Court Opinion

ID: 9724844
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:17:28.346052+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:07.207878
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
I think the order of the trial court refusing to dismiss the habitual offender count should be reversed with the instructions to grant that dismissal. Upon reading the case of Bullington v. Missouri, (1981) 451 U.S. 430, 101 S.Ct. 1852, 68 L.Ed.2d 270, I am convinced from its holding and the reasoning by which it is reached, that it applies to this case and if retried upon the habitual offender count, appellant Durham will have been twice placed in jeopardy of life and limb in violation of the Fifth Amendment, applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.
The verdicts of the jury were guilty of illegal possession of a firearm, guilty of illegal possession of a police radio, and *326following a separate jury sentencing hearing pursuant to I.C. § 85-50-2-8, not guilty of being a habitual offender. A judgment of guilty of the two offenses was rendered accordingly, and a sentence of four years was imposed on one, and six months on the other. A motion to correct errors was granted because the trial judge had not required bifurcation so as to separate the trial on the allegation of a prior bank robbery conviction pursuant to this Court's ruling in Sweet v. State, (1982) Ind., 439 N.E.2d 1144. The prosecution then filed its amended habitual offender count, and denial of the defense motion to dismiss it followed.
In Bullington v. Missouri, supra, the jury returned a verdict of guilty of murder, and then an additional verdict rejecting the death penalty and fixing the penalty at life imprisonment. One of the aggravating circumstances was "a substantial history of serious assaultive criminal convictions." The defense then filed a motion for a new trial which was granted by the trial judge because of a current decision of the U.S. Supreme Court regarding jury composition. The prosecution then filed a notice that it would seek the death penalty on retrial on the basis of the same aggravating cireum-stances. The trial court there, unlike the trial court here, struck the notice on a defense motion premised on a double jeopardy bar to the imposition of the death penalty after the jury declined to impose it. The Supreme Court of Missouri reversed the trial court. On certiorari, the U.S. Supreme Court, basing its decision on the double jeopardy clause, reversed.
It has certainly been the general rule that the protection against being twice placed in jeopardy in the Fifth Amendment, unlike the due process clause, does not extend to sentencing processes, and does not protect against a more severe sentence upon retrial and reconviction. North Carolina v. Pearce, (1969) 395 U.S. 711, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656. Death at the hands of the state is a more severe sentence than life imprisonment, and it is therefore apparent that the Supreme Court departed from the general rule in the Bullington case. As I see it, the fact that death was the more severe sentence is not at all at the core of the court's reasoning, but it provided the impetus for the additional judicial vigilance which uncovered the additional protective aspect of the double jeopardy clause. That which is at the core is the jury's decision reached after a sentencing procedure which had the "hallmarks" of a trial on guilt or innocence. Those hallmarks include (1) a duty of the prosecution to prove additional facts to justify a particular sentence, (2) a separate and identifiable procedure including standards to guide the jury's decision, (8) the binding quality of the jury's decision, (4) proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and (5) the ability of a court to view the procedure and rationally declare whether or not the prosecution has proved its case for the sentence sought. The jury sentencing procedure under our habitual offender statute had these hallmarks, and therefore the jury's verdict resolving the habitual offender claim of the prosecution in favor of the appellant must bar a thirty year enhancement on the basis of the habitual offender statute, of a sentence meted out to him upon retrial and reconviction for these two underlying offenses with which he stands charged. Any such enhancement is, as I see it, now barred by the Fifth Amendment.
PRENTICE, J., concurs.
PRENTICE, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent.
+I would not permit the State to refile, in the same case, an habitual offender count, alleging the same two prior felonies upon which a negative finding had previously been returned. It is immaterial that a retrial upon the underlying felony was appropriate following a favorable ruling upon the Defendant's motion to correct errors.
As previously expressed, neither would I permit the filing of an habitual offender count alleging more than two prior felony convictions without also requiring special findings (not now authorized). Under the present practice of permitting more than *327two prior convictions to be alleged and a general verdict, it is impossible to determine the convictions, if any, upon which the minds of the jurors met. To permit enhanced sentencing upon such loose procedures opens the door to happenstance enhancement and denies fundamental due process.