Court Opinion

ID: 9744473
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:03:48.954736+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:49.389597
License: Public Domain

FRIEDLANDER, Judge,
concurring in result.
I agree that Valentin’s convictions of both conspiracy to commit kidnaping and kidnap-ing violated the Indiana Constitution’s double jeopardy provision and therefore the petition for rehearing should be denied. I write separately to clarify the basis for my vote.
In recent years, the United States Supreme Court has modified the federal double jeopardy analysis. See United States v. Dixon, 509 U.S. 688, 113 S.Ct. 2849, 125 L.Ed.2d 556 (1993). On the question of multiple punishments, the analysis under Dixon focuses only upon the elements of the offenses in question, rather than upon the facts which must be proven. The practical effect of the new analysis is that some convictions are affirmed that formerly would have been found in violation of double jeopardy principles. The instant case is such a case.
As Judge Staton notes, our supreme court recently recognized and applied the new analysis to the issue of federal double jeopardy in Games v. State. However, the court expressly reserved for another day the question of whether, and how, Dixon impacts the double jeopardy analysis for challenges arising under the Indiana Constitution. See also Potter v. State, 684 N.E.2d 1127 (Ind.1997). We are confronted here with the question our supreme court has yet to address, namely, does the analysis of double jeopardy questions arising under the Indiana Constitution change in lockstep with the federal analysis? Implicit in this question is the question of why there has not previously been an independent Indiana double jeopardy analysis. Put another way, why have the analyses for double jeopardy challenges arising under the United States and Indiana Constitutions, respectively, been one and the same?
It is significant to me that the respective texts of the double jeopardy provisions contained in the United States and Indiana Constitutions aré not precisely the same. See U.S. Const, amend. V; Ind. Const, art 1, § 14. Therefore, it cannot be said that the previously coterminous analyses were based upon identical texts. From this, I conclude that our courts adopted the pre-Dixon federal analysis for challenges arising under the Indiana Constitution because such was deemed proper in view of the specific text of Article 1, § 14. Although it also happened that the same analysis was applied to challenges arising under the United States Constitution, such does not indicate to me that the analysis under the Indiana Constitution necessarily was intended to mirror the analysis under the United States Constitution.
Until our supreme court indicates otherwise, I believe that, because the text of Article 1, § 14 of the Indiana' Constitution has not changed, the analysis under that provision remains unchanged, regardless of whether the analysis of its federal counterpart has been modified. For these reasons, I concur in the decision to deny the petition for rehearing.