Court Opinion

ID: 9748973
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:19:18.129344+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:41.168644
License: Public Domain

Dalianis, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part. Because I agree with the majority’s analysis in Part I of its opinion, I concur in that part of the opinion. I write separately because I would affirm the trial court’s dismissal of the indictments on double jeopardy grounds and, thus, dissent from Part II of the opinion.
The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Federal Constitution provides that no person shall “be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” U.S. Const, amend. V. It “protects a defendant’s rights in three ways: First, it protects against a second prosecution for the same offense after an acquittal. Second, it protects against a second prosecution for the same offense after a conviction. Third, it protects against multiple punishments for the same offense.” State v. Bailey, 127 N.H. 811, 814 (1986) (quotation omitted); see United States v. Ursery, 518 U.S. 267, 273 (1996). The defendant asserts a violation of the third category of protection.
To determine whether the defendant was subject to multiple punishments for the same offense, we must determine the proper unit of prosecution intended by the legislature. See State v. Richard, 147 N.H. 340, 342 (2001). “We give the language of a statute a commonsensical meaning,” and apply the rule of lenity only if we find the statutory language to be ambiguous. State v. Cobb, 143 N.H. 638, 647 (1999) (quotation omitted).
The Criminal Code defines a “pattern of sexual assault” to mean “committing more than one act under RSA 632-A:2 or RSA 632-A:3, or both, upon the same victim over a period of 2 months or more and within a period of 5 years.” RSA 632-A:l, I-c (2007). In Richard, we determined that the legislature intended the unit of prosecution in a pattern offense to be the pattern itself. See Richard, 147 N.H. at 342-44. This is consistent with our decision in State v. Fortier, 146 N.H. 784, 791 (2001), in which we explained that the legislature intended the pattern statute to “criminalize a *780continuing course of sexual assaults, not isolated instances.” Thus, in Fortier, we ruled that the “essential culpable act” in a pattern offense was “the pattern itself, that is, the occurrence of more than one sexual assault over a period of time, and not the specific assaults comprising the pattern.” Fortier, 146 N.H. at 791. To secure a conviction under the pattern statute, therefore, “the State must prove to a unanimous jury ... (1) that the defendant engaged in more than one prohibited act under RSA 632-A:2 or 632-A:3; and (2) that the acts occurred over a period of two months or more and within a period of five years.” State v. Hannon, 151 N.H. 708, 713-14 (2005) (quotation omitted).
I believe that the indictments at issue violate the Federal Double Jeopardy Clause because they charge a single offense — a single pattern— in more than one count. See United States v. Brandon, 17 F.3d 409, 422 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 820 (1994). Each indictment alleges the same prohibited act against the same victim during the same five-year period. Here, there are not “multiple patterns of sexual assault involving a single victim ... during a common time frame,” but only one pattern. Richard, 147 N.H. at 343. As we explained in Richard, “When seeking convictions on multiple pattern indictments that charge numerous assaults within a common time frame inflicted on a single victim,... the pattern indictments cannot rely on the same underlying act or acts to comprise the charged pattern____[T]wo indictments charging a common time period cannot charge the same type of sexual assault.” Id.
The majority contends that the patterns alleged are different because they comprise “three separate sets of acts during three discrete time periods at three different locations.” I disagree. While in Richard, the indictments “each charged a particular variant of sexual assault different from the type charged in the other patterns,” here, each indictment charged the same variant of sexual assault. Id. Moreover, different patterns were not alleged merely because the same five-year period was divided into separate increments and the assaults were alleged to have occurred at different addresses. “The Double Jeopardy Clause is not such a fragile guarantee that prosecutors can avoid its limitations by the simple expedient of dividing a single crime into a series of temporal or spatial units.” Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161, 169 (1977); cf. State v. Sweeney, 151 N.H. 666, 678 (2005) (time and location are not essential elements of aggravated felonious sexual assault or felonious sexual assault). The statutorily proscribed conduct is a continuous offense, a pattern of conduct, which a prosecutor cannot individuate temporally or geographically. See Brown, 432 U.S. at 169.
For all of the above reasons, therefore, I would affirm the trial court’s dismissal of the indictments.