Title: Hunter v. State

State: delaware

Issuer: Delaware Supreme Court

Document:

430 A.2d 476 (1981)
Sara C. HUNTER, Defendant Below, Appellant,
v.
STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Delaware.
Submitted April 21, 1981.
Decided May 12, 1981.
Reargument Denied June 10, 1981.
Richard E. Fairbanks, Jr. (argued), Richard M. Baumeister, and Edward C. Pankowski, Jr., Asst. Public Defenders, Wilmington, for defendant below, appellant.
Charles M. Oberly, III, Asst. State Pros., and Bartholomew J. Dalton, Deputy Atty. Gen. (argued), Wilmington, for plaintiff below, appellee.
Before HERRMANN, Chief Justice, DUFFY, McNEILLY, QUILLEN and HORSEY, Justices, constituting the Court en Banc.
*477 HERRMANN, Chief Justice:
This case, decided by this Court on June 24, 1980 (Hunter v. State, Del.Supr., 420 A.2d 119), is now before this Court on vacating of judgment and remand by the Supreme Court of the United States (in summary disposition of Certiorari 80-283) "for further consideration in light of Albernaz v. United States," ___ U.S. ___, 101 S. Ct. 1137, 67 L. Ed. 2d 275 (1981). Delaware v. Hunter, ___ U.S. ___, 101 S. Ct. 1689, 68 L. Ed. 2d 190 (1981).
Our reconsideration of Hunter, under the mandate, is limited to the double jeopardy issue to which Albernaz applies.
In Hunter, the defendant was convicted of first-degree assault under 11 Del.C. § 613(1) and possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a felony under 11 Del.C. § 1447.[1] Before entering into an examination of whether cumulative punishments for the two offenses under § 613(1) and § 1447 were constitutionally permissible under the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment, "we considered preliminarily the question of whether the General Assembly intended to subject the defendant to multiple penalties for the single criminal act in which she engaged." 420 A.2d  at 124. We there concluded that such was the legislative intent; that "§ 1447 creates an offense distinct from the underlying § 613(1) felony of Assault First Degree, and that is was the legislative intent to subject this defendant to multiple penalties for the single criminal act in which she engaged"; and that, accordingly, we reached "the constitutional double jeopardy issue and the need to evaluate § 613(1) and § 1447 in the light of the Blockburger [v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 52 S. Ct. 180, 76 L. Ed. 306] test." 420 A.2d  at 124. And then, making the analysis and following what we thought were the teachings of Simpson v. United States, 435 U.S. 6, 98 S. Ct. 909, 55 L. Ed. 2d 70 (1978); Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161, 97 S. Ct. 2221, 53 L. Ed. 2d 187 (1977); Jeffers v. United States, 432 U.S. 137, 97 S. Ct. 2207, 53 L. Ed. 2d 168 (1977); Iannelli v. United States, 420 U.S. 770, 95 S. Ct. 1284, 43 L. Ed. 2d 616 (1975); North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 89 S. Ct. 2072, 23 L. Ed. 2d 656 (1969); and Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 52 S. Ct. 180, 76 L. Ed. 306 (1932), we concluded in Hunter that the Blockburger test was not satisfied; that under the test as applied in the instant case, for "double jeopardy purposes the two offenses are undoubtedly `the same'"; and that, therefore, multiple punishments for the "same offense" had been imposed here in violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause. 420 A.2d  at 125.
This Court unanimously agreed upon that result in the original Hunter opinion.
Subsequent to the filing of the original Hunter opinion on March 14, 1980, the United States Supreme Court decided Whalen v. United States, 445 U.S. 684, 100 S. Ct. 1432, 63 L. Ed. 2d 715 (1980), on April 16, 1980. A motion for reargument and clarification *478 was then pending in the instant case on another issue. In view of the cloud cast by Whalen upon the original Hunter opinion regarding the double jeopardy issue, this Court, sua sponte, requested supplemental briefing regarding the effect of Whalen upon the conclusions we had reached on the double jeopardy issue. Supplemental Opinions were filed in this case upon the Motion for Reargument, on June 24, 1980. 420 A.2d  at 127-34.
In the Supplemental Opinions, the majority stated:
420 A.2d  at 128-29 (footnote omitted). And after considerable self-imposed reconsideration in the light of Whalen, the majority of this Court concluded:
420 A.2d  at 130 (footnote omitted).
Justice Quillen dissented in the Supplemental Opinions, joined by Justice McNeilly, stating:
420 A.2d  at 132 (footnote omitted) (Quillen, J., dissenting). The dissent concluded:
