Opinion ID: 853754
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Finding Constitutional Basis for Multiple Punishment Doctrines Accomplishes Little

Text: Finding a constitutional dimension in multiple punishment cases under double jeopardy doctrine does not add to the protection already afforded under other provisions of the state and federal constitutions. As Justice Souter put it in his separate concurring and dissenting opinion in Dixon, the multiple punishment branch of double jeopardy law is designed to ensure that the accused is not receiving for one offense more than the punishment authorized. 509 U.S. at 744, 113 S.Ct. 2849, 125 L.Ed.2d 556. To achieve this, however, we need no further constitutional basis than the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the due course of law provision of our Indiana Constitution. A sentence in excess of that authorized by law violates these provisions and more. It is not merely an unconstitutional ex post facto increase of sentence; it is an imposition of a penalty never authorized at all. As such, it is plainly invalid. Thus resort to double jeopardy is wholly unnecessary to invalidate a sentence outside the penalties provided by statute. The issue is simply whether the statute does or does not authorize the punishment. To make the same point another way, it trivializes the Double Jeopardy Clause to equate it, as federal doctrine does, with legislative intent. [19] For example, our courts have held that one serious bodily injury cannot elevate both robbery and battery to Class A felonies. Odom v. State, 647 N.E.2d 377 (Ind.Ct.App.1995). However, the legislature could create a new class of AA felonies that consist of inflicting serious bodily injury by battery in the course of a robbery with penalties equal to the sum of present sentences for two Class A felonies. As the Supreme Court noted sixty years ago, [t]here is nothing in the Constitution which prevents Congress from punishing separately each step leading to the consummation of a transaction which it has the power to prohibit and punishing also the completed transaction. Albrecht v. United States, 273 U.S. 1, 47 S.Ct. 250, 71 L.Ed. 505 (1927). The Indiana Court of Appeals similarly observed, there was nothing to prevent the Legislature from enacting a statute making each step leading up to the sale of intoxicating liquor as a beverage unlawful, and, in doing so, it made the possession of intoxicating liquor and the maintenance of a place for persons to congregate for the purpose of drinking separate offenses. Thompson v. State, 89 Ind.App. 555, 559, 167 N.E. 345, 346 (1929). One can imagine a calibrated criminal code with finely graduated sentences for each aggravating element that would produce in net result the same sentence as multiple punishments for various combinations of crimes under existing law. The General Assembly has wisely chosen not to complicate matters with such an intricate criminal code, but if it did so, there would be no double jeopardy bar. [20] If all the legislature must do to impose higher penalties is properly identify one combined offense where two were formerly spelled out, the Double Jeopardy Clause presents no check on legislative piling on. Similarly, if one objective of the Double Jeopardy Clause is or ought to be restriction of prosecutorial discretion, the omnibus crime does restrict that discretion, if viewed as the alternative to the list of component crimes under current law. But the legislature is also free to create a series of ascendingly complex crimes, each a lesser included of those above it. Under such a regime, prosecutorial discretion to select the crime to be charged from this smorgasbord is unbounded, just as multiple counts give the prosecutor major bargaining power today. Ultimately the decision rests with the legislature to vest or not vest wider prosecutorial discretion to charge crimes with greater or lesser penalties. This remains true whatever view one has of the Double Jeopardy Clause.