Court Opinion

ID: 9710849
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:19:01.077415+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:00.331349
License: Public Domain

POLLOCK, J.,
concurring.
I concur in the opinion of the Court except for the following differences with the Court’s double-jeopardy analysis. The Court correctly concludes that in State v. DeLuca, 108 N.J. 98, 107 (1987), we established that a second prosecution will be barred if either the “elements” test or the “evidence” test is satisfied. In DeLuca, the issue was whether the sole evidence of recklessness in a death-by-auto prosecution was intoxication. If so, it would have barred a subsequent prosecution for driving-while-under-the-influence. Id. at 108-09. The reason is that the evidence of intoxication in the first prosecution would have been the sole evidence in the second prosecution. When evidence used to establish an element of the first offense is the sole evidence of an element of the second offense, prosecution of the second offense violates double jeopardy.
In my opinion, DeLuca should not be read as necessarily requiring that to satisfy the “evidence” test the same evidence used in the first prosecution must be the sole evidence in the second. That indeed was the factual setting in DeLuca, but I *711believe the holding of that case should also apply if the same evidence used in the first prosecution is the sole evidence of an element of an offense in the second prosecution. Thus, in State v. Dively, 92 N.J. 573, 583 (1983), we found that a subsequent prosecution for death-by-auto should have been barred because the sole evidence of the element of recklessness in that prosecution was the evidence of intoxication that provided the basis for the earlier prosecution for drunk driving. Similarly, in State v. Churchdale Leasing, Inc., 115 N.J. 83, 106-07 (1989), a case involving multiple punishment, not multiple prosecutions, we concluded that the imposition of multiple punishment violated the double-jeopardy clause because the same evidence was used to prove an element of two different motor vehicle offenses. Evidence that defendant’s vehicles weighed over 80,000 pounds was needed to prove not only that the defendant operated its vehicles above the gross weight allowed by law, an element of N.J.S.A. 39:3-84b(4), but also that it operated them above their registered weight, an element of N.J.S.A. 39:3-20. See also Thomas, Prosecution for the Same Offense: In Search of a Definition, 71 Iowa L.Rev. 323, 397 (1986) (discussing how Vitale established two-prong double-jeopardy test and providing that the “necessary element test [described in DeLuca as the “evidence test”] asks whether both prosecutions require proof of the same conduct as an essential element.”).
In sum, I believe that DeLuca should be read as barring a second prosecution not only when the same evidence in the first trial is the sole evidence of the second offense, but also when the same evidence in the first trial is the sole evidence of an element of an offense in the second prosecution. With that qualification, I join the opinion of the Court.