[581] LINDE, J.
Defendant was charged in two counts of an information with burglary in the first degree, ORS 164.205, 164.225, and with attempted theft in the second degree, ORS 164.015, 164.045. Count I charged that defendant entered a dwelling, described as the Balfour residence, with the intent to commit a crime therein. Count II charged that "as part of the same act and transaction set out in Count I,” defendant attempted to commit theft of less than $200 in money from Helen Balfour. The evidence showed that defendant entered the Balfour residence without permission, took $10 from Mrs. Balfour’s purse, and returned the money to Mrs. Balfour when he learned that she was calling the police.
A jury found defendant guilty on both counts. The trial court entered a single order, entitled ORDER ON SENTENCE, the operative paragraphs of which read as follows:
The defendant, GASTON CLOUTIER, having heretofore been duly convicted of the crime of "COUNT I: BURGLARY IN THE FIRST DEGREE and COUNT II: ATTEMPTED THEFT IN THE SECOND DEGREE,” upon the verdict of a jury on August 18, 1977, and this being the time set for the imposition of sentence; the defendant upon being asked if he had anything to say why sentence should not now be imposed, answered, showing no good or sufficient cause;
It is hereby CONSIDERED, ORDERED and ADJUDGED that GASTON CLOUTIER is GUILTY of the crime of "COUNT I: BURGLARY IN THE FIRST DEGREE and COUNT II: ATTEMPTED THEFT IN THE SECOND DEGREE,” and it is the judgment of the Comb that he be sentenced to the OREGON STATE CORRECTIONS DIVISION for a period of FOUR (4) YEARS; . . .
On appeal, defendant argued that the court erred in convicting and sentencing defendant for both crimes arising out of the same criminal conduct and charged [582] in the same indictment, relying on this court’s decision in State v. Woolard, 259 Or 232, 484 P2d 314, 485 P2d 1194 (1971), which held that a burglary and subsequent larceny could lead only to one conviction and sentence. The state, believing defendant’s Woolard claim to be well taken, confessed error in the Court of Appeals. That court nevertheless proceeded to examine the claim in the light of State v. Gilbert, 281 Or 101, 574 P2d 313 (1978), which was decided after the state’s confession of error. Gilbert held that when a defendant was accused of withholding the stolen property of six persons at the same time and place, a verdict on the trial of the first indictment only did not bar subsequent prosecutions for the others. The Court of Appeals concluded that this court’s analysis in Gilbert of ORS 131.505, which was enacted in 1973, "is so inconsistent with Woolard that Woolard must be deemed to have been overruled by ORS 131.505.” 33 Or App at 123. The court therefore affirmed the conviction and sentence. We allowed review to reexamine the status of convictions on multiple charges arising from a single act, transaction, or episode after the 1973 statute. 1
I
Courts and commentators have long recognized the problem of attaching "multiple consequences” to a "single criminal act” or of dealing with the "multiple criminal offender” to be one of the most vexing in [583] criminal law. See, e.g., Horack, The Multiple Consequences of a Single Criminal Act, 21 Minn L Rev 805 (1937); Remington and Joseph, Charging, Convicting, and Sentencing the Multiple Criminal Offender, 1961 Wis L Rev 528 (1961). It is necessary to recall the complexity of the problem so as to avoid reducing its solution to a simple but illusory formula. The difficulty reaches deep into the vocabulary of criminal law itself, for an analysis phrased in such apparent entities as a "crime” or an "act” risks being merely circular. Described from a layman’s perspective, without regard to its legal consequences, a defendant’s culpable behavior may appear as one continuous course of conduct, planned and executed through preparatory steps, false starts, repeated attempts and failures, to eventual completion; another’s may appear as distinct events marked by breaks in the continuity of time and place, or by different victims, or by reflecting new choices to act or to refrain on the part of the defendant. The "singleness” of the defendant’s act has been described in terms ranging from a single "muscular contraction,”2 through a single "transaction” or "episode,”3 to "unitary criminal conduct.”4 On the other hand, criminal codes define offenses so that a limited number of elements suffice to constitute one "crime”; moreover, statutes often address particular objectives by enacting special prohibitions that overlap more general offenses. As a result, many incidents that would appear as a single "act” or "crime” from a nonlegal perspective are also violations of several distinct criminal laws.
