Opinion ID: 2631032
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Unitary Conduct Depends upon the Harm Proscribed by the Statute at Issue

Text: {63} I agree entirely with the majority's recognition that double jeopardy precludes a defendant from being convicted of both felony murder and its predicate. See Maj. Op. ¶¶ 20, 23. Interestingly, in Jackson, a habeas case decided soon after Contreras, we implicitly understood Contreras to hold exactly what the majority does now. See 1996-NMSC-054, 122 N.M. 433, 925 P.2d 1195. It appears that Jackson has never been cited for this proposition. Despite my admiration of the majority opinion, I find it necessary to discuss why I believe Swafford, or at least our interpretation of that case, is inconsistent with United States Supreme Court precedent. {64} The determination under Swafford of whether a defendant's conduct underlying each charge is unitary has served as a substitution for an analysis of whether that conduct is part of the same act or transaction pursuant to Brown. See Brown, 432 U.S. at 169-70, 97 S.Ct. 2221. That is, we implicitly determined that whether a defendant's conduct underlying two charges is the same act or transaction depends on whether that same conduct is unitary. All things being equal, this would be a mere question of semantics. However, the framework we erected in Swafford on the unitary-conduct question focused our analytical scope too narrowly. {65} In Swafford, we partly relied upon a law review article to fashion our two-part test. Swafford, 112 N.M. at 13, 810 P.2d at 1233 (citing George C. Thomas III, A Unified Theory of Multiple Punishment, 47 U. Pitt. L.Rev. 1, 12-25 (1985)). Professor Thomas argued that the question of whether double jeopardy is violated under the multiple punishment prong hinges on three components: (1) whether the conduct is unitary; (2) whether the statutes proscribe the same conduct; and (3) whether the legislature authorized multiple punishments. See Thomas, supra, at 5-8. Professor Thomas further acknowledged, however, that [t]he same offense definitional issue contains the first two `component issues': (1) whether the underlying conduct was unitary, and (2) whether the statutory definitions are the same. Id. at 11. This observation tracks Supreme Court precedent. That is, Professor Thomas simply reiterated what I have already discussedthat to determine whether two offenses are the same for purposes of double jeopardy, courts must determine: (1) whether the conduct underlying each was part of the same act or transaction ( i.e., whether the conduct is unitary); and (2) whether the elements of one charge are subsumed within the other. {66} Swafford, a double-description case, read the unitary-conduct question to mean that if the defendant commits two discrete acts violative of the same statutory offense, but separated by sufficient indicia of distinctness, then a court may impose separate, consecutive punishments for each offense. 112 N.M. at 13, 810 P.2d at 1233 (emphasis added). Besides not recognizing Brown, one error made in Swafford was that the Court conflated the unit-of-prosecution issue with the double-description issue. That is, assuming it true that double jeopardy is not violated if a defendant is punished for multiple violations of the same statutory offense ( i.e., the exact same statute) so long as the defendant's actions are separated by sufficient indicia of distinctness, this does not mean that there is no double jeopardy violation when a defendant is punished twice for a greater- and lesser-included offense under the same circumstances. [4] In other words, Swafford incorrectly assumed that if one of the charges is a lesser-included offense of the other, this is the same thing as saying that they are the same statutory offense. By doing so, the court was able to temporally and spatially divide the defendant's actions into discrete units. See also id. (observing in a double-description case that the double jeopardy clause clearly cannot operate to prohibit prosecution, conviction, and punishment in a single trial for discrete acts violative of the same statute  (emphasis added)). {67} In his article, however, Professor Thomas recognized that, in accordance with Brown, whether a defendant's conduct underlying each charge is unitary with another is wholly dependent on the conduct the legislature intended to proscribe: [T]he unitary conduct question is not whether the physical actions of the accused are discretethey clearly were in Brown  but is, instead, whether the actions constitute a single course of conduct prohibited by the statute. If the defendant's separate physical acts are committed within the scope of that legislatively defined course of conduct, the conduct is unitary for purposes of the double jeopardy clause. Thomas, supra, at 18 (footnote omitted); see also id. at 19 n. 95 (stating that whether conduct is unitary ultimately depend[s] on determining the precise harm proscribed by the statutes at issue rather than analyzing the defendant's physical actions); id. at 20 ([T]he unitary conduct issue depends entirely on what the legislature intended to be the unit of conviction, rather than on a space-time analysis of the defendant's physical actions. (footnote omitted)). Thus, by misreading Professor Thomas's law review and inadvertently conflating the double-description and unit-of-prosecution issues, Swafford read the unitary-conduct question too narrowly. {68} I also note that because we mistakenly believed in Swafford that whether a defendant's charged conduct is unitary is largely contingent upon a spatial and temporal analysis of the defendant's conduct, we stated that the United States Supreme Court assumed that the rape and murder in Whalen were part of a single criminal episode. See Swafford, 112 N.M. at 13, 810 P.2d at 1233. In fact, the Supreme Court did not make this assumption. Rather, it simply recognized that the conduct underlying the predicate felony of a felony-murder charge is necessarily unitary with the murder. This is because a felony-murder statute, by its very nature, requires that the murder occur during the commission of the predicate felony. This, in turn, necessarily means that the two events are part of the same act or transaction since the felony-murder statute proscribes a course of conduct that necessarily includes the conduct underlying the predicate felony. Thus, because it comports with Supreme Court precedent, I would