Court Opinion

ID: 9788634
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:13:07.652319+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:15.177775
License: Public Domain

OPAL A, V.C.J.,
with whom KAUGER and BOUDREAU, JJ., join, dissenting.
¶ 1 The court vacates today the Court of Civil Appeals’ opinion and affirms the trial court’s dismissal order, declaring (a) that two statutes dealing with the State’s right to compensation benefits of incarcerated convicts — one enacted earlier which authorizes seizure of only fifty percent of one’s compensation award1 and the later of the entire award2 — are not in pari materia on the subject of an incarcerated convict’s right to *1084receive adjudged compensation benefits for permanent total disability and (b) that the later-enacted statute, being the most recent expression of legislative will, supersedes the earlier version. Because the court’s pronouncement fails to reach the dispositive issues in this public-law controversy,31 recede from its opinion.
¶ 2 In this controversy the court is not only entirely free, but also bears the duty, to make its own formulation of the questions that must be resolved.4 Two issues, both having a constitutional dimension, appear absolutely necessary for today’s pronouncement. The first is whether the statutory extrajudicial forfeiture of a prisoner’s compensation benefits (for the cost of incarceration) with no duty to account for the actual cost of the prisoner’s institutional maintenance constitutes a “bill of attainder” prohibited by Art. 2 § 15, Okl. Const.5 The other is whether an award’s forfeiture offends the Oklahoma constitutional interdiction against “forfeiture of estate” as an incident of conviction.6 Neither is addressed by today’s pronouncement.7
I
DOES THE STATUTORY EXTRAJUDICIAL FORFEITURE OF A PRISONER’S COMPENSATION BENEFITS (FOR THE EXPENSE OF INCARCERATION) WITH NO DUTY TO ACCOUNT FOR THE ACTUAL COST OF THAT PRISONER’S UPKEEP CONSTITUTE A BILL OF ATTAINDER PROHIBITED BY THE TERMS OF ART. 2 § 15, OKL. CONST.?
*1085¶ 3 A bill of attainder8 is a legislative act that inflicts punishment without a judicial trial.9 If the legislatively inflicted punishment be less than death, the enactment is termed a bill of pains and penalties.10 The provisions of this State’s constitution, Art. 2 § 15,11 which prohibit the legislature from passing a bill of attainder,12 encompass within their terms a like proscription of bills of pains and penalties. In the attainder context “punishment” means more than imprisonment, fine or a death sentence.13 It comprehends “a legislative decree of perpetual exclusion from a chosen vocation” or from some other government-conferred advantage. Most surely, attainder also includes an act which legislatively wills the loss of law-prescribed benefits from an on-the-job injury 14 — the loss to be addressed in this case.
*1086II
DOES FORFEITURE OF COMPENSATION BENEFITS OFFEND THE OKLAHOMA CONSTITUTIONAL INTERDICTION AGAINST “FORFEITURE OF ESTATE” AS AN INCIDENT OF CONVICTION?
¶ 4 Forfeiture upon conviction of a felony or treason was one of three kinds15 of forfeitures recognized by English law at the time of ratification of the Bill of Rights. The institution then paraded under the verbal garb of “forfeiture of estate.” All property, real and personal, of all those who stood convicted of a felony or treason was forfeita-ble to the Crown. This kind of forfeiture, grounded in punishment, was justified by the belief that property was a right derived from society which could be lost by a violator of society’s laws.16
¶ 5 The framers of the U.S. Constitution17 and members of the first Congress18 rejected the use of English common-law forfeiture of estate as a criminal penalty in the United States. The terms of Art. 2 § 15, Okl. Const.,19 explicitly abolish the common law that imposed a forfeiture of estate as an incident of felony conviction20 but adds that the abolition does not include pecuniary fines.
¶ 6 By the terms of 85 O.S.2001 § 22(13)(b)21 the State is authorized to bring about an extrajudicial forfeiture of all compensation awarded anyone convicted of a misdemeanor and, for example, sentenced to a 90-day jail term, to provide itself with reimbursement for the expense of incarceration. The State is given a carte blanche to seize a prisoner’s entire award — whether it be for $20,000 or $20 — without any duty (a) to account for the actual amount spent for the prisoner’s 90-day prison upkeep and (b) to disgorge any excess funds seized in forfeiture above the actual incarceration costs.
¶ 7 Because the court’s opinion declines to decide whether the forfeiture statute in contest is facially violative of the fundamental law’s prohibition (a) against passage of bills of attainder and (b) against forfeitures of *1087estate incident to one’s conviction, I must recede from its pronouncement.

. The terms of 57 O.S.2001 § 549(B)(1) are:
B. The State Board of Corrections shall cause to be placed in an account income from the inmate's employment and any other income or benefits accruing to or payable to and for the benefit of said inmate, including any workers' compensation or Social Security benefits.
1. From this account the State Board of Corrections may charge any inmate working in private prison industries or any other inmate for costs of incarceration not to exceed fifty percent (50%) of any deposits made to said account.
(emphasis added).

