Court Opinion

ID: 9652901
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:34:39.70461+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:54.949318
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from that portion of the principal opinion concerning whether defendant’s conviction under Count II for armed criminal action constitutes a second conviction for the same offense in violation of his rights under the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment, applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment and the common law prohibition against double jeopardy as applied in Missouri. Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 89 S.Ct. 2056, 23 L.Ed.2d 707 (1969); State v. Richardson, 460 S.W.2d 537 (Mo. banc 1970); State v. Toombs, 326 Mo. 981, 34 S.W.2d 61 (1930).
The double jeopardy clause prevents the state from punishing a defendant more than once for the same offense. United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., 430 U.S. 564, 568-570 n.6, 97 S.Ct. 1349, 1353 n. 6, 51 L.Ed.2d 642 (1977); State v. Toombs, supra, 34 S.W.2d at 63; State v. Gordon, 536 S.W.2d 811, 818 (Mo.App.19.76). The offenses are “the same” for purposes of double jeopardy unless each requires proof of an additional fact which the other does not. Jeffers v. United States, 432 U.S. 137, 150, 97 S.Ct. 2207, 2216, 53 L.Ed.2d 168 (1977); Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161, 168, 97 S.Ct. 2221, 2227, 53 L.Ed.2d 187 (1977); Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 304, 52 S.Ct. 180, 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932).
The majority opinion, following Kowalski v. Parrott, 533 F.2d 1071 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 844, 97 S.Ct. 125, 50 L.Ed.2d 115 (1976), observes that the “use of a weapon is not an element of first degree robbery, although it may factually be a part of the transaction.” Thus since “the two offenses are not the same in law, appellant’s double jeopardy protection has not been abrogated.” In the present case, however, as discussed later herein, we are *654not dealing with a detached theoretical application of our statutory scheme.
Kowalski, supra, upon which the majority relies, is based in large part upon the traditional reading of Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 52 S.Ct. 180, 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932), the dimension of which is discussed in the principal opinion, and upon Michener v. United States, 157 F.2d 616 (8th Cir.), rev’d, 331 U.S. 789, 67 S.Ct. 1509, 91 L.Ed. 1818 (1946) (per curiam). In Michener, the 8th Circuit panel considered the consecutive conviction and sentencing of the defendant for both manufacture and possession of a counterfeiting plate in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 264 (1940).
“There can be no doubt,” the court said, “but that separate offenses might be charged and proved under this statute, but that does not solve the question here presented. We must interest ourselves not with what might have been done, but what was actually done in this case.” Id. at 618.
The United States Supreme Court, in a 6-3 one-paragraph per curiam opinion reversed the 8th Circuit, citing Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 52 S.Ct. 180, 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932) and Albrecht v. United States, 273 U.S. 1, 47 S.Ct. 250, 71 L.Ed. 505 (1927). Albrecht, involving a multiple count prosecution under the National Prohibition Act, ruled in appropriate part that “[t]he fact that the person sells the liquor which he possessed does not render the possession and the sale necessarily a single offense.” Id. at 11, 47 S.Ct. at 254. In the instant ease, the sale/possession distinction is not helpful. Defendant and his companion committed the robbery, placing their victim in fear by brandishing the weapon which is the singular object of the second count upon which defendant was convicted. Had he committed the robbery without a weapon, he obviously could not have been tried independently for armed criminal action. Thus Albrecht is not instructive because sale and possession of unlawful material are distinctly different crimes. Under the facts of this case, there is nothing distinctive about the crime of armed criminal action.
Blockburger, supra, upon which Michener and the majority opinion here so strongly rely, has been recently and significantly modified with respect to the exclusivity of its test for judging whether one or two offenses have been committed in a multiple count prosecution under circumstances such as are found in the present case.
“The Blockburger test is not the only standard for determining whether successive prosecutions impermissibly involve the same offense. Even if two offenses are sufficiently different to permit the imposition of consecutive sentences, successive prosecutions will be barred in some circumstances where the second prosecution requires relitigation of factual issues already resolved by the first.” Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161, 166 n. 6, 97 S.Ct. 2221, 2226 n. 6, 53 L.Ed.2d 187 (1977).
In the instant case the defendant is being punished twice for two offenses the factual basis of which is exactly identical. No additional fact is here required for his conviction of armed criminal action other than that which was proved as an essential element of his conviction for robbery in the first degree. However we may theoretically construct and construe these statutes so as to recognize that they might be constitutionally secure, this defendant under these facts in this case is being punished twice for the same offense, namely robbery. His rights should not depend upon a conceivable construction of two statutes, his conviction under one of which was wholly and completely dependent upon his conviction under the other. When “ ‘a person has been tried and convicted for a crime which has various incidents included in it, he cannot be a second time tried for one of those incidents without being twice put in jeopardy for the same offense.’ ” Brown v. Ohio, supra, 432 U.S. at 168, 97 S.Ct. at 2226, quoting In re Nielsen, 131 U.S. 176, 188, 9 S.Ct. 672, 33 L.Ed. 118 (1889).
As an example, Brown strongly relies upon and “merely restates” the holding of In re Nielsen, 131 U.S. 176, 9 S.Ct. 672, 33 L.Ed. 118 (1889), where the court held that a conviction of a Mormon on a charge of *655cohabiting with his two wives over a two and one half year period barred a subsequent prosecution for adultery with one of them on the day following the end of that period. The court pointed out that conviction for adultery required proof that the defendant had sexual intercourse with one woman while married to another, while conviction for cohabitation required proof that the defendant lived with more than one woman at the same time. Obviously, these two offenses did not overlap, they were not the same in law, which according to the principal opinion in the present case would mean there was no double jeopardy. Yet, the court in Brown v. Ohio, supra, 432 U.S. at 166 n. 6, 97 S.Ct. at 2226 n. 6, said that the separate offenses in Nielsen were held to be the “same” for purposes of protecting the accused from having “ ‘to run the gantlet’ a second time.”
So it is here. It is true that robbery can be committed without the use of a gun. But as pointed out in Cain v. United States, 19 F.2d 472, 474 (8th Cir. 1927) this does not necessarily save the situation from double jeopardy. In Cain, the 8th Circuit followed Nielsen, supra, and held there was double jeopardy in a case where the defendant was charged in one count with selling narcotics to one Draper and in a second count with sending narcotics to Draper by mailing them to him. The court said: “The question whether the first count does not embrace the identical facts and acts charged in the second count is a serious and difficult one . . . The trouble is not with the law but with the facts. This possibility of a violation of either statute by wholly different acts is readily demonstrable . We think, however, it is a question of what was actually done rather than a question of what might have been done.” When the taking of the property is done by fear produced by the use of a gun, as was the case here, that particular robbery could not be committed without the use of a gun. When the prosecutor established robbery under the facts of the present case he necessarily also established armed criminal action. This makes the defendant run the gantlet twice when he is tried and punished for both.
Needless to say, the fact that this is all being done in one trial with two counts, is no different with respect to the double jeopardy risk than doing it in successive prosecutions, as was the case in Nielsen, supra. The double jeopardy clause protects against multiple punishments for the same offense, North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 717, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969).
I would therefore reverse the conviction on Count II.