420 A.2d  at 134 (footnote omitted) (Quillen, J., dissenting).
Thus the issue stood in this State (subject to a stay by this Court on all affected cases pending the outcome of the State's petition for certiorari) until the United States Supreme Court acted upon that petition by vacating this Court's judgment in this case and remanding the cause for reconsideration in the light of Albernaz, decided March 9, 1981.
We now have the enlightenment of the opinion of the Court in Albernaz, as set forth in its final paragraphs:
101 S. Ct.  at 1144-45.
The enlightenment of the Court's opinion in Albernaz is significantly dimmed, however, and the "veritable Sargasso Sea"[2] of the decisional law in the area remains significantly entangling to the "judicial navigator", by reason of two factors:
(1) The definitive ultimate and penultimate sentences of Albernaz are dicta, unnecessary to reach the Court's conclusion in that case; and
(2) Mr. Justice Stewart, the author of Whalen, in a concurring opinion joined by Justices Marshall and Stevens, felt impelled to disavow that dicta, stating:
*481 101 S. Ct.  at 1145-46 (Stewart, J., concurring).
The cloud thus remaining over the law of double jeopardy notwithstanding, we must consider ourselves bound by the majority rule now apparently emerging out of the "Sargasso Sea" and manifesting itself in the last paragraphs of Albernaz. Although dicta, the emergence of the evolving rule stands unmistakably clear by virtue of the vote of 6 to 3, cast in the face of the flat contradiction of the concurring Justices, including the author of Whalen.
Applying the rule of Albernaz to the instant case, we now hold that where the General Assembly intended, as we have found that it did in § 613(1) and § 1447,[3] to impose multiple punishments for two offenses not satisfying the Blockburger test, imposition of two consecutive sentences by a court as a result of a single criminal trial does not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
The Hunter majority in this Court reluctantly follows the evolving rule of the majority of the United States Supreme Court in Albernaz. The Rule of Supremacy prevails on this issue, however, and trusting, as we must, that the dicta in Albernaz will soon become the clear and unquestioned rule of law to be followed, we now hold as follows in the instant case: Our conclusion "that § 1447 creates an offense distinct from the underlying § 613(1) felony of Assault First Degree, and that it was the legislative intent to subject this defendant to multiple penalties for the single criminal act in which she engaged," 420 A.2d  at 124, is determinative upon the issue of double jeopardy. It follows therefrom that the imposition of multiple sentences upon the defendant for the two offenses in this case does not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
Any statement contrary to the above, contained in the previous Hunter opinions of this Court, is hereby abandoned.
The judgment below now stands
AFFIRMED.
[1]  Reference is made to the Hunter opinion for the facts and the texts of the Statutes involved. 420 A.2d  at 121-122.
[2]  The Sargasso Sea is a large oval-shaped area of the North Atlantic Ocean set apart by the presence of marine plants, or seaweed, which float on its surface  a region of slow ocean currents surrounded by a boundary of rapidly moving currents such as the Gulf Stream and the North Equatorial Current. "The early navigators who sailed their small ships to North America saw the Sargasso Sea as patches of gulfweed that seemed to form wide-spreading meadows. Soon there were legends and myths about the region which told of large islands of thickly matted seaweed inhabited by huge monsters of the deep. * * * They pictured a blanket of netted seaweed from which no ship could escape, once it became entangled in the weed. * * *" World Book Encyclopedia, Vol. 17, p. 111 (1976).
[3]  § 1447(c), especially, makes such intent unmistakable:

"§ 1447. Possession of a deadly weapon during commission of a felony; class B felony.
"* * *
"(c) Any sentence imposed upon conviction for possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a felony shall not run concurrently with any other sentence. In any instance where a person is convicted of a felony, together with a conviction for the possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of such felony, such person shall serve the sentence for the felony itself before beginning the sentence imposed for possession of a deadly weapon during such felony. * * *"