Opinion ID: 2310561
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Joubert's Challenge to the New Sentence Review by the Law Court

Text: Acting pursuant to a 1989 statute providing for sentence appeals to the Law Court, Joubert filed a petition for appellate review of his life sentence. After a preliminary review of his petition, the three-justice Sentence Review Panel denied the appeal on the ground that it did not have enough merit to justify a review by the full Law Court. Joubert now contends that the 1989 statute changed the law of appellate sentence review in a way to violate the ex post facto clauses of both the United States and Maine Constitutions, U.S. Const. art. I, § 10; Me. Const. art. I, § 11. We do not agree. In 1982, when Ricky Stetson was murdered, a defendant sentenced to imprisonment for one year or more could appeal the sentence only to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Judicial Court, a panel consisting of three justices of the court. See 15 M.R.S.A. §§ 2141, 2142 (1980). In 1989 the legislature repealed sentence review by the Appellate Division and substituted appeals to the full Law Court, subject to the discretionary allowance of a petition for appellate review by a three-justice Sentence Review Panel. See P.L.1989, ch. 218, §§ 1-2, 5 (effective September 30, 1989), codified at 15 M.R.S.A. §§ 2151-2157 (Supp.1991). As an initial proposition, it is immediately apparent that the 1989 statute does not present any ex post facto problem; the post-1989 sentence appeals process on its face is no more onerous than [that provided by] the prior law. Miller v. Florida, 482 U.S. 423, 431, 107 S.Ct. 2446, 2452, 96 L.Ed.2d 351 (1987). Under both the earlier statute and the present one, a defendant's sentence is reviewed by a panel of three justices of the Supreme Judicial Court. The present statute adds an additional level of sentence review by the full Law Court if any one of the three justices finds enough merit in the appeal to grant the defendant's petition. The present review of petitions for appellate review of sentences by the first three justices, even if it ends in denial, involves the same review as was accorded such appeals by the former three-justice Appellate Division. It is obvious that a sentence appeal such as Joubert's that lacks enough merit to get a full substantive review under the post-1989 statute would have been denied also by the Appellate Division under the prior statute. The 1989 sentence appeal statute in no way increases the burdens upon a defendant and in no way decreases his opportunity for appellate review of his sentence. A full ex post facto analysis brings us to the same conclusion. The United States Supreme Court has recently reaffirmed its holding in Beazell v. Ohio, 269 U.S. 167, 169-70, 46 S.Ct. 68, 68-69, 70 L.Ed. 216 (1925), restricting the circumstances in which a change in a criminal statute will violate the constitutional prohibition of ex post facto legislation. See Collins v. Youngblood, 497 U.S. 37, 110 S.Ct. 2715, 111 L.Ed.2d 30 (1990). By the Collins analysis, 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. See id., at ___, 110 S.Ct. at 2719, 111 L.Ed.2d at 39. The 1989 sentence review statute made none of these unconstitutional changes in the law applicable to the case at bar.