However, the administration of criminal law does not consist of the abstract analysis of a factual occurrence. It involves a series of decisions by different persons and institutions charged with different [584] functions. Thus Remington and Joseph, identified five "basic issues” that often arise in dealing with a single offender:
(1) For how many offenses should a suspect be prosecuted?
(2) Of these offenses charged, which should be submitted to the jury for its consideration?
(3) Where more than one offense is submitted to the jury, for how many offenses may the jury properly convict the defendant?
(4) Where there is conviction for more than one offense, for how many offenses is it proper to sentence the defendant?
(5) Under what circumstances may an accused be subjected to separate, successive prosecutions instead of adjudicating his liability in a single proceeding?
Remington and Joseph, supra, at 529.
The proper answers to these questions and others that could be added are of obvious importance in public policy and in the practical administration of criminal justice; yet traditionally only a few have been addressed by express legislative directives beyond the definitions of the different offenses themselves. This court, like others, has sometimes answered questions like the above by stating a conclusion whether the defendant’s conduct constituted one or more than one offense. See, e.g., State v. McCormack, 8 Or 236 (1880) (larceny of a horse and tack at the same time and place held "but one crime” for purposes of double jeopardy); State v. Clark, 46 Or 140, 80 P 101 (1905) (theft of property of several persons at one time and place held but one offense for purposes of charge in a single indictment); State v. Gratz, 254 Or 474, 461 P2d 829 (1969) (armed robbery of two persons at the same time and place held to constitute two offenses for purposes of indictment). But the mere fact that a defendant’s acts have violated more than one criminal statute or have violated one statute more than once does not in itself provide the answer to each of the operational issues identified [585] above. It does not follow, merely because a defendant can be charged with more than one violation of a statute, that the legislature also meant each violation to be the basis for a separate conviction or sentence, or that an objecting defendant may be tried for each in a separate proceeding. Thus this court in recent cases has treated these as posing separate issues of the governing policies beyond the determination whether one or several offenses were involved. See, e.g., State v. Welch, 264 Or 388, 505 P2d 910 (1973) (simultaneous bank deposit of two false checks held subject to only one sentence); State v. Boyd, 271 Or 558, 533 P2d 795 (1975) (simultaneous illegal possession of drugs and of a stolen television set held "single criminal episode” for purposes of requiring a single prosecution, ORS 131.515(2)).
In short, we have recognized that the answers to the foregoing operational issues must be sought, first, in such legislative directives as do exist; second, in the intentions and policies that may plausibly be attributed to the legislature in the light of legislative history, of the overall statutory framework, and of constitutional principles, see State v. Boyd, supra, at 565-566, n. 4; and finally in the state and federal double jeopardy clauses and other applicable constitutional limitations. See, e.g., Simpson v. United States, 435 US 6, 11 and n. 5, 98 S Ct 909, 55 L Ed 2d 70 (1978); Brown v. Ohio, 432 US 161, 165-166, 97 S Ct 2221, 53 L Ed 2d 187, 194 (1977).
II
In State v. Woolard, supra, as in the present case, defendant was charged with one count of burglary by breaking and entering a dwelling with the intent to steal and a second count of stealing property in the dwelling. She was convicted on both counts and sentenced to concurrent six-year terms in the penitentiary. This court reversed, but the several opinions in the case showed the different possible approaches to the problem.
[586] All members of the court agreed that a defendant could properly be charged separately 'with the burglary and the theft or other substantive offense committed after the entry. Although such charges arising out of a single transaction or episode are joined in one prosecution, see State v. Boyd, supra, State v. Brown, 262 Or 442, 497 P2d 1191 (1972), they do not charge the "same crime” twice. Nor did the decision in Woolard suggest that both charges could not be submitted to the jury, or that the jury should be instructed that they could return a verdict of guilty on no more than one of the charges. It is, of course, possible that a jury may find that a defendant entered with the intent to commit a crime but did not steal, or that he stole but did not enter illegally and with criminal intent, or that he did both. Further, the court did not treat the problem as one of "merger.” That term, which can easily become a name for a conclusion rather than a reason, is best reserved for the narrow situation when the completion of one offense necessarily includes commission of acts sufficient to constitute violation of another statute. See State v. Roach, 271 Or 764, n. 1, 534 P2d 508 (1975).5 This is not the case with burglary and theft.