. The pertinent terms of 85 O.S.2001 § 22(13)(b) are:
(b) Any employee convicted of a misdemeanor or felony and sentenced to a term of incarcera*1084tion of at least ninety (90) days in this state shall have all benefits for permanent total disability or temporary partial disability awarded by the Workers' Compensation Court and paid during the period of incarceration deposited to the credit of an account established pursuant to Section 549 of Title 57 of the Oklahoma Statutes for distribution in full to the Department of Corrections for costs of incarceration.
(emphasis added).

. The distinction between public and private law is well recognized in the Anglo-American legal system. Blackstone acknowledged the distinctness of these two bodies of law. Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. Ill, p. 1 [private wrongs], Vol. IV, p. 1 [public wrongs] (Wendell's ed. 1859). He defined a private wrong as an infringement or privation of the private or civil rights belonging to individuals, considered merely as individuals, and therefore termed civil injuries, while public wrongs were described as a breach and violation of public rights and duties affecting the entire community, considered as a community. Notwithstanding Blackstone's late eighteenth-century teachings, the term "public law” is not commonly used in the United States. Cappalli, The American Common Law Method (1997), pg. 177.

. This court is never chained to the exact theory on which the case was presented to the trial court when it is resolving purely public-law issues. Davis v. B.F. Goodrich, 1992 OK 14, ¶ 3, 826 P.2d 587, 593-94 (Opala, L, concurring)(citing Reynolds v. Special Indemn. Fund, 1986 OK 64, ¶ 14, 725 P.2d 1265, 1270); Burdick v. Independent School Dist. No. 52 of Oklahoma County, 1985 OK 49, ¶ 10, 702 P.2d 48, 54; McCracken v. City of Lawton 1982 OK 63, ¶ 9, 648 P.2d 18, 21. n. 11.

. The terms of Art. 2 § 15, Okl. Const., are;
No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, nor any law impairing the obligation of contracts, shall ever be passed. No conviction shall work a corruption of blood or forfeiture of estate; Provided, that this provision shall not prohibit the imposition of pecuniary penalties.
(emphasis supplied).
The U.S. Constitution's counterpart targets not only the Congress but also state legislatures. Art. 1 § 10, cl. 1, U.S. Const. Its terms are:
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
(emphasis supplied).
The federal equivalent of this State's prohibition against bills of attainder appears in Art. 1 § 9, cl. 3, U.S. Const. Its terms are:
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

. For the constitutional interdiction of forfeiture of estate, see the pertinent terms of Art. 2 § 15, Old. Const., supra note 5.

. The prisoner challenged, on other grounds, the Department of Correction’s right to retain, for the costs of incarceration, the full amount of his compensation benefits for permanent total disability. For a discussion of the various challenges to prison reimbursement legislation, see George L. Blum, Validity, Construction, and Application of State Statute Requiring Inmate to Reimburse Government for Expense of Incarceration, 13 ALR5lh 872 (1993).

. Bills of attainder were commonly used against political groups the English Parliament found treasonous. Parliament adjudicated activities deemed treasonous and punished them by death. The framers of the United States Constitution — to whom a bill of attainder doubtless meant an act of the legislature that sentenced a person to death and prevented his heirs from inheriting property — deemed the interdiction of bills of attainder to be a necessary constitutional guard against legislative encroachment on the judiciary, federal and state. Jane Welsh, The Bill of Attainder Clause: An Unqualified Guarantee of Process, 50 Brook. L.Rev. 77, 83-85 (1983). In the twentieth centuiy, the U.S. Supreme Court extended the prohibition (against bills of attainder) to all legislative acts that punish, without a trial, either named individuals or easily ascertainable class members. United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303, 66 S.Ct. 1073, 90 L.Ed. 1252 (1946); see also Welsh, supra at 90-93 (discussing the Court's broadened interpretation of the Bill of Attainder Clause).

. Lovett, supra note 8, 328 U.S. at 315, 66 S.Ct. at 1078, citing Cummings v. State of Missouri, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 277, 323, 18 L.Ed. 356 (1866). As a general rule, bills of attainder specifically identify persons or classes of persons who are to be deprived of a right as a kind of punishment. Cummings, supra, (a priest was barred from practising his profession); Ex parte Garland, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 333, 18 L.Ed. 366 (1866) (a lawyer was barred from federal-court practice); Lovett, supra note 8, 328 U.S. at 316, 66 S.Ct. at 1079 (the Court struck down a legislative determination of guilt that resulted in the loss of wages); United States v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437, 443, 85 S.Ct. 1707, 1715, 14 L.Ed.2d 484 (1965) (the Court struck down an act that focused upon easily identifiable members of a class (the Communist Party) and imposed on them the sanction of mandatory forfeiture of a job or office). See also Oklahoma jurisprudence in Golden v. Okfuskee County Election Bd., 1986 OK 57, ¶ 2, 723 P.2d 982, 983 (Opala, J., dissenting); Haley v. Oklahoma Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, 1984 OK CIV APP 58, 1121, 696 P.2d 1046, 1050; Oklahoma Alcoholic Beverage Control Board v. Seely, 1980 OK 1989, ¶¶ 2-3, 621 P.2d 534, 538-39 (Opala, J., concurring in result).

