Opinion ID: 1877210
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: People v. White

Text: Before 1973, this Court defined the scope of protection of double jeopardy consistent with federal law. People v. Grimmett, 388 Mich. 590, 202 N.W.2d 278 (1972). Grimmett was overruled and the same transaction test was adopted in People v. White, supra at 258, 212 N.W.2d 222. That decision came, despite this Court's rejection of the test in Grimmett, [26] which noted the difficulty of imposing a mandatory rule requiring the application of the same transaction test [27] in all double jeopardy cases. Id. The same transaction approach requires the government to join at one trial all the charges against a defendant that grow out of a continuous time sequence and display a single intent and goal. People v. Sturgis, 427 Mich. 392, 401, 397 N.W.2d 783 (1986). The test is said to `promote the best interests of justice and sound judicial administration'.... Id. at 402, 397 N.W.2d 783. In White itself, for example, the crimes committed, kidnapping, felonious assault, and rape were all part of a single criminal episode committed in a continuous time sequence and displaying a single intent and goal. The Court limited its holding to similar factual situations and indicated its willingness to consider the adoption of limited exceptions to the test. Within three years of the decision in White, the difficulty of applying the test observed in Grimmett had produced a practice of pleading guilty to the least serious of offenses growing out of a single transaction and seeking preclusion of the more serious charges. In a series of cases, Crampton v. 54-A District Judge, supra at 500, 245 N.W.2d 28, the Court granted bypass to revisit White. The majority developed a two-part exception to the same-transaction test based on whether the crimes involved were intent or no-intent crimes: (1) Where criminal intent is required in the offenses involved, the criterion set forth in White applies: continuous time sequence and display [of] a single intent and goal. (2) Where one or more of the offenses does not involve criminal intent, the criterion is whether the offenses are part of the same criminal episode, and whether the offenses involve laws intended to prevent the same or similar harm or evil, not a substantially different, or a very different kind of, harm or evil. [ Id. at 501-502, 245 N.W.2d 28.] Thus, applying the rationale of the Crampton majority to the instant case, the instant conspiracies do not involve both a continuous time sequence and display of a single intent and goal. Id. at 502, 245 N.W.2d 28. White is therefore inapplicable and the Oakland prosecution was not barred. Agreeing that White was inapplicable, Justice Levin concurred, but adopted a different rationale for the result, which also emphasized the limits of the same-transaction test and the potential for anomalous results. Crampton, supra at 511, 245 N.W.2d 28. While carefully preserving the myriad situations not covered by the groups of offenses he delineated, id. at 516, 245 N.W.2d 28, Justice Levin stated: Jones' arrest for being in a blind pig was but the occasion for discovering his possession of heroin and marijuana; it does not appear that Jones acquired the heroin or marijuana in the blind pig. There is no substantial connection in criminality between offenses where the only factor connecting one offense with the other is that one was discovered in consequence of apprehension for the other; each is a separate transaction. Thus, from the perspective of either the majority or concurrence in Crampton, that is, that the two crimes did not involve a continuous time sequence or common intent, or that the second conspiracy was discovered in consequence of the first, the Muskegon and Oakland conspiracies are not the same transaction.