Opinion ID: 2056690
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Ex Post Facto Provisions of the United States and Maine Constitutions are Coextensive

Text: [¶ 16] The United States Constitution directs: No State shall ... pass any ... ex post facto Law. U.S. Const. art. I, § 10, cl. 1. Similarly, the Maine Constitution provides, The Legislature shall pass no ... ex post facto law. Me. Const. art. I, § 11. The prohibition on ex post facto laws applies only to penal statutes which disadvantage the offender affected by them. Collins v. Youngblood, 497 U.S. 37, 41, 110 S.Ct. 2715, 111 L.Ed.2d 30 (1990). [¶ 17] In Collins, the United States Supreme Court comprehensively reviewed the history of interpretation of the ex post facto clause. Id. at 40-52, 110 S.Ct. 2715. Summarizing, the Court stated that the ex post facto clause prohibits laws that retroactively alter the definition of crimes or increase the punishment for criminal acts. Id. at 43, 110 S.Ct. 2715. The Collins Court described the criteria to be used for measuring whether or not a law imposing requirements on persons previously convicted of a crime is constitutionally prohibited as ex post facto: It is settled, by decisions of this Court so well known that their citation may be dispensed with, that any statute which punishes as a crime an act previously committed, which was innocent when done; which makes more burdensome the punishment for a crime, after its commission, or which deprives one charged with crime of any defense available according to law at the time when the act was committed, is prohibited as ex post facto. Id. at 42, 110 S.Ct. 2715 (quoting Beazell v. Ohio, 269 U.S. 167, 169-70, 46 S.Ct. 68, 70 L.Ed. 216 (1925)). [¶ 18] The Collins criteria are stated in the alternative; violation of any one prohibition renders a law a violation of the ex post facto clause. The constitutional prohibition on any statute ... which makes more burdensome the punishment for a crime, after its commission looks to, among other things, the burdens subsequently imposed on persons previously sentenced. Id. [¶ 19] Shortly after Collins, we adopted a similarly-worded standard for ex post facto analysis in State v. Joubert, 603 A.2d 861, 869 (Me.1992). We stated that an ex post facto violation exists only: i) if the new statute punishes as a crime an act that was innocent when done, or ii) if it makes more burdensome the punishment for a crime after its commission, or iii) if it deprives one charged with crime of a defense available according to law at the time the act was committed. Id. (citing Collins, 497 U.S. at 42, 110 S.Ct. 2715). [¶ 20] Letalien contends that we should abandon the view that the Maine Constitution's ex post facto prohibition is coextensive with the Federal Constitution's prohibition. He urges us to construe the Maine Constitution as affording greater protection to individuals than its federal counterpart because the ex post facto clause appears in the Maine Constitution's Declaration of Rights article, whereas the federal ex post facto clause is set forth as a limitation on the power of the legislative branch in the article establishing legislative authority. Compare Me. Const. art. I, § 11, with U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 3, § 10, cl. 1. [¶ 21] That the framers of the Federal Constitution chose to include a prohibition on ex post facto laws in the body of the Constitution itself suggests the high degree of importance they attached to it. The ex post facto clause, along with the protection of trial by jury in criminal cases, U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 3; ban on religious tests, U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 3; ban on bills of attainder, U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 3, § 10, cl. 1; the narrow definition of treason, U.S. Const. art. III, § 3, cl. 1; and the writ of habeas corpus, U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 2; were all included in the original Constitution and were intended by the framers of the Constitution to protect individual liberty. See Leonard W. Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights 28-29 (1999). These protections were placed within various articles of the Constitution that, by design, did not have a separate article declaring individual rights based on the belief that the Constitution's function was to provide for the existence of the federal government rather than to enumerate rights not divested of the people. See Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 1-3 at 8-9 n. 8 (3d ed. 2000); see also Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights 20-21. James Madison explained that the Constitutional Convention had not adopted a bill of rights for fear that a positive declaration of some of the most essential rights might be construed as exclusive, thus denying the public of any unexpressed rights. Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, 448 U.S. 555, 578, 100 S.Ct. 2814, 65 L.Ed.2d 973 (1980) (quoting 5 Writings of James Madison 271 (G. Hunt ed. 1904)). [¶ 22] Many people who opposed ratification of the Constitution did so because of the absence of a bill of rights that would safeguard basic freedoms. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 1-3 at 8-9 n. 8; see also New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713, 715-17, 91 S.Ct. 2140, 29 L.Ed.2d 822 (1971) (Black, J. concurring). The original Constitution was ratified only because crucial states were willing to accept the promise of a bill of rights in the form of subsequent amendments to the Constitution. Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights 31-32. [¶ 23] The framers' decision to include the ex post facto clause in the body of the Constitution adopted in 1787, and not to defer consideration to the amendment process that would follow, is evidence that the framers viewed the federal ban on ex post facto laws as fundamental to the protection of individual liberty. [6] [¶ 24] Similarly, the placement of a nearly-identically-worded ex post facto prohibition in the Declaration of Rights section of the Maine Constitution more than thirty years after the adoption of the Bill of Rights reflects that the framers of the Maine Constitution also regarded the prohibition as being fundamental to the protection of individual liberty. As originally adopted, the Maine Constitution declares the rights of individuals in an article expressly designated for that purpose. Unlike the framers of the Federal Constitution, the framers of the Maine Constitution had no reason to defer consideration of the ex post facto prohibition or other protections related to individual rights to an amendment process that would take place after it was adopted. Accordingly, the location of the federal and Maine ex post facto prohibitions within their respective constitutions is a function of history and the manner in which each constitution was developed, and does not establish that the Maine prohibition was intended to afford greater or different protections than the federal prohibition. [¶ 25] Thus, we conclude that the ex post facto clauses of the Maine and United States Constitutions are interpreted similarly and are coextensive, and a statute violates the prohibition against ex post facto laws if it: (1) punishes as criminal an act that was not criminal when done, (2) makes more burdensome the punishment for a crime after it has been committed, or (3) deprives the defendant of a defense that was available according to law at the time the act was committed. See Collins, 497 U.S. at 42, 110 S.Ct. 2715; State v. Chapman, 685 A.2d 423, 424 (Me. 1996); Joubert, 603 A.2d at 869.