicology. The State presented evidence that defendant‘s blood alcohol content (BAC) was .192 when a blood sample was taken from him approximately one hour and fiftеen minutes after the accident. Its expert toxicologist estimated that at the time of the accident, defendant‘s BAC was approximately .207.
The jury convicted defendant of all charges.
2.
After merger of two of defendant‘s offenses, the trial court sentenced defendant for one count of first-degree aggravated manslaughter, two counts of second-degree aggravated assault, and one count of fourth-degree assault by auto.
The trial court considered the aggravating and mitigating factors. It found aggravating factor two,
Noting defendant‘s lack of prior criminal offenses and his age -- he was sixty-two years old at sentencing -- the trial court found mitigating factor seven,
Citing
In this case, there are four victims. In terms of the gravity of harm inflicted, two of them suffered the worst consequences imaginable. [R.S.] lost his life, [M.J.G.] faces life in a wheelchair. Certainly, any sense of justice would require that the offense involving [M.J.G.] should receive a sentence consecutive to the sentence imposed for the death of [R.S.] However, the injuries suffered by [M.G.] are also extremely serious. As indicated, requiring several weeks of a hospital stay, numerous surgeries, he likely will not fully recover. Presently walks with the aid of a cane and limp. In this court‘s view, the sentence imposed for the offense against him also must be consecutive in order to accomplish accountability for the entire gravamen of the results of defendant‘s conduct.
The court accordingly found that defendant should be sentenced to consecutive sentences for his aggravated manslaughter conviction and his two aggravated assault convictions. It decided to impose a concurrent sentence for defendant‘s conviction of fourth-degree assault by auto, in which the victim, R.V., was less seriously injured than M.G. or M.J.G.
The trial court sentenced defendant to three consecutive terms: a term of twenty years’ imprisonment for first-degree aggravated manslaughter; a term of seven years’ imprisonment for the count of second-degree aggravated assault in which the victim was M.J.G.; and a term of five years’ imprisonment for the count of second-degree aggravated assault in which the victim was M.G. Each of the three terms was subject to NERA‘s eighty-five percent period of parole ineligibility. For defendant‘s conviction of fourth-degree assault by auto, the court imposed a term of one year‘s imprisonment to be served concurrently with dеfendant‘s other terms of incarceration.
Accordingly, defendant‘s aggregate sentence was thirty-two years’ incarceration with a parole ineligibility period of twenty-seven years.
3.
Defendant appealed his convictions and sentence. The Appellate Division affirmed defendant‘s convictions, but vacated the trial court‘s sentencing determination and remanded for resentencing. Liepe, 453 N.J. Super. at 135-41.
The Appellate Division observed that by virtue of defendant‘s consecutive sentences, he faced up to thirty-two years in jail and would be ineligible for parole until he reached the age of eighty-nine. Id. at 135. It considered that sentence “shocking to the judicial conscience” and opined that the sentence was “based on the judge‘s misunderstanding of applicable legal principles about when cоnsecutive terms are warranted.” Id. at 133.
The Appellate Division acknowledged that in Carey, the Court stated that when an offender‘s use of a motor vehicle causes harm to multiple victims, the sentencing court should “ordinarily” impose consecutive terms. Id. at 135-36 (quoting Carey, 168 N.J. at 429-30). It urged sentencing courts not to “assume from this statement that there exists a presumption in favor of consecutive terms.” Id. at 136. The Appellate Division “discern[ed] from the [trial] judge‘s decision to impose consecutive terms that he believed Carey required consecutive terms -- a conclusion the Court expressly rejected” in Carey. Ibid.
The Appellate Division stated that defendant‘s sentence “has not been shown to be in accord with any other sentence imposed in similar circumstances” and opined that this disparity impairs “the overarching Yarbough goal that there be uniformity in sentencing.” Id. at 142. In support of that contention, the Appellate Division attached an appendix in which it “synopsized all available post-Carey decisions -- some reported, most unreported -- identifying sentences imposed in multiple-victim vehicular homicide cases.” Id. at 139 n.5, 142-45.
4.
We granted the State‘s petition for certification. 235 N.J. 295 (2018). We denied defendant‘s cross-petition for certification, in which he challenged the Appellate Division‘s decision affirming his conviction. 235 N.J. 211 (2018).
A.
The State urges the Court to reinstate the sentence that the trial court imposed. It argues that in Carey, the Court prescribed a presumption in favor of consecutive sentences where an intoxicated driver causes multiple fatalities or injuries. The State observes that the trial court did not impose the maximum term for any of defendant‘s offenses and properly sought to impose a fair sentence for defendant‘s crimes. The State contends that the Appellate Division unfairly faulted the trial judge for failing to compare defendant‘s sentence to sentences imposed on other defendants and stresses that the cases cited in the Appellate Division‘s appendix involved less serious crimes than those at issue here.
B.
Defendant counters that his sentence shocks the judicial conscience because his conduct was no more serious than that of similarly situated defendants sentenced to more lenient terms. He contends that the facts of this case do not support a conviction for aggravated manslaughter and that the trial court should therefore have imposed no consecutive sentences. Defendant asserts that the trial court misconstrued Yarbough to mandate consecutive sentences in this case and cites the dissent in Yarbough for the proposition that
III.
