Opinion ID: 836009
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Multiple Punishments versus Multiple Prosecutions

Text: Article I, section 12, of the Oregon Constitution provides that [n]o person shall be put in jeopardy twice for the same offence. In the present case, the parties agree that indicting and proceeding against defendant criminally will put him in jeopardy within the meaning of Article I, section 12. However, they differ as to whether civil exclusion under the Portland PFZ ordinance already had placed defendant in jeopardy. Initially, the parties couched their differences in that regard in terms of whether Article I, section 12, prohibits multiple punishments in addition to multiple prosecutions. In the Court of Appeals, the state argued that Article I, section 12, pertains only to multiple criminal prosecutions and that defendant had no double jeopardy claim, because he could not show that he already had been subjected to a criminal prosecution. [5] The state appears to have retreated from that view to some degree, and now argues that jeopardy may arise out of a criminal punishment, i.e., a punishment that lawfully may be imposed only after a criminal prosecution with all of the constitutional protections required in such proceedings. The state also argues, however, that defendant's exclusion under Portland's prostitution-free zone ordinance is not a criminal punishment. The foregoing focus on whether Article I, section 12, applies to cases of multiple punishment is an unnecessary detour, in our view. Although it may be that multiple punishments that arise out of a single proceeding do not create a double jeopardy issue, [6] that proposition does not describe the circumstances of this case. Here, although there is or will be only one formal criminal proceeding, the punishment of exclusion has no real connection to that proceeding. Instead, the exclusion arises out of a separate process, which is initiated by an individual police officer's decision to arrest a suspected offender on prostitution charges and which may, if the offender desires, involve a hearing in court before the exclusion takes effect. See PCC § 14.150.160 (providing for appeal of exclusion notice). In this case, then, the question is not whether the former jeopardy prohibition of Article I, section 12, is implicated when lawmakers attach multiple punishments to the same conduct in, or by means of, a single criminal prosecution. Rather, it is whether the former jeopardy prohibition applies when, in addition to the ordinary criminal consequences of particular forbidden conduct, a second sanction or consequence is meted out in a separate proceeding that is not, at least in name, a criminal prosecution. So understood, that question really is no different than the question that this court recently addressed in State v. Selness, 334 Or. 515, 54 P.3d 1025 (decided this date), viz., was a nominally civil proceeding under Oregon Laws 1989, chapter 791, that resulted in forfeiture of a home on the ground that the home was used in illegal manufacture of marijuana, jeopardy for purposes of Article I, section 12? We turn to that opinion to aid us in resolving the present case.