Opinion ID: 1172193
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Authority From the Federal Circuits and Other States

Text: Citing several cases from the various federal circuits and other states, the majority admits these courts are divided as to whether the federal double jeopardy clause applies to proceedings analogous to the one here. (Lead opn., ante, at pp. 839-840; see also conc. opn. of Brown, J., ante, at p. 847.) As the lead opinion concedes, several federal circuits and state courts have profitably applied the Bullington hallmarks of the trial on guilt or innocence test to find the federal double jeopardy clause applicable to noncapital sentencing proceedings. For example, in Briggs v. Procunier (5th Cir.1985) 764 F.2d 368 (hereafter Briggs ), Texas indicted the defendant for burglary and alleged two prior felony convictions which, if proved, required he be sentenced to life in prison. After a jury found the defendant guilty of the charged burglary, the state dismissed the charged prior convictions, citing proof problems. The defendant sought a new trial and the state joined the motion. When it was granted, the state again indicted the defendant for burglary. This time, however, the state charged two different prior felony convictions to enhance the sentence. ( Id. at p. 369.) The prior felonies were found true and the defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals applied the Bullington hallmarks of the trial on guilt or innocence test to reverse the district court's denial of relief on habeas corpus. Like the death-sentencing procedure discussion in Bullington v. Missouri, 451 U.S. 430 [101 S.Ct. 1852, 68 L.Ed.2d 270] (1981), the Texas scheme requires the state to prove at trial, beyond a reasonable doubt, the predicate facts, two prior convictions, necessary for the imposition of the harsher sentence. `The two prior convictions must be alleged in the indictment, and upon review the allegations are treated the same as allegations of the elements of a substantive offense.' [Citation.] Therefore, if the state fails to introduce sufficient evidence of the defendant's status as an habitual offender at a first trial, the Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits the sentencing of the defendant as an habitual offender at a second trial. ( Briggs, supra, 764 F.2d at p. 371.) The Supreme Court of Washington reached the same conclusion in Hennings, supra, 670 P.2d 256. The defendant in Hennings was charged with robbery and with being a habitual criminal under Washington's habitual offender law. He ultimately pleaded guilty to robbery, but the trial court dismissed the habitual criminal charge, concluding the People failed to prove defendant's guilty plea in the prior conviction matter was knowingly and voluntarily obtained, a statutory requirement under Washington law. ( Id. at p. 257.) The Washington high court held double jeopardy precluded the People from recharging and retrying the habitual criminal allegation. The court explained that, like the capital proceeding at issue in Bullington, supra, 451 U.S. 430, a habitual offender determination under Washington law takes place in a separate proceeding in which the state bears the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In addition, should the allegation be proved, the range of penalties is strictly circumscribed: If the sentence is not suspended, the habitual offender must be sentenced to life imprisonment; there is no other sentence. ( Hennings, supra, 670 P.2d at p. 258.) The similarities [between Bullington and the Washington habitual offender law] indicate that under Bullington double jeopardy principles should apply to Washington's habitual criminal proceedings. ( Hennings, supra, 670 P.2d at p. 260.) As illustrated by Briggs, supra, 764 F.2d 368, and Hennings, supra, 670 P.2d 256, the majority rule that has emerged from the federal circuit courts and state high courts is this: Bullington 's hallmarks of the trial on guilt or innocence test is the applicable standard to determine whether noncapital sentencing proceedings are subject to the federal double jeopardy clause. As in Briggs and Hennings, many courts have found double jeopardy applies to bar retrial of a noncapital sentencing allegation because the state law at issue bore the hallmarks of a trial on guilt. (In addition to Briggs, supra, 764 F.2d 368 [Fifth Circuit], and Hennings, supra, 670 P.2d 256 [Washington], see, e.g., Bohlen v. Caspari, supra, 979 F.2d at p. 113, revd. on other grounds in Caspari, supra, 510 U.S. 383 [8th Circuit, interpreting Missouri habitual offender law]; Nelson v. Lockhart (8th Cir.1987) 828 F.2d 446, 447-448, revd. on other grounds, Lockhart v. Nelson, supra, 488 U.S. 33 [interpreting Arkansas habitual offender law]; Durosko v. Lewis, supra, 882 F.2d at p. 359 [Ninth Circuit interpreting Arizona