Opinion ID: 1453499
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Grady Analysis

Text: Despite certain similarities between the two cases, Grady does not forbid defendant's prosecution for aggravated assault and criminal damage. In Grady, the defendant drove his automobile across a double yellow line and struck two oncoming vehicles, killing one passenger and injuring others. 495 U.S. at 511, 110 S.Ct. at 2087-88. He received two traffic tickets arising from the incident. Id. at 511, 110 S.Ct. at 2088. The first charged him with driving while intoxicated, a misdemeanor under New York law. N.Y.Veh. & Traf.Law § 1192(3) (McKinney 1986). The second charged him with failure to keep to the right of the median, an infraction under New York law. Id. §§ 1120(a) and 155. While prosecutors were gathering evidence for a homicide prosecution, defendant pleaded guilty to the two traffic tickets in Justice Court. Grady, 495 U.S. at 511-512, 110 S.Ct. at 2088. The court accepted his guilty plea. Id. Ultimately, defendant was sentenced to a $350 fine, a $10 surcharge, and had his license revoked for six months. Id. at 513, 110 S.Ct. at 2089. Approximately two months later, defendant was indicted for reckless manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter, negligent homicide and reckless assault. Id. The prosecution's bill of particulars revealed that the state would rely on defendant's intoxicated condition and failure to keep to the right of the median to prove the manslaughter and assault charges. Id. at 513-514, 110 S.Ct. at 2089. Justice Brennan, writing for a 5-4 majority, expanded the analytic framework to be used in resolving double jeopardy challenges to successive prosecutions. Prior to Grady, the Court employed the test set forth in Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 52 S.Ct. 180, 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932). The Grady Court reiterated the test as follows: [T]he Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment prohibits successive prosecutions for the same criminal act or transaction under two criminal statutes whenever each statute does not `requir[e] proof of a fact which the other does not.' Grady, 495 U.S. at 510, 110 S.Ct. at 2087 (citing Blockburger, 284 U.S. at 304, 52 S.Ct. at 182). The Grady Court held that Blockburger establishes the threshold inquiry, and that successive prosecutions surviving the test may still violate the double jeopardy clause under certain circumstances. Those circumstances, according to the Court, are implicated when the government, to establish an essential element of an offense charged in that prosecution, will prove conduct that constitutes an offense for which the defendant has already been prosecuted. Grady, 495 U.S. at 521-522, 110 S.Ct. at 2093. Based on the facts presented in Grady, the Court concluded that the double jeopardy clause barred the second prosecution. The Court reasoned that the state's bill of particulars would prove the entirety of the conduct for which Corbin was convicted  driving while intoxicated and failing to keep to the right of the median  to establish essential elements of the homicide and assault offenses. Id. at 523, 110 S.Ct. at 2094. The key element of Grady is the Court's underlying assumption that the initial proceedings were in fact a prosecution. Corbin was charged with a misdemeanor, entered a plea of guilty, and was subsequently sentenced. There is no indication in Grady that any party or the court contested that the proceedings resulting in guilty pleas in the Town Justice Court were anything but prosecutions. Defendant in the instant case contends that because Corbin was charged and sentenced for a traffic infraction (failure to keep right of the median) under New York law, the holding in Grady should be extended to criminal prosecutions following civil proceedings in Arizona. Whatever the relative merits of this foray into the intricacies of New York law, we believe that defendant and the court of appeals read Grady too expansively. Default judgment was entered against defendant on two civil traffic violations. The proceedings were not criminal in nature, and therefore not prosecutions for double jeopardy purposes. Grady is simply inapplicable to the present case. The Supreme Court's same conduct test was premised on the assumption that a prior prosecution occurred. Because we find that the resolution of civil traffic violations are not prosecutions, see infra, we hold that jeopardy did not attach when the trial court entered default judgment against the defendant. Moreover, we think it highly unlikely that the Supreme Court would depart from the well-settled principle, in multi-prosecution analysis, that the risk to which the [Double Jeopardy] Clause refers is not present in proceedings that are not `essentially criminal,' Breed v. Jones, 421 U.S. 519, 528, 95 S.Ct. 1779, 1785, 44 L.Ed.2d 346 (1975) (quoting Helvering v. Mitchell, 303 U.S. 391, 398, 58 S.Ct. 630, 633, 82 L.Ed. 917 (1938)), without explicitly saying so. See also W. LaFave & J. Israel, Criminal Procedure § 24.1(b) (1984). Grady is a significant addition to double jeopardy jurisprudence, but, as we interpret it, applies only when the conduct at issue has been charged and tried in a prior prosecution.