From this legal character of burglary and theft as "entirely separate and distinct criminal acts involving different elements,” two members of the court concluded, in dissent, that Woolard could properly be convicted and sentenced for both offenses. 259 Or at 241. The majority, however, rejected this test for multiple convictions and sentences as "purely mechanical” and not conclusive on the question whether the legislature intended violation of two or more statutes [587] in the same course of conduct to lead to cumulative punishment. Id. at 235. Noting that the statutory maximum sentence for burglary was more than twice that for larceny in a dwelling, the majority concluded that the severe punishment allowed for burglary was meant to incorporate the punishment for the succeeding larceny, if that was the crime intended in the unlawful entry. But the court also recognized the difficulties posed in two situations: (1) when the burglar intending one crime commits a different crime after entry, and (2) when the crime intended and committed carries a heavier penalty than burglary. The court made it clear that its holding did not address the first of these situations. As to the second, two concurring members of the court, in dicta, expressed the view that when a burglar intends and carries out a crime more serious than the burglary, "the penalties provided for the more serious crimes are adequate to provide the basis for sentencing where the crime is aggravated by an unlawful intrusion.” Id. at 240.
As the court recognized in State v. Welch, supra, the attribution of the Woolard holding to legislative intentions was necessarily speculative.6 Welch reached the same conclusion against multiple punishment with respect to a defendant’s conviction on each of two counts of publishing false checks in making a single bank deposit. Although the opinion purported to "treat” the transaction as "encompassing only one offense,” the court explained this result by its belief that, if the legislature had considered the problem, "we suspect it would have chosen not to impose multiple punishments.” The opinion quoted with "sympathy” the United States Supreme Court’s statement in Bell v. United States, 349 US 81, 75 S Ct 620, [588] 99 L Ed 905 (1955), that "[w]hen Congress leaves to the Judiciary the task of imputing to Congress an undeclared will, the ambiguity should be resolved in favor of lenity. ... It may fairly be said to be a presupposition of our law to resolve doubts in the enforcement of a penal code against the imposition of a harsher punishment.” 349 US at 83, quoted in 264 Or at 393.
State v. Woolard was decided under the law in effect before the revisions of the criminal code and criminal procedure code in 1971 and 1973. Accordingly, if our answers to the several operational issues of multiple prosecutions and penalties are to reflect an effort to carry out legislative policies, these enactments must be scrutinized for evidence of the relevant policies.
Several of the new sections came before this court in State v. Gilbert, supra. The revision of the substantive crimes consolidated the several formerly separate forms of theft in one statute, ORS 164.015. Although the various forms of theft are further defined in separate sections, ORS 164.065-164.095, the legislature provided that theft "constitutes a single offense,” and need not be charged by alleging the particular manner of its commission. ORS 164.025. Gilbert had been tried and acquitted on a charge of theft by withholding one of six stolen firearms found in his home, and he resisted further trial on indictments charging theft by withholding firearms belonging to different persons on the ground of former jeopardy. This claim required the court to interpret the standards for single or multiple prosecutions enacted in 1973, ORS 131.505-131.525. We concluded that the express terms of ORS 131.505(3), which provides that even in one episode of criminal conduct "there are as many offenses as there are victims,” precluded treating the simultaneous withholding of the property of several owners as "the same offense” for purposes of [589] ORS 131.515(1).7 Thus, if Gilbert shows anjdhing relevant to the problem in the present case, it is that a statutory statement that conduct "constitutes a single offense” as in ORS 164.025, or "constitutes a separate and distinct offense,” as in ORS 131.505(2),8 or "as many offenses as there are victims,” ORS 131.505(3), must be related to the functional context for which the particular statute is enacted.
