Court Opinion

ID: 9689127
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:20:57.161087+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:27:30.628921
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Judge
(concurring specially):
Implicit in those cases wherein unconstitutionally discriminatory prosecution is found, there is an element of actual or potential coercion. Whatever crime was committed in those cases was still in praesenti and was calculated to be also in futuro. It was not merely the matter of a person’s or persons’ committing a crime of a nonrepetitive or noncontinuous nature.
A major vice to be found in discriminatory prosecution is in its coercive power, the Damoclean “cease and desist or else.” This is vivified in cases in which injunctive relief has been sought to prevent such prosecutions.
The alleged criminal conduct here involved is, and was at the time of the institution of the prosecution, a thing of the past exclusively. Whatever committee was formed was no longer viable. The members thereof could be punished for whatever crime they committed, but it is inconceivable that a prosecution of them would tend to curb them even in a similar activity in the future any more than it would others.
There is no contention by defendants that anyone had it in for them by reason of who they are. To the contrary their prestigiousness is beyond question and the near unanimity of esteem they enjoy is beyond cavil. A less likely target of discrimination, in its derogatory sense, could hardly be found.
The claim is that the alleged discriminatory conduct is to be seen by the light of the particular objective, an objective that had been accomplished before the prosecution commenced. The anomaly that it now appears that there may be in the near future another election on the same subject does not discount in the least the reality that such was not reasonably foreseeable at the time of the institution of the prosecution, or even at the time of the submission of this case on appeal. No such contention is to be found in the briefs or oral arguments of any of the parties.
There is no evidence to the effect that the flesh and blood and spirit that activated the prosecution of defendants had views in opposition to the defendants on the sub*297ject of the proposed constitutional amendment. There is no evidence that anyone acting on the opposite side of the question was a party to the institution of the prosecution. The result of the election shows prima facie at least that the defendants were on the popular side. Discrimination against entrenched popularity is possible, but it is rare; if true, it partakes of the nature of a paradox. If it exists in this case, it constitutes an enigma that has not been explained, a riddle that has not been solved.
Although I concur in the judgment of reversal and rendition on other points in the opinion, I fail to see improper or unconstitutional discrimination, by whatever characterization it is given, such as “invidious discrimination”, prosecution “with an evil eye and an uneven hand”, “purposeful” discrimination, and discrimination based upon “unjustifiable standard such as race, religion, or other arbitrary classification”, in cases cited in the prevailing opinion in this case.