Serino v. State
| Decision Date | 19 November 2003 |
| Docket Number | No. 32S01-0305-CR-210.,32S01-0305-CR-210. |
| Citation | 798 N.E.2d 852 |
| Parties | Stephen T. SERINO, Appellant (Plaintiff below), v. STATE of Indiana, Appellees (Defendants below). |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
Paula M. Sauer, Danville, IN, Attorneys for Appellant.
Steve Carter, Attorney General of Indiana, Arthur Thaddeus Perry, Deputy Attorney General, Indianapolis, IN, Attorneys for Appellee.
The State charged appellant Stephen T. Serino with twenty-six counts of child molesting and sexual misconduct involving a minor, and a jury found him guilty on all counts. These charges involved various acts committed with a teenage boy over about three years. The trial court sentenced him to 385 years in jail. We affirm the conviction, but revise the sentence to ninety years.
Serino became friends with S.M.'s mother when the child was just two years old. Their encounters were sporadic; sometimes as much as two years would go without seeing each other. In 1992, the mother wished to have her son tested for attention deficit disorder and she contacted Serino, who worked for the local schools and had training in psychology. After this experience, she and her sons saw more of Serino.
When Serino became divorced in 1996, they began spending regular time with Serino and his adopted son. The first inappropriate conduct occurred during 1997, when S.M. was eleven. Serino began giving him backrubs and by summer progressed to rubbing S.M.'s penis beneath the boy's underwear. Such conduct proceeded over the winter.
Serino and his teenage son moved to Wisconsin during the summer of 1998. They returned in the fall of 1999 when Serino began a new job at the schools in Owen County. S.M.'s mother and her sons moved to a new home in Plainfield about the same time. By January 2000 the two parents began dating, the families were spending most weekends together, and Serino became a father figure to S.M.
The bad news was that Serino also took up once again molesting the boy. Serino and the boy slept in a bed together during overnight visits, and Serino fondled S.M. and sucked his penis, forced S.M. to do the same, and eventually began demanding that S.M. perform anal sex on him. Though S.M.'s mother had no concern about the sleeping arrangements, Serino's aunt objected, and the mother began asking that the sleeping arrangements change, at least when overnights were under her roof.
These activities sometimes occurred under especially distasteful circumstances. Serino and his son commonly went to church on Wednesday evenings, and they sometimes picked up S.M. to go with them. Overnight visits after church turned into sexual abuse of S.M.
The parents' romantic relationship ended in the fall of 2000, and it appeared that S.M. became increasingly sensitive to the mention of Serino's name. About two months later, he told his mother about Serino's molestations. This led to the charges of twenty-six counts, the jury verdict, and the sentence.
On appeal, Serino challenged his conviction and sentence on multiple grounds. The Court of Appeals affirmed. Serino v. State, 784 N.E.2d 591 (Ind.Ct.App.2003). We granted transfer to consider Serino's appeal of his sentence. We summarily affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals concerning Serino's other claims of error. Ind. Appellate Rule 58(A).
American jurisdictions have embraced a variety of methods for imposing criminal sentences, and most states and the federal government have revised their practices over time.
Indeterminate sentencing arrangements, for example, provide for sentences stated as a range of years, such as "ten to twenty years." Black's Law Dictionary 1367 (7th ed. 1999). Indiana used this system until 1977, so that, for example, the punishment for child molesting used to be either one to five years for molesting children between twelve and sixteen years old, or two to twenty-one years for molesting children under twelve years of age. Ind.Code Ann. § 35-1-54-4 (Michie 1975).1
Under indeterminate sentencing systems, the actual number of years of incarceration was decided by officials of the executive branch, typically based on the behavior of the prisoner. Under Indiana's old system, it was the task of the parole board to determine when an offender was ready for release. See generally Hon. Louis B. Meyer, North Carolina's Fair Sentencing Act: An Ineffective Scarecrow, 28 Wake Forest L.Rev. 519, 557 n. 249 (1993).
A leading alternative to such arrangements has been determinate sentencing, under which the court imposes a penalty stated as a specific number of years. The current version of this system employed in Indiana provides for a "standard" sentence, from which the trial judge may add or subtract based on findings of aggravating or mitigating circumstances. Thus, the standard sentence for the crime of child molesting as a class A felony is thirty years, to which the trial judge may add as much as twenty or subtract as much as ten years. Ind.Code Ann. § 35-50-2-4 (West 1998). One could characterize this system as one in which judicial discretion is guided within a range. It thus produces widely varying sentences for similar crimes, especially when the prosecutor elects to file multiple charges arising out of the same basic events.
Of course, a respectable legal system attempts to impose similar sentences on perpetrators committing the same acts who have the same backgrounds. While it is widely recognized that this is extremely difficult to achieve in any court system that makes thousands of such decisions annually, serious efforts to achieve it continue. In the federal system, judges are bound by a scheme of guidelines in which points are assigned for various factors relevant to sentencing. The 2003 sentencing guidelines, prepared by the Office of Special Counsel of the United States Sentencing Commission, are promulgated pursuant to the PROTECT Act, Pub.L. 108-21.