A.
When it reviews a trial court‘s sentencing determination, an appellate court must not “substitute its judgment for that of the sentencing court.” State v. Fuentes, 217 N.J. 57, 70 (2014); State v. Lawless, 214 N.J. 594, 606 (2013). As the Court observed in State v. Roth, the “error which warrants modification of a sentence must amount to more than a difference of opinion or individual sentencing philosophy. The sentencing objectives are spelled out in the Code. It is deviation from those objectives, in view of the standards and criteria therein set forth, which constitutes error.” 95 N.J. 334, 365 (1984) (quoting People v. Cox, 396 N.E.2d 59, 65 (Ill. App. Ct. 1979)).
Appellate review is thus limited to consideration of:
(1) whether guidelines for sentencing established by the Legislature or by the courts were violated; (2) whether the aggravating and mitigating factors found by the sentencing court were based on competent credible evidence in the record; and (3) whether the sentence was nevertheless “clearly unreasonable so as to shock the judicial conscience.”
[State v. McGuire, 419 N.J. Super. 88, 158 (App. Div. 2011) (quoting Roth, 95 N.J. at 365-66).]
1.
The sentencing provisions of the New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice are “based on notions of proportionality and desert,” Carey, 168 N.J. at 422 (quoting Roth, 95 N.J. at 355), and “focus[] on the gravity of the offense,” ibid. As the Court observed in Yarbough, “[t]he Code requires the sentencing court to look at the individual offender in balancing the defined aggravating and mitigating factors (including the defendant‘s prior record, cooperation, or the likelihood of further criminal conduct) to determine the range of the sentence, a parole disqualifier, or an extended term.” 100 N.J. at 636 (citing
The Court noted in Yarbough, however, that “[t]he Code does not define with comparable precision the standards that shall guide sentencing courts in imposing sentences of imprisonment for more than one offense.” Ibid. “With certain narrow exceptions,” ibid. (citing
This Court “recognized early on that investing unbridled discretion in sentencing judges would inevitably lead to a lack of sentencing uniformity.”
To further the Legislature‘s goals, the Court identified the following guidelines:
- there can be no free crimes in a system for which the punishment shall fit the crime;
- the reasons for imposing either a consecutive or concurrent sentence should be separately stated in the sentencing decision;
- some reasons to be considered by the sentencing court should include facts relating to the crimes, including whether or not:
- the crimes and their objectives were predominantly independent of each other;
- the crimes involved separate acts of violence or threats of violence;
- the crimes were committed at different times or separate places, rather than being committed
so closely in time and place as to indicate a single period of aberrant behavior;
(d) any of the crimes involved multiple victims;
(e) the convictions for which the sentences are to be imposed are numerous;
(4) there should be no double counting of aggravating factors; [and]
(5) successive terms for the same offense should not ordinarily be equal to the punishment for the first offense.
The Court noted in Yarbough that a sentencing court “will normally make an overall evaluation of the punishment for the several offenses involved,” and that the trial court‘s “goal is not an exercise ‘whose object is to find the maximum possible period of incarceration for a convicted defendant.‘” Id. at 646 (quoting People v. Price, 199 Cal. Rptr. 99, 109 (Ct. App. 1984)). It “recognize[d] that even within the general parameters thаt we have announced there are cases so extreme and so extraordinary” that they may warrant
2.
In Carey, the Court reviewed the sentence of a defendant who was convicted of two counts of vehicular homicide, contrary to
This Court reversed the Appellate Division‘s judgment in Carey and reinstated the consecutive terms that the trial court had imposed. Id. at 431. The Court viewed the third Yarbough guideline, “the facts relating to the crimes,” to “provide[] the clearest guidance to sentencing courts faced with a choice between concurrent and consecutive sentences.” Id. at 423. The Court reiterated that the five “facts relating to the crimes” within that guideline “should be applied qualitatively, not quantitatively” and held that, consequently, “a sentencing court may impose consecutive sentences even though a majority of the Yarbough factors support concurrent sentences.” Id. at 427-28. The Court required a judge conducting a Yarbough analysis to “determine whether the Yarbough factor under consideration ‘renders the collective group of offenses distinctively worse than the group of offenses would be were that circumstance not present.‘” Id. at 428 (quoting People v. Leung, 7 Cal. Rptr. 2d 290, 303 (Ct. App. 1992)).