The Court of Appeals in the present case recognized that this is so, and that Gilbert dealt only with a claim of former jeopardy. Indeed, our opinion in Gilbert expressly distinguished the "separate problem” whether the defendant, if he were found guilty on more than one of the several indictments for theft by withholding, could be cumulatively sentenced. 281 Or at 110. ORS 131.505 obviously does not address that problem, being limited by its own terms to the provisions governing single or separate prosecutions. Nevertheless, the Court of Appeals believed that our reading of ORS 131.505 in Gilbert necessarily implied the propriety of separate sentences for "separate offenses.” Because ORS 161.505 defines an offense as "conduct for which a sentence to a term of imprisonment or to a fine is provided by any law of this state,” the court thought that "it logically follows that separate sentences are authorized for separate offenses.” 33 Or App at 126. But we do not agree that this follows from the mere definition. No doubt conduct is an [590] "offense” by virtue of ORS 161.505 only if it is subject to the sanction of a fine or imprisonment, but it is not questioned that each of the several statutory violations that may occur in the course of a single criminal act, transaction, or episode would individually constitute an "offense” within that definition. The question is whether they may be punished cumulatively. For indications of the legislative policy on that question we must look elsewhere than the definition of an offense or the provisions for joining charges for prosecution.
m
While detailed and systematic attention is lavished on defining the elements of the many offenses that, upon proper charge, trial or plea, and conviction, will make one liable to disposition as a criminal, this is less true of the law governing the dispositional phase that is the intended and actual end product of the process. It is the dispositional phase that concerns us here. The range or class of potential penalties prescribed for each statutory offense represents a legislative judgment of the gravity of that offense alone, and there are often provisions for aggravation or for habitual offenders. SkcORS 166.230; ORS 161.725-161.735.But only occasional provisions directly address the penalty to be imposed for multiple statutory violations that share common elements of time, place, act, or intent. And where examples of such enactments are found, for instance in California, Illinois, and Minnesota, they have not been wholly successful in distinguishing the problem of multiple prosecutions from that of multiple sentences or in escaping the dilemma of defining the "same act,” "conduct," or "offense.”9 Courts in jurisdictions without such statutes have wrestled with the [591] problem in much the same terms as the courts in those states. See, e.g., Irby v. United States, 390 F2d 432 (DC Cir en banc, 1967); Estevez v. State, 313 S2d 692 (Fla 1975) (comparing divergent results in earlier Florida burglary-larceny cases); Note, Criminal Law: Cumulative Sentencing for Offenses Within a Single Transaction, 26 U Fla L Rev 367 (1974).
The search for a rational policy toward the conviction and sentencing of the so-called "multiple offender” must start from the recognition that, though a defendant’s conduct may have constituted multiple offenses, the sentencing phase concerns the disposition of a single, not a multiple, human being. Sentencing policy and practice forever struggle with the contradictory demands that the punishment fit the crime and that it fit the criminal. It is further complicated by the [592] contrast between concurrent and consecutive sentences, by potential differences between a single sentence and concurrent sentences of the same length, by the collateral consequences of multiple judgments of conviction even when only a single sentence is imposed, and by the operational significance of the judgment of conviction apart from sentencing, particularly with respect to appeals.
The Oregon statutes do not contain a specific provision governing conviction and sentence on multiple charges comparable to those mentioned in note 9, above. ORS 161.025(g) states as a purpose of the 1971 revision of the criminal code "[t]o safeguard offenders against excessive, disproportionate or arbitrary punishment.” And the 1971 and 1973 statutes were joined in 1977 by an act relating to prison sentences and parole. Oregon Laws 1977, chapter 372. Following upon those reformulations of the substantive and procedural criminal law, the legislature in the 1977 act turned its attention to the problems of penology, the dispositional stages of the law.