law]; People v. Quintana, supra, 634 P.2d at p. 419 [Colorado]; Cooper, supra, 631 S.W.2d at pp. 513-514 [Texas]; Ex Parte Augusta (Tex. Crim. App. 1982) 639 S.W.2d 481, 484 [following Cooper ]; cf. DeBussi v. State (Miss. 1984) 453 So.2d 1030, 1032-1033 [applying a Bullington -type analysis to conclude double jeopardy under the Mississippi Constitution barred retrial of habitual offender allegation].) Other courts have applied Bullington 's hallmarks of the trial on guilt or innocence test to noncapital sentencing proceedings to come to a contrary conclusion, i.e., that the sentencing law at issue did not bear sufficient similarity to a trial on the question of guilt. Accordingly, these courts have found double jeopardy did not prohibit a retrial under the particular statutory scheme at issue. For example, in Wilmer v. Johnson (3d Cir.1994) 30 F.3d 451 (hereafter Wilmer ), a challenge to a Pennsylvania drug trafficker sentence enhancement scheme, the appellate court applied the Bullington hallmarks of the trial on guilt or innocence test to find double jeopardy did not apply. Noting the state was permitted to appeal the sentence in the particular statutory sentencing scheme at issue, the Wilmer court concluded there would be no second trial. More importantly, only a preponderance of the evidence test was applicable. The lower standard of proof signifies a more lax procedure which in turn signifies that a hearing is not, in the Bullington calculus, trial-like. ( Wilmer, supra, 30 F.3d at pp. 457-458.) Contrary to the suggestion of the majority that Wilmer held double jeopardy could not apply to noncapital sentencing because of the absence of the death penalty, the Wilmer court applied Bullington 's hallmarks of the trial on guilt or innocence test and concluded the state sentencing scheme at issue there was insufficiently analogous to a trial on guilt. People v. Levin (1993) 157 Ill.2d 138 [191 Ill.Dec. 72, 623 N.E.2d 317], which dealt with the Illinois habitual offender statute, also applied the Bullington analysis to a noncapital case before finding double jeopardy did not apply. The legislature has fashioned the habitual-criminal sentencing proceeding to be less formalized than a trial. Indeed, the paucity of due process protections at sentencing supports the conclusion that the legislature has deemed the defendant's interests at this stage of the proceeding to warrant fewer of those protections than at trial. We conclude that the separate hearing procedure under our Act bears insufficient formalities of a trial to render that factor analogous to the separate hearing procedure in Bullington and to this defendant's trial on the issue of guilt. (623 N.E.2d at p. 325.) In other words, the separate hearing held pursuant to Illinois's habitual offender statute does not bear the hallmarks of a trial on guilt, so double jeopardy does not apply. Other cases applying the Bullington hallmarks of the trial on guilt or innocence test to noncapital sentencing proceedings and finding such hallmarks absent include Woodall v. U.S. (8th Cir.1995) 72 F.3d 77, 79-80 (interpreting federal Armed Career Criminal Act), State v. Sowards (1985) 147 Ariz. 156 [709 P.2d 513, 515] (Arizona), State v. Cobb (Mo. 1994) 875 S.W.2d 533, 535 (hereafter Cobb ) (Missouri), [3] Fitzpatrick v. State (1981) 194 Mont. 310 [638 P.2d 1002, 1017] (Montana), and People v. Sailor (1985) 65 N.Y.2d 224 [491 N.Y.S.2d 112, 480 N.E.2d 701] (New York). (See also State v. Avila (1985) 147 Ariz. 330 [710 P.2d 440, 445-446] [quoting Sowards with approval]; cf. State v. Ledbetter (1997) 240 Conn. 317 [692 A.2d 713, 717-718] [suggesting Bullington applies to state's noncapital persistent offender law, but concluding defendant waived the claim].) All of these cases recognize the applicable test in determining whether double jeopardy applies to bar retrial is whether the noncapital sentencing scheme bears sufficient similarity to a trial on guilt so that one can conclude, as in Bullington, that a not true finding operates as an acquittal of the sentencing allegation. (See, e.g., Woodall v. U.S., supra, 72 F.3d at p. 79 [emphasizing government's burden of proof is only by a preponderance of evidence to conclude double jeopardy does not apply].) The majority's attempt (lead opn., ante, at pp. 839-840; conc. opn. of Brown, J., ante, at p. 847) to distinguish these cases wholesale as insufficiently impressed with the unique nature and constitutional origins of the death penalty is flawed, relying as it does on an unjustified embellishment of the Supreme Court's rationale in Bullington. Although Bullington involved a capital sentencing scheme, the mere possibility of the death penalty was not cited by the Bullington court as central to its rationale. As noted above, the Supreme Court of Washington has explicitly rejected the notion that Bullington