Court Opinion

ID: 9746471
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:18:07.630339+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:13.553949
License: Public Domain

*293Justice EAKIN,
dissenting.
I dissent on two points. First, the majority holds an “offense” for purposes of § 1532(c) means a single criminal episode; I believe this interpretation is inconsistent with both the language and the aim of § 1532(c). Secondly, even if the statute means “episode” when it says “offense,” the burden of establishing that 16 crimes over several months are really a single episode must fall on the party so claiming—it cannot be PennDOT’s burden to establish the “lack of single episode” when it is not a party to the underlying criminal investigation or conviction, and unlike appellee, has no pre-suspension knowledge of the potential issue, much less access to the evidence needed to address such a burden.
Section 1532(c) provides that suspension shall occur when PennDOT receives notice of a licensee’s “conviction of any offense.” The statute defines “conviction” as “any conviction ... for any of the offenses” listed in the first paragraph, See 75 Pa.C.S. § 1532(c)(2). The statute does not address whether multiple counts arising from a single act or episode are to be treated differently, but as the Commonwealth Court noted in Lauer v. PennDOT, 666 A.2d 779 (Pa.Cmwlth.1995) (en banc), “the focus of [the statute] is on ‘offenses,’ not ‘criminal acts’ or the facts surrounding them.” Id., at 782. The statute does not differentiate between convictions arising from a single episode and convictions arising from separate episodes, and that is telling; “[although ‘one is admonished to listen attentively to what a statute says[; o]ne must also listen attentively to what it does not say.’ ” Kmonk-Sullivan v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, 567 Pa. 514, 788 A.2d 955, 962 (2001) (citation omitted).
The phrase “conviction of an offense” is not one which involves the complex nuances my colleagues import to it. The operative act which mandates the suspension is the offense— the operative act which triggers the imposition of that suspension is notice of the conviction. Adding the word “conviction” merely ensures that licenses are not suspended unless and until the commission of the offense is established in court.
*294Regardless, one word the statute does not use is “episode.” I agree it is often difficult to determine where one episode ends and a separate one begins, but there is something inherently counterintuitive about a four-month “episode.” A course of similar conduct does not make something a single episode. If one steals 16 cars in four months, it is a business, not an episode. The same goes for bottles of pills; there were 16 counts here for a reason.
In the present case, the Commonwealth Court expressed the inability to determine the specifics of the offenses,1 but we do know that the crimes were committed between certain dates, and the facts pled to caused there to be 16 counts. If this was in fact a single incident, and that were the test, the convicted party should have the burden of proving so.
If the record given the appellate court is insufficient to make the determination, the record given PennDOT is equally insufficient; it consists, again by the terms of the statute, of notice of conviction, and does not include details reflecting on the issue of “episodes.” We cannot expect PennDOT to assess such matters comprehensively based on the information the legislature requires it be given. The General Assembly never intended that a licensee should escape the consequences of 16 violations, since PennDOT is not given the whole criminal file to try to figure out whether the offenses occurred other than in a single episode. Nor can the propriety of a civil license suspension depend on the amount of detail set forth in the record of a plea in a collateral criminal case.
*295Burdon of proof aside, I would hold that under § 1532(c), a separate suspension is properly imposed for each count of which the licensee is convicted, regardless of whether the counts occurred in a single criminal episode. This approach is consistent with Frontini v. Commonwealth, Department of Transportation, 527 Pa. 448, 593 A.2d 410 (1991), which involved a similar issue: whether a driver could be classified as a habitual offender under 75 Pa.C.S. § 1542, when his convictions for three counts of homicide by vehicle arose from the same accident. Unlike the statute at issue, § 1542 specifically provided the convictions had to arise from “separate acts” for them to be classified as separate offenses for the purpose of imposing a recidivist penalty. This Court concluded that since the three convictions arose from a single act, they could not be counted as separate offenses, so the recidivist penalty was not applicable. Frontini, at 412. Thus, this Court has upheld the use of a “single criminal episode” analysis in a license suspension where it is required by statute. However, § 1532(c) contains no such language.
A “single criminal episode” analysis is appropriate for criminal prosecutions, as there are policy considerations not present in license suspension cases: 1) protection of the accused “from governmental harassment of being forced to undergo successive trials for offenses stemming from the same criminal episode,” and 2) the matter of “judicial administration and economy, to assure finality without unduly burdening the judicial process by repetitious litigation.” Commonwealth v. Hude, 500 Pa. 482, 458 A.2d 177, 180 (1983). The compulsory joinder rule and 18 Pa.C.S. § 110 protect these interests by requiring that all crimes arising from the same criminal episode be charged and tried together. Id.; see also Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184, 187, 78 S.Ct. 221, 2 L.Ed.2d 199 (1957) (“[T]he state ... should not be allowed to make repeated attempts to convict an individual for an alleged offense .... ”); Commonwealth v. Stewart, 493 Pa. 24, 425 A.2d 346, 349 (1981) (“Compulsory joinder of all offenses arising from a single ‘transaction’ avoids piecemeal litigation and thus conserves precious judicial and professional manpower as well *296as the time of jurors, witnesses, and the use of public resources.”) (quoting Commonwealth v. Campana [I], 452 Pa. 233, 304 A.2d 432, 441 (1973), vacated on other grounds and remanded, 414 U.S. 808, 94 S.Ct. 73, 38 L.Ed.2d 44 (1973)). This guards against prosecutorial forum-shopping, duplicative trials and consequent depletion of judicial resources, unnecessary delay and expense to the accused and the Commonwealth, and unnecessary aggravation to the accused and witnesses. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Travaglia, 723 A.2d 190, 193-94 (Pa.Super.1998) (citation omitted).
These concerns are not present in a license suspension case, where the licensee has already been charged and convicted of the underlying offenses. That which compulsory joinder is intended to guard against is not a concern. A license is a privilege, not a constitutional liberty; removal of the latter is obviously to be more jealously guarded than the former.
The Double Jeopardy Clause protects the convicted defendant from multiple prosecutions for the same offense, requiring a “single criminal episode” analysis. Commonwealth v. Tarver, 493 Pa. 320, 426 A.2d 569, 571-72 (1981); see also Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161, 97 S.Ct. 2221, 53 L.Ed.2d 187 (1977). Again, these concerns are not present in license suspension cases, where the licensee has already been sentenced for the crimes on which the suspension is based (in this case, drug offenses; appellee received five years probation for each count). Finally, as this Court has noted, license suspension is “merely a civil consequence of a criminal violation.” Plowman v. PennDOT, 535 Pa. 314, 635 A.2d 124, 128 (1993). Therefore, the double jeopardy protections afforded in the criminal setting are not applicable in such cases, and the “single criminal episode” analysis is unnecessary.2
*297Accordingly, I would reverse the order of the Commonwealth Court and remand the matter for reimposition of the original suspensions.
Justice NEWMAN joins this dissenting opinion.