adopt the view that a determination of whether a defendant's conduct underlying each charge is unitary always depends solely upon what course of conduct our Legislature proscribednot simply upon the discrete physical acts or objectives of the defendant. See Thomas, supra, at 23-25 (The unitary conduct determination is made by comparing the defendant's conduct to the basic unit of conviction defined by the statute or statutes in question and tempering the result with the rule of lenity. (footnote omitted)). {69} While I agree that Swafford referred to legislative intent in discussing both the same offense and intent to punish questions, see Maj. Op. ¶ 24, our long line of subsequent precedent has undoubtedly construed Swafford to mean that we do not consider legislative intent at all unless we first determine that a defendant's conduct was unitary in time and space. In the felony-murder context alone, we have done so in at least eight published opinions. See State v. Bernal, 2006-NMSC-050, ¶ 11, 140 N.M. 644, 146 P.3d 289; State v. DeGraff, 2006-NMSC-011, ¶ 31, 139 N.M. 211, 131 P.3d 61; State v. Barrera, 2001-NMSC-014, ¶ 36, 130 N.M. 227, 22 P.3d 1177; State v. Foster, 1999-NMSC-007, ¶ 35, 126 N.M. 646, 974 P.2d 140; State v. Mora, 1997-NMSC-060, ¶ 71, 124 N.M. 346, 950 P.2d 789; State v. Livernois, 1997-NMSC-019, ¶ 22, 123 N.M. 128, 934 P.2d 1057; State v. Kersey, 120 N.M. 517, 523, 903 P.2d 828, 834 (1995); State v. Ortega, 112 N.M. 554, 571, 817 P.2d 1196, 1213 (1991). {70} This is how I would summarize a modification of Swafford to bring our double-jeopardy jurisprudence in line with United States Supreme Court precedent. The general rule is that multiple punishments for the same offense violate the Double Jeopardy Clause unless our Legislature has clearly authorized otherwise. To ascertain whether two charges are the same offense, a court must first determine if, pursuant to the Blockburger same-elements test, one charge is subsumed by the elements of the other. If so, the court must then determine if the conduct underlying each charge is part of the same act or transaction, that is, if the conduct is unitary. Of course, if the two charges are statutorily the same (a unit-of-prosecution case) one need only answer the unitary-conduct question to determine whether the charges are the same offense. Whether the defendant's conduct is unitary depends entirely on what conduct the Legislature intended to proscribenot on a simple analysis of the spatial and temporal division between the defendant's actions or the type of force used to commit each act. If a charge is a lesser-included offense of the other and if the defendant's conduct underlying each charge is part of the same act or transaction, then the two offenses are the same offense and a court must then determine whether our Legislature clearly authorized multiple punishments for that same offense. Under the rule of lenity, statutory silence and ambiguity on this question is construed in favor of the defendant. If our Legislature did not clearly authorize multiple punishments, then the lesser of the defendant's convictions must be reversed. {71} Although in the final analysis I am suggesting a further deviation from our existing precedent than the majority contemplates, we are bound by the United States Supreme Court's interpretation of the United States Constitution, and we must endeavor to refrain from unduly encroaching on the functions of the legislative branch of this State. Cockrell v. Bd. of Regents of N.M. State Univ., 2002-NMSC-009, ¶ 27, 132 N.M. 156, 45 P.3d 876. See also State ex rel. Serna v. Hodges, 89 N.M. 351, 354, 552 P.2d 787, 790 (1976) (recognizing that Supreme Court precedent interpreting the U.S. Constitution is binding upon us), overruled in part on other grounds by State v. Rondeau, 89 N.M. 408, 412, 553 P.2d 688, 692 (1976); see also State v. Martinez, 2002-NMSC-008, ¶ 64, 132 N.M. 32, 43 P.3d 1042 (Serna, C.J., dissenting) (This Court cannot reinterpret the federal constitution contrary to Supreme Court precedent.); cf. Dixon, 509 U.S. at 712, 113 S.Ct. 2849 (Although stare decisis is the `preferred course' in constitutional adjudication, `when governing decisions are unworkable or are badly reasoned, this Court has never felt constrained to follow precedent.' (quoting Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808, 827, 111 S.Ct. 2597, 115 L.Ed.2d 720 (1991))). Furthermore, it is important to point out that prosecutors will typically not have their hands tied. For instance, as happened in this case, a prosecutor may still charge a defendant with felony murder and several other felonies, only one of which is the predicate to the felony murder. In such a scenario, the defendant could still be convicted of felony murder and all of the non-predicate felonieswith sentences on all or some of those non-predicate felonies running consecutively to his or her life sentence for first-degree murder. See, e.g., Meeks v. State, 604 So.2d 748, 753 (Miss.1992) (It may well be that the prosecution could have achieved the practical end it here defends through other means. Had it selected burglary as the underlying felony incident to the capital murder charge and left the kidnapping . . . wholly aside from that charge, likely separate prosecution and double conviction would stand. (citation omitted)). {72} Frazier was unconstitutionally twice punished for the same offense when he was convicted of both kidnapping and felony murder predicated on kidnapping. The elements of kidnapping were subsumed within the elements of felony murder predicated on kidnapping. Because the felony-murder statute proscribes killings that occur during the course of any felony, and because Frazier's felony-murder charge was contingent upon the kidnapping, Frazier's conduct underlying the kidnapping and murder of Knolls was unitary. That is, the conduct underlying both charges was part of the same act or transaction. Thus, Frazier's kidnapping and felony-murder charges were the same offense. Double jeopardy was violated by his dual convictions of these charges since our Legislature has not clearly authorized multiple punishments in such situations. Accordingly, I would also vacate Frazier's conviction of kidnapping. However, because I would go further and actually modify Swafford to bring it into conformity with the United States Supreme Court's precedent on double jeopardy, I specially concur with Justice Bosson's well-written opinion.