Court Opinion

ID: 9704389
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:33:59.091721+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:01.749278
License: Public Domain

Ryan, J.
(concurring). I concur with the result but would limit the application of the rule herein announced to the facts of this case.
In Robinson v Neil, 409 US 505; 93 S Ct 876; 35 L Ed 2d 29 (1973), the United States Supreme Court decided that the question of whether a double jeopardy decision should be given limited retroactivity is "not readily susceptible of analysis under the Linkletter [v Walker, 381 US 618; 85 S Ct 1731; 14 L Ed 2d 601 (1965)] line of cases”, because these cases "dealt with those constitutional interpretations bearing on the use of evidence or on a particular mode of trial. Those procedural rights and methods of conducting trials, however, do not encompass all of the rights found in the first eight Amendments. Guarantees that do not relate to these procedural rules cannot, for retroactivity purposes, be lumped conveniently together in terms of analysis”. Id, at 508.
Robinson held that Waller v Florida, 397 US 387; 90 S Ct 1184; 25 L Ed 2d 435 (1970), is fully *537retroactive. Waller held that the concept of dual sovereignty cannot be applied to two prosecutions for the same act, one under municipal law and another under state law. The analysis proceeded in terms of the "same evidence” construction of the Double Jeopardy Clause.
People v White, 390 Mich 245; 212 NW2d 222 (1973), held that the same, transaction test is the proper construction of the term "offense” as it is used in the Double Jeopardy Clause of the state and federal constitutions. That decision was unique in that it encompassed both a substantive constitutional interpretation, and simultaneously created a new procedural mandate.
Substantively, in reading "same transaction” as the equivalent of "same offense”, White swept within the Double Jeopardy Clause all the elementally similar or identical crimes committed "where a single criminal episode involves several victims” or "where a single transaction is divisible into chronologically discrete crimes. E.g., Johnson v Commonwealth, 201 Ky 314; 256 SW 388 (1923) (each of 75 poker hands a separate 'offense’)”. See Ashe v Swenson, 397 US 436, 448, 451; 90 S Ct 1189, 1197, 1198; 25 L Ed 2d 469, 478, 480 (1970) (Brennan, J. concurring).
Procedurally, White compelled the joinder of elementally distinct crimes committed as part of the same transaction, e.g., rape, felonious assault and kidnapping, which theretofore had been prosecuted in separate informations. The Court’s reason for the rule adopted was to curb prosecutorial discretion which was used to sentence shop and harass defendants.
The Court’s motivation in adopting the "same transaction” test in White was, of course, salutary, and although, as Justice Brennan observed dis*538senting in White, the purpose could have been achieved by adopting a court rule requiring joinder of offenses under such circumstances, the Court chose to elevate this procedural mandate to constitutional stature.
This dual aspect of the White decision is crucial in analyzing its retroactive effect. First, cases involving the proscription of multiple prosecutions for the same or similar criminal act deal with the substantive expansion of the Double Jeopardy Clause, and are indeed "not readily susceptible of [retroactivity] analysis”. Therefore, White should be fully retroactive to cases of this nature. Second, however, cases involving the joinder of elementally distinct crimes occurring in the course of a continuous transaction deal with a new, constitutionally compelled, procedural rule. To these cases, the majority’s retroactivity analysis based on the three-pronged test of Linkletter v Walker, supra, and People v Hampton, 384 Mich 669; 187 NW2d 404 (1971), is particularly appropriate.
To cases, like the case at bar, which involve the issue of compulsory joinder, People v White would not apply retroactively.