Copeland v. Warden

• Decision Date: 16 March 1993
• Docket Number: No. 14381,14381
• Citation: 621 A.2d 1311,225 Conn. 46
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: David COPELAND v. WARDEN, State Prison.

Page 1311

621 A.2d 1311

225 Conn. 46

David COPELAND v. WARDEN, State Prison.

No. 14381.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued Dec. 9, 1992.

Decided March 16, 1993.

David J. Wenc, Windsor Locks, for appellant (petitioner).

James M. Ralls, Asst. State's Atty., for appellee (respondent).

Before CALLAHAN, BORDEN, BERDON, KATZ and MENT, JJ.

BORDEN, Associate Justice.

The issue in this appeal is whether, after a defendant has been found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect for an earlier offense and has been committed for psychiatric treatment, the trial court has the authority to stay the execution of a criminal sentence, imposed for a subsequent offense, until the defendant's psychiatric commitment has ended. The petitioner, David Copeland, appeals, upon a grant of certification, ¹ from the Appellate Court's affirmance of the judgment of the trial court denying his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. ² We affirm.

The Appellate Court set forth the relevant facts. "On June 21, 1977, the petitioner was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect of the crimes of attempted murder, reckless endangerment and criminal mischief. He was thereafter committed to the Connecticut Valley Hospital, a state institution, for twenty years. On June 5, 1981, he was charged with sexually assaulting a female worker at the hospital. After a trial to the court, Spallone, J., the petitioner was found guilty of first degree sexual assault and second degree kidnapping. ³ He was sentenced on December 6, 1982, to a total effective prison term of fifteen to thirty years to run consecutively to his psychiatric commitment. The petitioner began serving his criminal sentence on January 18, 1985, when he was released from the psychiatric institution. In 1986, the petitioner sought habeas corpus relief. After the petitioner filed an amended petition in August, 1988, the case was tried, on March 13, 1990, to the court, Potter, J., which denied the writ on April 18, 1990." Copeland v. Warden, 26 Conn.App. 10, 11-12, 596 A.2d 477 (1991). That court, in a two to one decision, affirmed the judgment of the trial court.

The petitioner claims that the habeas court improperly concluded that it was within the trial court's inherent sentencing powers to impose a criminal sentence consecutive to his psychiatric commitment. We disagree.

We first note that the petitioner in this case has received only one criminal sentence, and thus the sentence for the sexual assault and kidnapping is not consecutive to another criminal sentence. There is a fundamental distinction between an incarceration pursuant to a criminal sentence and a commitment following an insanity acquittal. It is, in part, this distinction that compels us to treat this case as a "stay" case rather than as a "consecutive sentence" case. See Payne v. Fairfield Hills Hospital, 215 Conn. 675, 683-84, 578 A.2d 1025 (1990). "Consecutive sentence" ordinarily refers to one criminal sentence that commences consecutive to another criminal sentence. Therefore, although framed as a consecutive sentencing issue by the parties and by this court in our grant of certification to appeal, upon closer examination this case is better described as raising the related question of whether a trial court has the authority to stay the execution of a criminal sentence until a defendant's psychiatric commitment has concluded.

The common law has long recognized a court's ability to stay the execution of a criminal sentence in a variety of contexts. For example, in Talley v. Beavers, 141 Ga. 110, 80 S.E. 556 (1913), the defendant was found to have a mental disease or defect that arose following his conviction but before the sentence on the conviction was executed. The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's stay of the execution of the sentence until his psychiatric commitment ended. Id.; see Ex parte State, 150 Ala. 489, 43 So. 490 (1907) (stay of execution of sentence proper pending inquiry into defendant's sanity); Ex parte Hinson, 156 N.C. 250, 72 S.E. 310 (1911) (stay of execution of sentence while defendant put affairs in order); State v. Abbott, 87 S.C. 466, 70 S.E. 6 (1911) (stay of execution of sentence proper upon showing of compelling reasons or serious hardship); Spencer v. State, 125 Tenn. 64, 140 S.W. 597 (1911) (court has power to stay execution of sentence in order to achieve proper enforcement of the sentence or to safeguard the rights in the particular controversy).