Several states have undertaken similar exercises. Georgia adopted a comparable but non-binding guideline to "reserve the hardest bed for the hardest criminal." Walter C. Jones, Panel recommends sentencing guidelines, The Augusta Chronicle, December 2, 1999. Likewise, Oregon adopted an indeterminate structure and added a parole matrix. It reasoned, "[a] corrections system that overruns its resources can increase the risk to life and property within the system and to the public." See Oregon Sentencing Guidelines, (2003) available at http:// www.ocjc. state.or.us/ SG.htm. Arizona adopted the indeterminate sentencing structure, but later opted to revise the scheme to a presumptive term. Arizona v. Wagner, 194 Ariz. 1, 976 P.2d 250, 255 (Ct.App.1998) (citing Rudolph J. Gerber, Criminal Law of Arizona, ch. 7, at 702-08 (2nd ed. 1993)).2
Several states have abandoned indeterminate sentencing and instead adopted a "Truth-in-Sentencing" system to reduce the likelihood of confusion and uncertainty regarding a particular sentence. In 1995, Ohio offered greater protection for victims of crime, broadened discretion for trial judges in sentencing, limited appellate review of sentencing, and abolished the traditional "good time" concept. See Ohio Bar Association (2003), available at http://www.ohiobar. org/. The Congress has fostered this movement by adding provisions in federal grant programs that promote state adoption of "Truth-in-Sentencing" laws. See, e.g., 42 U.S.C. § 13704 (2002) (); see also 42 U.S.C. § 13703 (2002) ().
As for serious grid systems, Massachusetts used one scheme whereby the grid cell represented the governing offense and the classification of the criminal history to determine an appropriate sentence for the offender. See http:// www.state.ma.us/ courts/ formsandguidelines/ index.html. Michigan also followed a system to reduce unwarranted disparities in sentencing decisions. See People v. Hegwood, 465 Mich. 432, 636 N.W.2d 127, 131 (2001)
. Likewise, Minnesota adopted similar guidelines to promote proportionality and uniformity in sentencing. See Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission, (2003), available at http:// www.msgc.state.mn.us/ goals_of_the_guidelines. htm (explains goals of sentencing guidelines). The American Law Institute has a major project under way to develop a model for sentencing commissions and guidelines. A.L.I., Model Penal Code: Sentencing, Preliminary Drafts No. 2, June 3, 2003.
The federal system is the one most well known, though complaints about it abound. See Stephen J. Schulhofer, Assessing the Federal Sentencing Process: The Problem Is Uniformity, Not Disparity, 29 Am. Crim. L.Rev. 833, 861-63 (1992) (); see also Paul J. Hofer, The Reason Behind the Rules: Finding and Using the Philosophy of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 40 Am.Crim. L.Rev. 19, 20 (2003) ().
The debate about the best way to devise effective sentences is current and local. The Indiana General Assembly has recently created a Sentencing Policy Study Committee, part of whose mission will be to assure that sentencing laws protect the public and promote fairness and uniformity in sentencing. See H.B. 1145, 113th Gen. Assem., 1st Reg. Sess. (Ind.2003), P.L. 140.
The statutory process by which trial judges fashion discrete sentences has been described above.
Appellate review of such sentences proceeds on a basis somewhat different from the methods that apply to other issues that typically are the subject of a criminal appeal. The drafters of the present judicial article of the Indiana Constitution provided in Article 7, section 4: "The Supreme Court shall have, in all appeals of criminal cases, the power to review all...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Wright v. State
...impose similar sentences on perpetrators committing the same acts who have similar background,’ " id. at 22 (quoting Serino v. State , 798 N.E.2d 852, 856 (Ind. 2003) ), Wright offers no precedent for this Court to make such a determination. And, even if he had, Wright did not receive the m......
-
Pruitt v. State
...imposed on federal courts at roughly the same time in our nation's history by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines"); Serino v. State, 798 N.E.2d 852, 856 (Ind.2003). The purpose of the express authority to "review and revise" sentences was to "ensure that justice is done in [Indiana] courts a......
-
Gutermuth v. State
...while reserving for the appellate court the chance to review the matter in a climate more distant from local clamor." Serino v. State, 798 N.E.2d 852, 856-57 (Ind.2003). The court has also stated that when a perpetrator commits the same offense against multiple victims, "enhanced and consec......
-
Wadle v. State
...on the legislative proliferation of overlapping criminal offenses and on the prosecutor's multi-count indictment.33 See Serino v. State , 798 N.E.2d 852, 857 (Ind. 2003) (recognizing, as one factor driving the potential need to revise a cumulative sentence, the prosecutor's decision "to cha......