The act places heavy reliance on presentence reports, on trial court articulation of reasons in sentencing, on appellate review of sentences even within the legally permissible limits, and on adoption of standards for parole decisions as means to compel principled analysis and to reduce disparity in the disposition of offenders at each state of the process.10 ORS 138.040, 138.050, 11 ORS 144.775-144.790. Sentence review was [593] expanded in 1977 from the former "excessive, cruel or unusual” standard to the present substantive review by reference to "the nature and background of the offender” and "the facts and circumstances of the offense.” The absence of provisions for effective appellate review of sentences, particularly of the choice between concurrent and consecutive sentences, was one criticism leveled against earlier efforts to systematize sentencing law in the Model Sentencing Act published in 1963 by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency and the 1962 draft of the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code. Compare the American Bar Association’s Report on Standards Relating to Appellate Review of Sentences §§ 3.1, 3.2;12 [594] and see generally, Caraway, Sentencing Reform in Multiple Offense Cases: Judicial and Legislative Avenues to Reform, 7 Conn L Rev 257 (1975). Taken together, the legislature’s recent enactments reflect a continuing policy to bring rationality and proportionality to the penal dimension of criminal law, a dimension often marked by haphazard statutory penalties, by a deliberate or fortuitous multiplicity of charges, and by the tactical opportunities these factors offer in plea negotiations.13
It is this penal policy rather than the definition in ORS 131.505 of "separate and distinct offenses” for purposes of charge and trial, as in State v. Gilbert, supra, that courts must seek to apply in sentencing a [595] defendant who pleads or is found guilty of several factual related offenses. However, that section’s definition of "criminal episode” remains important to the sentencing problem, because it prescribes when the required joinder of "two or more offenses based upon the same criminal episode,” ORS 131.515(2), will bring these offenses before the sentencing court at the same time. ORS 131.505(4) provides:
"Criminal episode” means continuous and uninterrupted conduct that establishes at least one offense and is so joined in time, place and circumstances that such conduct is directed to the accomplishment of a single criminal objective.
The relevance of the definition to the sentencing problem is the light it sheds on the legislature’s view of the critical factor in treating criminal conduct as a unitary event. That factor is not the coincidence of "time, place and circumstances” as such, but the resulting inference that the conduct is "directed to the accomplishment of a single criminal objective.” Multiple statutory violations are to be dealt with in one prosecution, not merely because they involve evidence common to the time, place and circumstances, but because the responsibility of the defendant for his conduct in pursuit of one "criminal objective” should be fully determined in one proceeding.
Other courts have found the test whether the defendant acted for a single or a sequence of separate criminal objectives to be no panacea for deciding on the proper disposition of multiple charges. The Illinois Supreme Court, for instance, adopted the "independent motivation” test for multiple convictions in People v. Stewart, 45 Ill 2d 310, 259 NE2d 24 (1970) (aggravated battery during an attempted robbery) and People v. Whittington, 46 Ill 2d 405, 265 NE2d 679 (1970) (automobile stolen for prison escape); but it abandoned this test in People v. King, 66 Ill 2d 551, 363 NE2d 838 (1977) as far as concurrent sentences are concerned, substituting a limit on multiple sentences only for offenses "carved from the same physical act.” 363 [596] NE2d at 844.14 In Irby v. United States, supra, which involved consecutive sentences for a housebreaking and robbery in the house, the Court of Appeals en banc found the continuity between an offender’s original criminal purpose and his subsequent acts important for his liability to two sentences, despite the difficulties of this criterion.15 Whatever the merits and difficulties of these competing approaches, it seems to us that in ORS 131.505(4), supra, the revised criminal statutes have chosen to attach importance to the "singleness” of a defendant’s criminal objective rather than only to the "singleness” of his acts.
In the present case, as in State v. Woolard, supra, there is no dispute that the offenses of which defendant was convicted arose in a criminal episode marked by a single objective—theft—as well as by continuity of time and place. Accordingly, nothing in the statutory policies enacted since Woolard appears to contradict the court’s conclusion in that case that when a breaking and entering with intent to commit a crime is followed by the commission of the intended crime, the penalty is to be limited to that prescribed for the offense carrying the greater potential sentence. We reaffirm that conclusion. That is the specific issue, and it is all we decide in this case. Because similar problems have arisen and will continue to arise in many other cases, however, it seems pertinent to mention distinctions between the Woolard rule reaffirmed today and other situations involving multiple [597] offenses, distinctions which may or may not bear upon the proper disposition of such other cases.
(1) As already stated, an offense may be described as being "merged” in another if all of its elements are necessarily included in the commission of the other offense. In such a case a judgment of conviction on only one of the charges is proper. See ORS 136.465; State v. Washington, 273 Or 829, 543 P2d 1058 (1975); State v. Roach, supra; State v. Fish, 282 Or 53, 577 P2d 500 (1978) (felony murder includes commission of felony).