Accordingly, the "power to stay the execution of a sentence, in whole or in part, in a criminal case, is inherent in every court having final jurisdiction in such cases, unless otherwise provided by statute." Weber v. State, 58 Ohio St. 616, 51 N.E. 116 (1898); see State v. Taylor, 153 Conn. 72, 80, 214 A.2d 362 (1965), cert. denied, 384 U.S. 921, 86 S.Ct. 1372, 16 L.Ed.2d 442 (1966). Absent an abuse of discretion or a limiting statute, therefore, a trial court has the ability to stay the execution of a criminal sentence in order to fulfill its duty to implement the penalties dictated by the legislature for criminal offenses and to promote the ends of justice.

The legislature, by enacting our penal code, has deemed it appropriate to criminalize the behavior of which the petitioner in this case was found guilty, and to attach appropriate penalties. In order to effectuate the goals of the legislature, therefore, the trial court properly may stay the execution of the criminal sentence until the petitioner's psychiatric commitment has ended. ⁴

This conclusion is supported by drawing an analogy to the related issue of consecutive sentencing. A trial court may conclude, in a case in which a defendant had previously been convicted for another offense, that a concurrent sentence would not adequately meet the sentencing goals of retribution or deterrence because such a sentence would allow the defendant to avoid additional incarceration for the subsequent offense. Similarly, as in this case, a trial court may reasonably conclude that a criminal defendant should not be able to avoid punishment merely because he engaged in the criminal conduct during his psychiatric commitment. Indeed, the authority to stay the execution of the sentence is further justified in the present context because, unlike a defendant in a case involving consecutive sentences, the petitioner here has not been subject to any term of penal incarceration.

In addition to satisfying the state's interest in adequately punishing criminal behavior, the trial court's stay of the execution of the sentence benefits the petitioner as well. The stay allows the petitioner to continue to receive psychiatric care until he has obtained a sufficient state of mental health. Only then is he required to serve the criminal sentence imposed because of his criminal conduct. Cf. Talley v. Beavers, supra; State v. Braggs, 9 Ohio Misc. 32, 221 N.E.2d 493 (Ohio Juv.1966); Mitts v. State, 345 P.2d 913 (Okla.App.1959), cert. denied, 363 U.S. 846, 80 S.Ct. 1620, 4 L.Ed.2d 1730 (1960).

The only jurisdiction that has addressed the particular issue presented has reached a similar conclusion. In State v. Flemming, 409 A.2d 220, 225-26 (Me.1979), the defendant was committed to a psychiatric institution following a verdict of not guilty of murder by reason of insanity. During his commitment, the defendant escaped, in violation of Maine's penal code. After having been found guilty on the escape charge, the defendant was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of five years with execution of the sentence stayed until his discharge from the psychiatric institution. Id. at 222. On appeal, the Maine Supreme Court concluded that it was within the trial court's inherent sentencing powers to stay the execution of the sentence until the defendant was discharged from the institution: "Punishment for escape should not be ignored simply because a person happens to be in a mental institution. In enacting the [criminal code,] the Legislature determined that criminal penalties should flow from an escape of this nature. Therefore, we deem it entirely rational that a presiding justice, faced with the dilemma created when an inmate escapes from a mental institution, should have the authority to suspend the imposition of criminal penalties until such time as the mental disease or defect has been treated." Id., at 225-26. The same reasoning applies here.

The petitioner, adopting the position of the dissenting opinion in the Appellate Court, argues that even if the trial court historically had the power to impose a criminal sentence to begin at the conclusion of his psychiatric commitment, the trial court's inherent sentencing powers have been circumscribed by General Statutes § 53a-37. ⁵ See Copeland v. Warden, 26 Conn.App. 10, 14, 596 A.2d 477 (1991) (Lavery, J., dissenting). Section 53a-37 provides that "when a person who is subject to any undischarged term of imprisonment imposed at a previous time by a court of this state is sentenced to an additional term of imprisonment, the sentence or sentences imposed by the court shall run either concurrently or consecutively with respect to each other and to the undischarged term or terms in such manner as the court directs at the time of sentence." We are not persuaded.

This case, as noted above, does not involve a question of consecutive sentencing. The statute is limited by its plain language to those instances in which a court imposes an additional criminal sentence on a defendant already serving a criminal sentence previously imposed by a Connecticut court. The statute does not address the court's authority to stay the execution of a sentence for a subsequent offense until the completion of a defendant's psychiatric commitment following a verdict of not guilty in an earlier case.

Moreover, "[i]t is ... a rule of statutory construction that statutes in derogation of the common law are to be strictly construed.... No statute is to be...