Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

49 N.J. 247

229 A.2d 636

State v. De Stasio

Supreme Court of New Jersey

Decided May 1, 1967

Supreme Court of New Jersey · decided 1967-05-01

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“* * * No defendant, even in gambling cases, is just the same as every other defendant. He is an individual human being with his own background and future and is entitled to be dealt with as such. His sentence, though it may appropriately be severe, should nonetheless be a just one imposed by the trial judge, as in all other cases under the prevailing system, after he has carefully considered and duly weighed all of the circumstances and all of the societal and individual interests involved. * * *.”

quoted by 2 later decisions, including State v. Velazquez, 104 N.J. Super. 578 - State v. Velazquez

Relies on Graham & the Title Guaranty & Surety Co. v. United States · Frank Graham v. United States of America · Agrashell, Inc. v. Composition Materials Co.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1967-05-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 59 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2007 · most notably Kugler v. Helfant (1975), State v. Churchdale Leasing, Inc. (1989)

9 federal appellate · 47 state decisions

32019671970198019902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Jacobs, J.

¶1(concurring in result) :

¶2I find neither prejudicial trial error nor constitutional infirmity in the sentencing procedure and therefore join my colleagues in affirming. But I do not share their belief that the administrative directive represents a wise exercise of policy and is compatible with modern views of penology and sound judicial administration. As applied here, it withdraws the sentencing power from the judge who tried the case and transfers it, not to a specialist “sentencing tribunal” (45 Neb. L. Rev., at 498), but to another judge who had nothing at all to do with the trial and who had no specialized training or skill in sentencing. It suggests .general distrust which may breed general incompetence (Holmes, J., in Graham v. United States, 231 U. S. 474, 480, 34 S. Ct. 148, 58 L. Ed. 319, 324 (1913)), and may sap much needed strength and vitality in our trial bench as a whole. And it unfortunately shackles the power of the conscientious trial judge to do full and complete justice as he finds it in the light of all of the trial testimony before him, the vital needs for the public welfare and the protection of society, *262and the individual considerations applicable to the particular defendant.

¶3In the law review article cited in the Court’s opinion, Judge Levin discussed steps which have been taken elsewhere and might well be taken here towards eliminating unwarranted disparities in sentencing. None of those steps involved any abandonment of individualization of sentence or any disregard of individual justice. In Judge Levin’s own language, the just sentence “will reflect the divergent backgrounds and present circumstances of each individual offender, his present attitudes, and the nature of the offending act itself.” 45 Neb. L. Rev., at p. 499. No defendant, even in gambling cases, is just the same as every other defendant. He is an individual human being with his own background and future and is entitled to be dealt with as such. His sentence, though it may appropriately be severe, should nonetheless be a just one imposed by the trial judge, as in all other cases under the prevailing system, after he has carefully considered and duly weighed all of the circumstances and all of the societal and individual interests involved. See Goodman, “In Defense of Federal Judicial Sentencing,” 46 Calif. L. Rev. 497 (1958); Papers Delivered at the Institute on Sentencing for United States District Judges, 35 F. R. D. 381 (1964); First Philadelphia Judicial Sentencing Institute, 40 F. R. D. 399 (1965); cf. Hart, “The Aims of the Criminal Law,” 23 Law & Contemp. Prob. 401 (1958); Tappan, “Sentencing Under The Model Penal Code,” 23 Law & Contemp. Prob. 528 (1958); see also Model Penal Code Art. 7 (Proposed Official Draft, 1962) ; National Council on Crime and Delinquency, Model Sentencing Act Arts. I-III and Comments (1963).

¶4Justices Schettino and Haneman agree with the views expressed in this concurrence.

¶5For affirmance—Ohief Justice Weintraub and Justices Jacobs, Francis, Proctor, Hall, Schettino and Haneman—7.

¶6For reversal—None.

/49/nj/247 · .json · Public domain