(2) By virtue of ORS 161.485, the same rule applies to an attempt, a solicitation, and a conspiracy to commit the same crime or to any of them followed by the completion of the actual commission of the planned crime, even though these inchoate crimes are not necessarily included in the completed offense.16
(3) An offense, though neither inchoate nor necessarily included in another, may be committed as one step in the commission of another offense in the course of a single criminal episode with a single criminal objective, as defined in ORS 131.505(4), supra. This is the characteristic Woolard situation, in which we assume that punishment for the most serious crime committed meets the legislature’s penal objectives unless there are legislative indications to the contrary.17
(4) An offense may have unity of time, location, act and intent but involve sets of objects or actions that can be divided into parts, each of which would support a conviction. Typical illustrations are the simultaneous possession of several burglar tools, or of a quantity [598] of narcotics divisible into several smaller equally punishable quantities, or the simultaneous possession and transportation of the same item, or the theft of a quantity of money in the form of many bills, or driving recklessly while also intoxicated.18 In State v. Welch, supra, this court held that a single transaction of publishing two false checks in making one bank deposit could not be divided up in that manner. See also Doran v. State, 270 Or 758, 529 P2d 928 (1974) (driving with excess blood alcohol and under the influence of intoxicants punishable only as one offense). Again, when a legislature finds reason to deter or punish continuing offenses by specifying cumulative penalties, it knows how to say so. See, e.g. ORS 418.990 (each day’s operation of uncertified day care facility a separate offense); ORS 433.990(7) (keeping unclean slaughter house considered separate offense for each 5 day period); ORS 441.990 (operating unlicensed health care facility is separate offense for each day after first conviction); ORS 764.990 (fine for each day’s violation of railroad crew shelter requirement).
(5) Distinct from the foregoing are three situations. One is the commission of offenses against several victims in a single criminal act or episode, offenses which are declared separate for procedural purposes in ORS 131.505(3). These span events of such diverse penological significance as the traffic offense that fortuitously results in the death of many instead of a single occupant of another vehicle, and the calculated decision of a robber to empty not only the cash register but also the purses of the individual employees or guests of the establishment.19 The second is the commission of two equally serious separate offenses [599] against the same victim for separate criminal objectives, as for instance a rape and a robbery.20 The third distinct situation is the ongoing criminal activity conducted through a series of unlawful transactions in pursuit of one continuing criminal objective,21 the problem characteristically presented by the disposition of illegal gaming and drug offenders and receivers of stolen property.22 None of these situations is before us. We leave it to the Court of Appeals in the first instance to develop criteria for multiple convictions and sentencing in such cases under ORS 138.040 and 138.050, as stated above.
What remains is the situations in which the defendant’s offenses have no important element in common except the identity of the offender, an offender who has committed several discontinuous unlawful acts on separate occasions, each upon a new or renewed decision to accomplish a distinct criminal objective. While such sentences, too, are reviewable under the above mentioned penological objectives of the 1977 statute, they do not pose the problem of multiple convictions and sentences discussed here.
[600] IV
It remains to deal with the order of conviction and sentence entered by the trial court in this case.
In State v. Woolard, supra, the court stated that "one breaking and entering with the intent to commit larceny can only be convicted and sentenced for either burglary or larceny, but not for both.” 259 Or at 238. In other words, in a case in which the Woolard analysis barred multiple sentences, it would also bar the entry of convictions on all but the most serious of the offenses of which the defendant was guilty. The order entered in this case, as set forth at the beginning of the opinion, leads us to examine in more detail the relationship between "conviction” and sentence.
Woolard assumes a situation in which a defendant has validly been charged with and has pleaded or been found guilty of more than one offense, since otherwise the problem of the permissible penalty does not arise. This poses the question what if any order or judgment of conviction is to be entered upon the remaining pleas or verdicts when sentence can legally be imposed on only one conviction. The answer is important primarily, though not exclusively, for the process of appeal and possible further proceedings in case of a reversal.
From that standpoint, it would seem desirable that attacks on the validity of any of the verdicts on charges combined for a single trial be combined in one appeal. However, ORS 138.040 permits defendant to appeal only "from a judgment on a conviction,” and ORS 137.010(5) mandates the imposition (or suspension)23 of a sentence whenever a person is "convicted of an offense.” Together, these sections create difficulties for entering an appealable judgment on the verdict on any of several charges on which a sentence is precluded by Woolard. The proper disposition of verdicts [601] in multiple-charge, single-sentence cases has troubled prosecutors, trial courts, and the Court of Appeals. See, e.g., State v. Morales, 21 Or App 827, 537 P2d 109, 22 Or App 470, 539 P2d 1112 (1975); State v. Thompson, 20 Or App 545, 532 P2d 1140 (1975); State v. Meyer, 12 Or App 486, 507 P2d 824 (1973).
