Opinion ID: 2056690
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Heading: the maine constitution

Text: [¶ 66] The Maine Constitution provides an independent basis for decision. We interpret the Maine Constitution independently of the Federal and have the authority to interpret language in the Maine Constitution as providing more protection to our residents than similar or identical language in the Federal Constitution. See State v. Caouette, 446 A.2d 1120, 1122 (Me. 1982) ([F]ederal decisions do not serve to establish the complete statement of controlling law but rather to delineate a constitutional minimum....). The United States Supreme Court has long held that, despite its interpretation of federal constitutional provisions, the States are free, pursuant to their own law, to adopt a higher standard. They may indeed differ as to the appropriate resolution of the values they find at stake. Lego v. Twomey, 404 U.S. 477, 489, 92 S.Ct. 619, 30 L.Ed.2d 618 (1972). Thus, the Federal Constitution prescribes the minimum mandatory constitutional standards that states must afford their citizens. State v. Collins, 297 A.2d 620, 626 (Me.1972). [¶ 67] Consistent with this discussion in Lego, we held in Collins that the Maine Constitution provides greater protection to its citizens than the Federal Constitution in adopting a higher standard of proof necessary to establish the voluntariness of a confession because the value expressed in the provision has been endowed with the highest priority by being embodied in a constitutional guarantee. Id.; State v. Rees, 2000 ME 55, ¶ 8, 748 A.2d 976, 979. Similarly, in Caouette, we interpreted more broadly than the United States Supreme Court the constitutional requirement that statements made by a defendant be voluntary. 446 A.2d at 1122-23. More recently, in Rees, we discussed that a more protective standard [for suppressing a defendant's statements] is warranted under Maine law. 2000 ME 55, ¶ 9, 748 A.2d at 979. [¶ 68] Other states have held that sex offender registration laws violate the ex post facto clauses of their state constitutions even in circumstances in which they would not violate the Federal Constitution. For example, in a state law challenge following the United States Supreme Court decision in Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84, 123 S.Ct. 1140, 155 L.Ed.2d 164 (2003), the Alaska Supreme Court applied the federal intent-effects test, [19] but found that the Alaska sex offender registration law violated the state constitution, which is more protective than the Federal despite the use of similar language. Doe v. Alaska, 189 P.3d 999, 1003, 1007, 1019 (Alaska 2008). The Indiana Supreme Court as well held that a sex offender registration act was unconstitutional under the state constitution as applied to the defendant, even when using the federal test. See Wallace v. Indiana, 905 N.E.2d 371, 378 (Ind.2009). [¶ 69] Here, we have reason to apply a higher standard. The location of the ex post facto clauses within the broader constitutional schemes of the Maine and United States Constitutions indicates their unique underlying purposes. Maine's ex post facto clause is found not in article IV, which sets out the powers of the Legislature, but is instead found in article I, which declares the personal rights of Maine's citizens. See Me. Const. art. I, § 11. By contrast, the Federal Ex Post Facto Clause is found not in the Bill of Rights, which enumerates citizens' federal personal rights, but rather in article I, section 9, which describes the powers and limitations of the legislative branch of the federal government. See U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 3. [¶ 70] The location of a provision within a constitution bears as much significance as the provision's text itself. Chief Justice Marshall recognized this point when construing the Necessary and Proper Clause in McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 17 U.S. 316, 419-20, 4 L.Ed. 579 (1819). Rebuffing Maryland's argument that the clause limited Congress's power to enact legislation, the Chief Justice deftly pointed to the clause's placement among the powers of Congress, not among the limitations on those powers. Id. at 419. Had the framers intended by this clause, to restrain the free use of means which might otherwise have been implied, that intention would have been inserted in another place. Id. at 420 (emphasis added). [¶ 71] The respective placements of the ex post facto clauses in the federal and state constitutional schemes indicate that the Maine Constitution, unlike its federal counterpart, declares that the right to be free of ex post facto laws is a personal right, and not simply a limitation of legislative power, as it is in the United States Constitution. See Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 1-13 at 41-42 (3d ed. 2000) (stating that when the text [of the Constitution] is silent or ambiguous... [courts often must] rely `on notions of a constitutional planthe implicit ordering of relationships within the [governmental] system,' and explaining that `[t]he tacit postulates yielded by that ordering are as much engrained in the fabric of the document as its express provisions, because without them the Constitution is denied force and often meaning' (quoting Nevada v. Hall, 440 U.S. 410, 433, 99 S.Ct. 1182, 59 L.Ed.2d 416 (1979) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting))). Because of this difference, we should analyze the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act of 1999, 34-A M.R.S. §§ 11201-11256 (2008), under the Maine Constitution, acknowledging its greater protection to this personal right. [¶ 72] One of the greater protections afforded by our Constitution should be a standard of proof that is not as onerous as the clearest proof standard, which is both unnecessary and excessive when applying the ex post facto clause of the Maine Constitution. The Supreme Court's standard requiring the clearest proof to find a statute that is intended to be civil to instead be an ex post facto law is not controlling. See Caouette, 446 A.2d at 1122; Collins, 297 A.2d at 626-27. Instead, pursuant to well-established jurisprudence in this State, any constitutional challenge to a statute is subject to the presumption that the statute is constitutional. State v. Falcone, 2006 ME 90, ¶ 5, 902 A.2d 141, 142. We need not employ a more onerous standard under the Maine Constitution. I would follow the Alaska Supreme Court in adhering to the presumption of constitutionality approach, and not impose a heightened presumption requiring `clearest proof' ... [which] could threaten rights protected by [our State] Constitution and might be inconsistent with the responsibilities of this court. Doe, 189 P.3d at 1008 n. 62.