Applying that principle to the case before it, the Court concluded that “[c]rimes involving multiple deaths or victims who have sustained serious bodily injuries represent especially suitable circumstances for the imposition
The Court concluded that the defendant‘s conduct in Carey, which resulted in two deaths and inflicted serious injuries on two other individuals, was much more damaging than conduct that kills or injures only one person, id. at 428-29, and that the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it imposed consecutive sentences, id. at 430-31. The Court recognized that the impact of multiple victims on sentencing “resonates most clearly in cases in which a perpetrator intentionally targets multiple victims” but applied that sentencing principle to “cases in whiсh, as here, the defendant does not intend
State v. Molina, a companion case to Carey, similarly involved an alcohol-related accident in which a car driven by the defendant, whose BAC was estimated to be .085, veered into oncoming traffic and collided with a vehicle in the opposite lane. 168 N.J. 436, 438-40 (2001). The accident killed the other driver and a passenger in that driver‘s vehicle, and injured two other passengers in that vehicle. Id. at 439. The defendant was convicted of two counts of vehicular homicide, elevated to a second-degree crime prior to defendant‘s sentencing, and was sentenced to two consecutive five-year terms of incarceration. Id. at 440-41. The Appellate Division affirmed the defendant‘s convictions and sentence. Id. at 441.
The Court affirmed the Appellate Division‘s judgment. Id. at 442. It determined that although thе trial court had inadequately explained its reasoning, it did not abuse its discretion in premising consecutive sentences entirely on the fact that the defendant had killed multiple victims. Id. at 442-43. The Court reiterated in Molina the core principle of Carey: by virtue of their impact on multiple lives, crimes involving two or more victims are particularly suited for the imposition of consecutive sentences, so that “the multiple-victims factor is entitled to great weight and should ordinarily result
3.
In this appeal, the Appellate Division held that our decisions in Carey and Molina did not establish a presumption in favor of consecutive sentences in cases involving alcohol-related accidents in which multiple victims are killed or seriously injured. See Liepe, 453 N.J. Super. at 135-36. We agree.5
A presumption “is a conclusion that the law directs must be drawn,” or a “mandatory inference that discharges the burden of producing evidence as to a fact (the presumed fact) when another fact (the basic fact) has been established.” Shim v. Rutgers, 191 N.J. 374, 386 (2007). This Court has adopted presumptions in clear and unmistakable language in various settings. See, e.g., In re Keri, 181 N.J. 50, 53, 63 (2004) (“establish[ing] a presumption in favor of spend-down proposals” permitting “self-sufficient adult children
There is no such language in
C.
Nothing in the trial court‘s determination in this case suggests that it reached its decision through the application of a presumption, contrary to the Appellate Division‘s suggestiоn. Liepe, 453 N.J. Super. at 135-36. In the court‘s detailed consideration of the facts before it, and its citation to the language of Carey, there was no mention of a presumption. We detect in the trial court‘s analysis no misunderstanding of the governing principles. See id. at 133.
Consistent with Yarbough and Carey, the trial court acted within its discretion when it found that the injuries inflicted on multiple victims in this case warranted consecutive sentences. As Carey mandated, the trial court carefully considered whether the accident‘s impact on multiple victims “renders the collective group of offenses distinctively worse” than those offenses would be had defendant killed or injured only one individual. See 168 N.J. at 428. The court deemed the impact of defendant‘s conduct on both R.S. and M.J.G. to be the “worst consequences imaginable,” and observed that the impact of defendant‘s conduct on M.G. to be “extremely serious“: a child, R.S., was killed; another child, M.J.G., was permanently paralyzed; and M.G.
The trial court considered the fairness of a thirty-two-year aggregate NERA sentence, taking into account defendant‘s age. See State v. Cuff, ___ N.J. ___ (2019) (slip op. at 37-38) (reminding trial courts to consider the fairness of an aggregate sentence); State v. Abdullah, 184 N.J. 497, 515 (2005) (same). It properly viewed its primary obligation, however, not to ensure that defendant would live long enough to be released on parole, but to craft a sentence warranted by the offenses.
We find no “deviation from [the Code‘s sentencing] objectives, in view of the standards and criteria therein set forth,” in the trial court‘s determination, and accordingly we find no error. See Roth, 95 N.J. at 365 (quoting Cox, 396 N.E.2d at 65). A court, acting within its broad discretion, could have imposed a concurrent term of incarceration for defendant‘s aggravated manslaughter conviction or for one or both of his convictions of aggravated assault, but it was not an abuse of discretion to impose consecutive terms in this case.
Nor do we find the sentence imposed by the trial court to shock the judicial conscience.
This Court, however, has never imposed on a trial court the obligation to demonstrate that a sentence comports with sentences imposed by other courts in similar cases. See N.J.S.A. 2C:44-5; see also Yarbough, 100 N.J. at 643-44.6 The Yarbough guidelines promote proportionality not by a comparative analysis of the sentencing practices of different courts, but by focusing the trial court on the “facts relating to” the defendant‘s crimes. Carey, 168 N.J. at 423; see also Yarbough, 100 N.J. at 643-44. Here, the trial court properly focused on the case before it, and on the devastating impact of defendant‘s crimes.
Defendant‘s consecutive terms dо not violate statutory or judicial guidelines for sentencing, and they do not shock the judicial conscience. There was no abuse of the trial court‘s sentencing discretion in this case.
IV.
The judgment of the Appellate Division is reversed, and the sentence imposed by the trial court is reinstated.
CHIEF JUSTICE RABNER and JUSTICES LaVECCHIA, ALBIN, FERNANDEZ-VINA, SOLOMON, and TIMPONE join in JUSTICE PATTERSON‘S opinion.