. The majority notes the record does not reflect details of the three and one-half month period of the stealing of the drugs (information apparently not necessary to the criminal plea, and not required by custom or statute to be forwarded to PennDOT), and from this concludes: "[tjherefore, Appellee's conviction was for a single 'offense' within the meaning of that term in this statute, that is, a single criminal episode.” Maj. Op., at 291, 883 A.2d at 508. I can find no logic to this alchemy. There were 16 offenses here, no matter whether the record shows they were part of one long course of conduct or not. An offense is simply a violation of the law, or a crime, see Black's Law Dictionary (17th ed. 1999); accord 18 Pa.C.S. § 106, and multiple offenses (or crimes) may arise out of any particular single criminal episode. See, e.g., 18 Pa.C.S. § 110(l)(ii) (requiring, as general rule, consolidation of multiple offenses arising out of single criminal episode).

. See also Department of Transportation, Bureau of Driver Licensing v. Gonzalez, 117 Pa.Cmwlth. 224, 543 A.2d 231 (1988) (75 Pa.C.S. § 1544 required mandatory periods of suspension under § 1532(b)(3) for two incidents of driving under influence of alcohol to be served consecutively, although both convictions were on same date). I do not reach the separate situation where the underlying convictions merged for criminal sentencing purposes. Appellee's convictions did not merge, and this issue was not raised.