Court Opinion

ID: 9791725
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:16:43.306203+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:38.141276
License: Public Domain

BRETT, Judge
(specially concurring).
I concur in this decision, that the writ of prohibition should issue, essentially for the reason that the proper administration of justice requires that it issue. This Court may take judicial notice of other records before it; and in doing so, the record of trial for the kidnapping conviction in Oklahoma County has been reviewed. The in-formations in both charges, i. e., Rape in Canadian County, and Kidnapping for Purpose of Extorting a Thing of Value in Oklahoma County, list the same witnesses. Consequently, it seems logical that the same identical evidence and testimony was used in both trials.
The statement of Judge Bussey in his dissent is also correct. Kidnapping and Rape, are separate offenses; but I disagree with him to the extent that under the facts of these cases this petitioner cannot be tried for these two separate offenses.
The object of petitioner’s misconduct was the commission of rape; hence, the *250kidnapping was carried forward to accomplish that purpose. Under these facts, numerous other crimes could be carved out of the circumstances, if it were legal, but the Oklahoma Constitution and Statutes prohibit such carving.
As early as 1914, in Estep v. State, 11 Okl.Cr. 103, 143 P. 64, Judge Doyle wrote:
“To make the offenses the same, the in-formations need not be identical in language. The name of the offense in the two informations may differ, and within our constitutional guaranty the offenses be the same.”
In Estep, supra, the charge pertained to maintaining a place where liquors were dispensed in violation of the statutes; and the defendant had been earlier acquitted on an information for the same offense covering a different period of time; however, some of the same dates were shown on the second information; and therefore, a plea of former jeopardy had been entered. This Court stated, quoting from Wharton on Criminal Procedure:
“A continuing offense is a transaction or a series of acts set on foot by a single impulse, and operated by an unintermit-tent force, no matter how long a time it may occupy.”
Later the Court provided:
“A series of criminal charges cannot, under our system of jurisprudence, be based upon the same criminal act or transaction; a single criminal act cannot be split up or subdivided into two or more distinct offenses and prosecuted as such. If the state elects, through its authorized officers, to prosecute an offense in one of its phases or aspects, and upon his trial the defendant is acquitted by a jury, it cannot afterwards prosecute the same criminal act or series of acts under color of another name. The state will not be permitted to split or divide up an offense into divers parts, and punish each moiety.”
⅜ ⅝ ⅜ ⅝ *
“To give our constitutional provision the force evidently intended by the language used, and to render it effectual, the decisive test is whether the same testimony will support both charges.” (Emphasis added)
There appears to be little doubt but that the testimony in both of petitioner’s trials was the same. Admittedly petitioner did not obtain an acquittal on the rape charge, but he was granted a mistrial because of a hung jury. The State is attempting to proceed again on that charge. It is interesting to note concerning the claim of “rape”, in the record of the kidnapping trial, the doctor who examined the prosecuting witness testified that there was no medical evidence to show that the woman had been subjected to sexual intercourse. Notwithstanding the other reasons stated, in face of that type of evidence, the proper administration of justice seems to demand that the taxpayers be spared the expense of a second trial for rape, if for no other reason.
I concur in the issuance of the writ of prohibition as to District Court of Canadian County, Case No. CRF-69-389.