No. 29960 - State
of West Virginia v. Ronald L. Adams Starcher, Justice, concurring:
According to the briefs, the
defendant in this case was released from prison on parole in August of 1999.
Two months later he was committing the robberies that led to the ninety-year
prison sentence that is at issue in the instant case. This defendant is apparently
a “poster child” for how our correctional system is failing us. The defendant's official “record”
begins with a conviction of grand larceny in 1972, apparently followed by a
substantial stretch in prison. The prosecution says the defendant has spent
his entire adult life at “crime,” and he will likely continue in that
path. The circuit judge saw the case the same way, and imposed what is probably
a life sentence for this forty-five-year-old defendant. I concur in the Court's judgment,
because I think there is a fair possibility that as a circuit judge, I would
have read this defendant as a truly dangerous person who needs to be restrained
for a very long time to protect the public. Even so, I would have probably imposed
about a twenty-five-year sentence, on the grounds that in ten or twelve years
there is a fair chance this defendant's tendency to crime and violence would
have abated enough
to let the parole board take a look at him. Ninety years seems too long
for a crime with no weapon. But the judge looked hard at this defendant and
made a judgment that in this case I do not choose to second-guess.
There is a single point I wish
to make in this case.