was premised on the fact the death penalty was there involved. (See Hennings, supra, 670 P.2d at p. 260; see also Linam v. Griffin (10th Cir.1982) 685 F.2d 369, 376-377 (conc. opn. of Anderson, J.) [fact death penalty was involved in Bullington was not relied on nor even articulated by the Supreme Court as a basis for its holding (italics omitted)].) To the extent the majority relies on this death-penalty-only view of Bullington, it relies on an augmentation of that decision's rationale that appears nowhere in the body of the opinion itself. The majority relies on cases which, admittedly, find Bullington does not apply to noncapital sentencing proceedings. In addition to espousing the minority rule, however, many of these cases employ faulty reasoning or announce their interpretation of Bullington in dicta. For example, in State v. Aragon (1993) 116 N.M. 267 [861 P.2d 948], cited by the lead opinion in support (lead opn., ante, at p. 840), the New Mexico Supreme Court found that double jeopardy did not attach to New Mexico's habitual offender proceedings because the law does not create a substantive criminal offense. (See 861 P.2d at pp. 950-951 [we have determined that habitual offender proceedings do not involve a determination of guilt of any offense  (italics added)], 953 [double jeopardy [does] not attach to the habitual offender proceeding ... because ... there was no prosecution of an offense  (italics added)].) This reasoning misreads Bullington, for, as explained, ante, the jury in the Missouri capital sentencing trial in Bullington also did not try a separate offense. Instead, the Bullington jury was deciding between life or death as an appropriate sentence. Clearly, whether or not a sentencing scheme delineates an offense is not the test. Accordingly, Aragon 's reasoning is flawed. Denton v. Duckworth (7th Cir.1989) 873 F.2d 144 (hereafter Denton ), also cited by the majority in support (lead opn., ante, at p. 840; conc. opn. of Brown, J., ante, at p. 847), contains the same analytical flaw (873 F.2d at p. 148 [Indiana's habitual offender statute  does not create a separate offense. ... (italics added)]), but is unpersuasive for a more basic reason. In Denton, the defendant was convicted of rape and was also found to be a habitual offender under Indiana law based on his conviction of four prior unrelated felonies. After his rape conviction, one of the four prior felony convictions was vacated by a different court. The state moved to retry the habitual offender allegation with the remaining three prior felony allegations (only two were necessary), deleting the now-vacated conviction. In these circumstances, the court held retrial was permissible. Denton thus does not present a situation in which the state, with all its resources, failed to present sufficient evidence to convict. Instead, the matter was one of trial error for which the federal double jeopardy clause is inapplicable. ( Burks, supra, 437 U.S. at pp. 15-16 [98 S.Ct. at pp. 2149-2150].) As even the Denton court opined: This clearly is a case of `trial error,' and not of insufficiency of the evidence. ( Denton, supra, 873 F.2d at p. 148.) Any discussion in Denton of the application of Bullington was thus dictum. Linam v. Griffin, supra, 685 F.2d 369, also declares its interpretation of Bullington in dictum. In Linam, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals found a state appellate court's reversal of a noncapital sentence enhancement meets the Burks Court's definition of trial error and is not a true finding of inadequacy of evidence. ( Id. at p. 373.) Because only trial error was present in Linam, no double jeopardy bar to retrial applied irrespective of that court's views on Bullington. (See generally, Bohlen v. Caspari, supra, 979 F.2d at p. 114 [concluding Linam and Denton are distinguishable as cases involving trial error and not insufficiency of evidence]; Carpenter v. Chapleau (6th Cir.1996) 72 F.3d 1269, 1276 (dis. opn. of Moore, J.) [finding Denton 's and Linam 's discussion of Bullington to be dictum].) The majority's reliance on dicta in Denton, supra, 873 F.2d 144, and Linam, supra, 685 F.2d 369, is thus misplaced. The majority rule emerging from the federal circuit courts and the high courts from our sister states is this: The test to determine whether the federal double jeopardy clause applies to bar multiple retrials of noncapital sentencing determinations is Bullington 's hallmarks of the trial on guilt or innocence test. The cases cited by the majority in support of its contrary position delineate a minority rule, and are for the most part weakly reasoned or announce their interpretation of Bullington in dictum. Because I find the majority rule better reasoned and thus more persuasive, I would apply Bullington 's hallmarks of the trial on guilt or innocence test to the facts of this case.