A number of dispositions seem theoretically possible: (1) In Morales, supra, which involved charges of unlawful possession and transportation of the same drugs, the state argued that the trial court correctly imposed a sentence on each charge, leaving it to the appellate court to decide which sentence should be sustained and which vacated. The Court of Appeals rejected this approach. We agree, since it would leave both sentences standing if for any reason there were no appeal. The rule against multiple sentences must be one that can be correctly applied by trial courts without an appeal. (2) Instead, the Court of Appeals suggested that the trial court might have disposed of one of the two charges by stating at the time of sentence that the charge of unlawful possession "merged” with that of transportation for this purpose, or that the charge of unlawful possession was "dismissed.” 21 Or App at 833. In a petition for reconsideration, the state disputed the propriety of a trial court "dismissal” of any of the charges after verdict, because such a charge would not be involved in the appeal and could not be revived24 in case the judgment on which defendant was sentenced were later reversed. That result could perhaps be avoided if the state cross-appealed from the dismissal of the other charges whenever a defendant appealed the judgment, but this would introduce another opportunity for procedural slips. (3) The trial court could enter judgments of conviction on all verdicts and pleas of guilty and declare that the single sentence on the most serious [602] charge was also the sentence on all the others. This may be what the Court of Appeals in Morales, supra, meant by "merger” of the charges for sentence. Arguably it satisfies the court’s obligation to sentence under ORS 137.010. However, aside from the inexactness it introduces in the use of "merger,” see 21 Or App at 833, such judgments might appear to impose the same sentence on the "merged” charges as on that into which they "merged,” so that a sentence remains on record even if the judgment on the "main” charge were reversed on appeal. Also, the additional judgments might have adverse collateral consequences apart from the sentence. (4) The trial court might pronounce a judgment of conviction and sentence on only the gravest charge and dispose of the other charge or charges by an order reciting the charge and the verdict or plea of guilty, postponing further disposition while awaiting the outcome of an appeal if one is taken. However, this procedure would sacrifice the possibility of an immediate appeal from the convictions on which judgment is postponed, and it might prejudice a defendant with respect to successful appeals by delaying the retrial on those charges for months or even years.
None of these solutions is wholly compelling as a matter of logic or compelled as a matter of statute. We believe another disposition is available. A trial court might pronounce a judgment of conviction on each of the charges, indicating the sentence he would impose if the conviction stood alone but suspending its execution (or suspending imposition of sentence), and accompany the judgment on each but the gravest charge with an order that the judgment is vacated by its own terms whenever the time for appeal has elapsed or the judgment appealed from has been affirmed. Such an order would make it clear on the record that the conviction on the secondary charge retains no legal effect in the absence of a further order reviving it in case a successful appeal from the judgment on the gravest charge is not followed by a retrial on that [603] charge. But since the use of such an order has not been argued in this case, we do not now decide that it should be used.
The order in the present case, as quoted at the beginning of this opinion, recited that the defendant had "heretofore been duly convicted of” both burglary and attempted theft. In the absence of any record of a preceding judgment of conviction in the case, we assume that "convicted” was meant as a reference to the verdict, and that the ORDER ON SENTENCE was the judgment. The order "considered, ordered and adjudged” that defendant "is guilty” of burglary and of attempted theft, and stated "the judgment of the court that he be sentenced to the OREGON STATE CORRECTIONS DIVISION” for a term of four years. This order pronounces a judgment of conviction on both charges. As stated above, the state confessed error in the Court of Appeals if the Woolard holding still governed the case. It does. Nor can the error be corrected simply by vacating the judgment of conviction on the attempted theft, since the record does not show whether the court would have imposed the same sentence if defendant had not attempted the theft.25 Accordingly, the case must be remanded for resentencing and a judgment of conviction on the burglary count only.
Reversed and remanded.