Punctilious Judge costs Lancaster County Attorney's Office

State v. Gass, 269 Neb. 834 Filed May 20, 2005. No. S-04-1105.

Chronically punctilious Judge Paul Merritt cost the Lancaster County Attorney's Office a life sentence last week. The Nebraska Supreme Court nixed his belated attempt to alter his sentencing Kenny Gass a indeterminate life sentence with an automatic 20 year minimum to a straight life sentence. Kenny Gass plead no contest to 2nd degree murder in what appeared to be a truck stop robbery. 2nd degree murder is a Class IB felony.When a maximum limit of life is imposed by the court for a Class IB felony, the minimum limit may be any term of years not less than the statutory mandatory minimum 83-1,105.01 State v. Schnabel, 260 Neb. 618, 618 N.W.2d 699 (2000), the case involving the murder of a popular Saunders County volleyball coach and arson to conceal the crime, held when a flat sentence of “life imprisonment” is imposed and no minimum sentence is stated, by operation of law, the minimum sentence is the minimum imposed by law under the statute. Only limited circumstances permit the judge to alter his sentence "nunc pro tunc:" only when it is clear that the defendant has not yet left the courtroom; it is obvious that the judge, in correcting his or her language, the judge did not change in any manner the sentence originally intended; and no written notation of the inadvertently mispronounced sentence was made in the records of the court. State v. Foster, 239 Neb. 598, 476 N.W.2d 923 (1991). Schnabel, supra 260 Neb. at 623, 618 N.W.2d at 703. No doubt Judge Merritt will return to his imperious style and make up for this costly error by dismissing more uncontested divorces on technicalities.