The defendant, who had been convicted of murder and two counts of kidnap-
ping in the first degree, appealed to this court from the judgment of the
trial court denying his motion to correct an illegal sentence. The judge
who presided over the defendant’s probable cause hearing offered the
defendant a plea deal at a pretrial conference, proposing a thirty year
term of imprisonment if the defendant agreed to plead guilty to murder.
The defendant rejected the deal and it was withdrawn. A jury found the
defendant guilty of all charges and, at his sentencing hearing, the judge
who had presided over the trial imposed a sentence of sixty years of
imprisonment on the murder count and eighteen years on each of the
kidnapping counts, to run consecutively, for a total effective sentence
of ninety-six years of imprisonment. The defendant filed an application
with the sentence review division of the Superior Court, requesting a
reduction of his sentence, which he claimed was excessive. His request
was denied and the sentence was upheld. The defendant then filed a
motion to correct an illegal sentence, claiming that, by imposing a sen-
tence substantially longer than that which was proposed pretrial, the
sentencing judge was punishing the defendant for rejecting the plea
deal and, in doing so, violated the defendant’s constitutional right to
due process. Following a hearing, the trial court denied the defendant’s
motion and the defendant appealed to this court. Held that the trial court
properly denied the defendant’s motion to correct an illegal sentence
because the record did not contain any indication of vindictiveness on
behalf of the sentencing judge: the fact that the length of the sentence
imposed greatly exceeded the length of the sentence proposed prior to
trial did not give rise to an inference of vindictiveness when the record
was considered as a whole, including the defendant’s background, his
long and violent criminal history, and evidence that the defendant posed
such a grave danger to the community that he should spend the remain-
der of his life in prison; moreover, there were legitimate bases for
the disparity between the sentence proposed pretrial and the sentence
imposed posttrial, including that the trial provided the sentencing judge
with the opportunity to gain a greater appreciation of the evidence and
of the effect of the defendant’s actions on his victims and their families,
that a guilty plea would have shown evidence of the defendant’s willing-
ness to accept responsibility for his crimes, which is a mitigating factor
for sentencing, whereas his refusal to accept responsibility even after
his trial demonstrated a lack of remorse and dim prospects for rehabilita-
tion, and that the sentences were considered by two different judges,
with different sentencing philosophies and priorities, at different stages
of the case; furthermore, the sentencing judge was not required to
expressly disavow a vindictive or retaliatory motive for the sentencing
because the facts of the case did not give rise to a presumption of
vindictiveness.
Argued October 6, 2020—officially released June 22, 2021 Procedural History