Court Opinion

ID: 9586115
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:07:20.719734+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:24:20.726043
License: Public Domain

FELDMAN, Justice,
concurring in part, dissenting in part.
¶ 20 The kidnapping was complete when Defendant restrained the victims “with the intent” to inflict a sexual offense. A.R.S. § 13-1304(A)(3). The later sexual offenses in a different room were separate and complete crimes apart from the kidnapping. Thus, I agree that the consecutive sentences imposed on Defendant did not constitute double jeopardy. I am not able to agree, however, with the court’s views regarding the elements of the offense of kidnapping.
¶ 21 Under A.R.S. § 13-1304, kidnapping is a class 2 felony unless the “victim is released voluntarily ... without physical injury in a safe place prior to [the defendant’s] arrest.” In such case, the crime is a class 4 felony. A.R.S. § 13-1304(B). The difference in severity of punishment between a class 2 and class 4 felony is substantial. The former is punishable by imprisonment for five years and the latter for two and one-half years. A.R.S. § 13-701; see also A.R.S. § 13-604 (increasing punishment for recidivists). Nevertheless, the court holds today that proof of whether the victim was released unharmed is not an element of the crime of kidnapping.
¶ 22 The significance of the court’s holding is this: if failure to voluntarily release the victim, unharmed and in a safe place, is not an element of the crime, then the state need not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim was harmed, the release was involuntary, or release was not made in a safe place. Further, the court need not submit these questions to the jury but may, instead, find these facts itself and thus determine whether the defendant is guilty of a class 2 or only a class 4 felony. But if these factual matters are elements of the crime described as second-degree kidnapping, then due process is violated if the state is not given the burden to prove these matters to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. This, indeed, was the holding in State v. Sterling, 148 Ariz. 134, 713 P.2d 335 (App.1985).
¶23 The court today rejects Sterling, adopting instead the view that kidnapping is a single crime, that it is a class 2 felony, and that voluntary release of the victim, unharmed and in a safe place, is a mitigating factor that the defendant may try to establish. See majority opinion at ¶¶ 10 and 13. Thus, the court concludes, the group of facts in question is “a mitigating factor relevant solely for sentencing purposes” and that “it is proper to place the burden of proving them on the defendant.” Id. at ¶ 18. But due process may still require the state to bear the burden of disproving a factor that reduces or justifies a crime. See State v. Duarte, 165 Ariz. 230, 798 P.2d 368 (1990) (in murder prosecution in which there is any evidence of self-defense, state has burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant did not act in self-defense).
¶ 24 It is true, as the majority notes, that the legislature wrote § 13-1304 to define the single crime of kidnapping, treated it as a class 2 felony, and worded the statute so that voluntary release, unharmed and in a safe place, was a mitigator that reduced the crime to a class 4 felony. See majority opinion at ¶¶ 11 and 13. Thus, the majority’s reasoning is quite logical, its conclusion quite reasonable, and possibly — perhaps even probably— correct. But as the court notes, if the crime of kidnapping had been designated a class 4 felony, aggravated to class 2 if the defendant failed to voluntarily release the victim unharmed and in a safe place, those same facts *194would be aggravators and might thus become elements the state would have the burden of proving to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. See majority opinion at ¶ 9 and n. 1.
¶ 25 I do not agree the question can be answered solely by looking to see whether the statute labels the facts to be found as aggravators or mitigators. Think of this scenario painted by Justice Sealia:
I do not believe that [the] distinction [between elements and sentencing factors] is (as the Court seems to assume) simply a matter of the label afSxed to each fact by the legislature. Suppose that a State repealed all of the violent crimes in its criminal code and replaced them with only one offense, “knowingly causing injury to another,” bearing a penalty of 30 days in prison, but subject to a series of “sentencing enhancements” authorizing additional punishment up to life imprisonment or death on the basis of various levels of mens rea, severity of injury, and other surrounding circumstances. Could the state then grant the defendant a jury trial, with requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, solely on the question whether he “knowingly cause[d] injury to another,” but leave it for the judge to determine by a preponderance of the evidence whether the defendant acted intentionally or accidentally, whether he used a deadly weapon, and whether the victim ultimately died from the injury the defendant inflicted? If the protections extended to criminal defendants by the Bill of Rights can be so easily circumvented, most of them would be, to borrow a phrase from Justice Field, “vain and idle enactments], which accomplished nothing, and most unnecessarily excited Congress and the people on [their] passage.”
Monge v. California, 524 U.S. 721, 737, 118 S.Ct. 2246, 2255, 141 L.Ed.2d 615 (1998) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (quoting SlaughterHouse Cases, 83 U.S. 36, 16 Wall. 36, 96, 21 L.Ed. 394 (1892)).
¶ 26 Justice Scalia’s comments are, of course, just as relevant to the mitigators in the present case as the enhancers in Monge. Could Arizona establish one violent crime— “knowingly causing injury to another” — punishable as a class 1 felony, subject only to a wide variety of factors that would reduce punishment to lesser levels by a series of sentencing mitigators to be determined by the judge and not the jury?
¶ 27 Unfortunately, we cannot find an answer in the United States Supreme Court’s decisions. Its jurisprudence on the issue is conflicting at best. It serves no purpose to review the decisions here. They are discussed in detail in Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227, 119 S.Ct. 1215, 143 L.Ed.2d 311 (1999) (invoking doctrine of constitutional doubt, Court treats enhancing factor of serious bodily harm to victim of carjacking as element of crime); Monge, 524 U.S. at 727-31, 118 S.Ct. at 2250-51 (recidivism enhancer is sentencing factor). It is puzzling that the question of bodily harm becomes an element of the crime, so that the state must prove it beyond a reasonable doubt and to a jury, when labeled as an enhancing factor but, as in the present case, not when labeled as a mitigating factor.
¶ 28 Another recent case involving a charge of unlawful possession of a firearm presents the question of whether proof of a so-called hate crime motive was a sentencing factor or must be treated as an element of the crime. New Jersey v. Apprendi, 159 N.J. 7, 731 A.2d 485 (1998). The New Jersey court held that the question of whether racial animus was the motive for the crime need not be treated as an element, so the state did not have the burden of proving it to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Instead, the judge could make the finding and increase the sentence accordingly. Id. at 494-95.3 The United States Supreme Court has now granted certiorari. Apprendi v. New Jersey, - U.S. -, 120 S.Ct. 525, 145 L.Ed.2d 407. Hopefully, the Court will tell us by summer how to differentiate between an element and an enhancer or mitigator.
¶29 Until then, I would be inclined to follow Sterling4 because the presence or ab*195sence of the factors involving release of the victim make a significant difference in sentencing and because the nature of the factors in question — whether the release was voluntary, whether the victim suffered harm, whether the victim was released in a safe place — requires determination of factual issues that are ease-specific and are the types of factors traditionally reserved for jury determination. Cf. State v. Hurley, 154 Ariz. 124, 130-31, 741 P.2d 257, 263-64 (1987) (we will interpret Arizona’s double jeopardy clause in accordance with federal model; release status, usually determined by documentary evidence, is enhancing factor that applies across the board to all crimes and therefore is not element of offenses of armed robbery or aggravated assault).

. Florida has reached the opposite conclusion. Florida v. Stalder, 630 So.2d 1072 (Fla.1994).

. New Jersey has reached the same result as Sterling on a statute almost identical to the one *195in question in this case. See State v. Federico, 198 N.J.Super. 120, 486 A.2d 882 (1984).