. Cummings, supra note 9, 71 U.S. at 323; Welsh, supra note 8 at 83-84. " 'Pains and penalties' historically consisted of a wide array of punishments: commonly included were imprisonment, banishment, and the punitive confiscation of property by the sovereign.” Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425, 474, 97 S.Ct. 2777, 2806, 53 L.Ed.2d 867 (1977) (citations omitted).

. For the terms of Art. 2 § 15, Okl. Const., see supra note 5.

. State Mut. Life Assur. Co. of America v. Hampton, 1985 OK 19, ¶ 2, n. 3, 696 P.2d 1027, 1035 n. 3 (Opala, J., concurring)

. See Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603, 628, 80 S.Ct. 1367, 1382, 4 L.Ed.2d 1435 (1960) (Douglas, J., dissenting) (a Bulgarian immigrant's social security benefits were forfeited because he had been a member of the communist party). The dissent by Douglas, J., quotes from Irving Brant, 363 U.S. at 629, 80 S.Ct. at 1382 ("Address entitled Bills of Attainder in 1787 and Today. Columbia Law Review dinner 1954, published in 1959 by the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, under the title Congressional Investigations and Bills of Attainder”):
'Today's bill of attainder is broader than the classic form, and not so tall and sharp. There is mental in place of physical torture, and confiscation of tomorrow's bread and butter instead of yesterday's land and gold. What is perfectly clear is that hate, fear and prejudice play the same role today, in the destruction of human rights in America that they did in England when a frenzied mob of lords, judges, bishops and shoemakers turned the Titus Oates blacklist into a hangman's record. Hate, jealousy and spite continue to fill the legislative •attainder lists just as they did in the Irish Parliament of ex-King James.’

. Lovett, supra note 8, 328 U.S. at 315, 66 S.Ct. at 1079; Brown, supra note 9, 381 U.S. at 447, 85 S.Ct. at 1714; Cooper v. Henslee, 257 Ark. 963, 522 S.W.2d 391, 400 (1975)(Fogleman, J., concurring).

. The other two kinds are forfeitures (1) of deodands and (2) in statute-based proceedings. Of the three classes, only forfeitures in statute-based proceedings survive in the United States. The ancient law of deodands is founded on the fiction that an inanimate object (or an animal) may be guilty of wrongdoing. The value of an inanimate object (or an animal) causing the death of the King's subject was forfeitable to the Crown. Austin v. United States, 509 U.S. 602, 611, 113 S.Ct. 2801, 2806, 125 L.Ed.2d 488 (1993) (citing O. Holmes, The Common Law, c. 1 (1881), and 1 Biackstone’s Commentaries, supra note 3 at 300-301). Of the most notable statutory forfeitures known to the English law were those which affected commodities and vessels used in violation of customs and revenue laws. Calero-Toledo v. Pearson Yacht Leasing Co., 416 U.S. 663, 682-83, 94 S.Ct. 2080, 2091-92, 40 L.Ed.2d 452 (1974); Austin, supra, 509 U.S. at 611-13, 113 S.Ct. at 2806-07. For an extended discussion of the three types of forfeiture recognized by the English law during the late eighteenth century, see Austin, supra, 509 U.S. at 611-16, 113 S.Ct. at 2806-09; Calero-Toledo, supra, 416 U.S. at 680-85, 94 S.Ct. at 2090-92. See also State v. Bisaccia, 45 N.J. 504, 213 A.2d 185, 187 (1965). For Oklahoma decisional law, see State v. One 1965 Red Chevrolet Pickup, 2001 OK 82, ¶ 14, 37 P.3d 815, 820-21.

. Austin, supra note 15, 509 U.S. at 611-12, 113 S.Ct. at 2806-07 (citing 1 William Biackstone's Commentaries, supra note 3 at 381-82 and The Palmyra, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat) 1, 14, 6 L.Ed. 531 (1827)); One 1965 Red Chevrolet Pickup, supra, note 15 at ¶ 14, at 820-21. For a brief discussion of instrumentalities of crime and their genesis in the law of forfeiture, see Warden, Md. Penitentiary v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 303, 87 S.Ct. 1642, 1648, 18 L.Ed.2d 782 (1967); Bisaccia, supra note 15 at 187.

. The terms of Art. 3 § 3, cl. 2 of the U.S. Constitution (the treason clause) expressly prohibit the use of English common-law criminal penalty of forfeiture for treason. In addition to the treason clause interdiction, the framers rejected the criminal penalty of forfeiture by prohibiting both the national and state governments from passing bills of attainder. Art. 1 § 9, cl. 3, and § 10, cl. 1, U.S. Const., supra note 5.

. In drafting the earliest U.S. Punishment of Crimes Bill in 1790, the first Congress expressly rejected the use of forfeiture as a criminal penalty. See An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes Against the United States, 1st Cong., 2d Sess., Act of April 30, 1790 § 24 (prohibiting use of forfeiture as criminal penalty for any crime).

. Supra note 5.

. Hampton, supra note 12, at ¶ 2, at 1035 (Opa-la, J., concurring).

. For the terms of 85 O.S.2001 § 22(13)(b), see supra note 2.