DICKSON, J.
[W]e grant transfer and hold that: (1) fundamental error is not a satisfactory rationale to justify the State’s challenge to an illegal sentence; (2) the legislature intended to permit the State to challenge erroneous criminal sentences; (3) the State’s appellate sentence challenge, when the issue is a pure question of law and does not require resort to evidence outside the appellate record, is an acceptable substantial equivalent to the motion to correct erroneous sentence; (4) the State’s appellate challenge to an illegal sentence is not limited to facially erroneous sentences; and (5) such an appellate challenge need not be initiated in the trial court nor commenced within thirty days of the sentencing judgment. The State’s appellate claim of sentence illegality was not waived by its failure to file a motion to correct erroneous sentence in the trial court or its failure to otherwise assert the claim within thirty days of the sentencing judgment. As the defendant does not challenge the merits of the State’s claim of illegal sentence, we summarily affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals to require the challenged concurrent sentences to be served consecutively, and we summarily affirm its opinion in all other respects.
Shepard, C.J., and Sullivan, J., concur.
BOEHM, J., dissents with separate opinion in which Rucker, J., concurs:
I respectfully dissent. The majority holds that the State may challenge what it contends to be an illegal sentence by raising the issue in its appellee’s brief in the Court of Appeals, even though the issue was never presented to the trial court. I agree that longstanding precedent permits the State to raise sentencing errors in a cross-appeal of a defendant’s direct appeal. . . . However, I would not permit the State to appeal an erroneous sentence without first raising the issue in the trial court.