Court Opinion

ID: 9791936
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:20:41.023475+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:39.476422
License: Public Domain

URBIGKIT, Chief Justice,
specially concurring, with whom MACY, Justice, joins.
I agree due process was violated when the sentence affirmed by this court was later increased by the district court. Because double jeopardy was also violated, I concur only in the result.
In concurrence with the majority, I agree that due process was violated under the holding of North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969). However, the double jeopardy argument advanced by the majority should also lead to the conclusion that double jeopardy was separately violated by the same governmental conduct. The majority first establishes that “the district court would violate constitutional guarantees against double jeopardy if, * * *, it were to increase the earlier [affirmed] sentence.” The majority then establishes that “[w]e hold it appropriate, * * *, to deem that such an effect constitutes an increase in appellant’s sentence for interference with a peace officer [which is the affirmed sentence].” Then, with no explanation, the majority claims there is no double jeopardy violation.1 The only conclusion that could match the majority’s argument is one that indicates double jeopardy was violated. In agreement with the logic but not the con-*1217elusion, I would consequently hold that due process and double jeopardy were both violated.
I would also not join in the language that indicates the federal and Wyoming double jeopardy provisions must “have the same meaning and are coextensive in application.” It seems ill-founded to indicate Wyoming’s double jeopardy clause cannot be interpreted independently of the federal clause.
The historical circumstances surrounding adoption of the United States Constitution are not remotely similar to the historical circumstances surrounding adoption of many states’ constitutions, particularly those like Wyoming that were adopted long after the colonial era had ended. It therefore makes no sense to incorporate an interpretation attributable to the original framers of the federal Constitution into a state’s own constitutional jurisprudence.
Keiter, An Essay on Wyoming Constitutional Interpretation, XXI Land and Water L.Rev. 527, 543 (1986).
This analysis would not reject the traditional understanding that the double jeopardy clauses in the federal Constitution and Wyoming’s Constitution are assigned three protective functions — protection from subsequent prosecution for the same offense after acquittal, protection from subsequent prosecution for the same offense after conviction, and multiple punishments for the same offense. I do challenge the claim, which sprang from Vigil v. State, 563 P.2d 1344, 1350 (Wyo.1977), was maintained in Lauthern v. State, 769 P.2d 350, 353 (Wyo.1989), and is repeated in the majority opinion, that Wyoming’s double jeopardy clause can be no more protective than the federal double jeopardy clause. Such a claim seems ill-founded against the backdrop of double jeopardy cases such as Grady v. Corbin, — U.S. -, 110 S.Ct. 2084, 109 L.Ed.2d 548 (1990), where the dissent was only one vote short of becoming the majority. Grady raises a double jeopardy bar to “subsequent prosecution if, to establish an essential element of an offense charged in that prosecution, the government will prove conduct that constitutes an offense for which the defendant has already been prosecuted.” Id. at 2087. Had Grady been decided as its dissent argued, the Wyoming Supreme Court would still be free to interpret Wyoming’s double jeopardy clause to include what are now Grady protections so that a Wyoming prosecutor would constitutionally be barred from proceeding with a subsequent prosecution that used previously prosecuted conduct to establish an element of a new offense. Because state legislatures and state constitutions are quite free to expand the liberties of their people beyond the minimum afforded under the interpretation given the federal constitution,2 state constitutions may improve upon federal guarantees,3 indecisive as they may be dependent upon the times, tides, and politics ladled out by a majority of the nine in Washington, D.C. who decide how well the United States Constitution protects and guarantees. I follow Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard of the Indiana Supreme Court:
The rights of Americans cannot be secure- if they are protected only by courts or only by one court. Civil liberties pro*1218tected only by a U.S. Supreme Court are only as secure as the Warren Court or the Rehnquist Court wishes to make them. The protection of Americans against tyranny requires that state supreme courts and state constitutions be strong centers of authority on the rights of the people.
Shepard, Second Wind for the Indiana Bill of Rights, 22 Ind.L.Rev. 575, 586 (1989). Likewise see Kempkes, Rediscovering the Iowa Constitution: The Role of the Courts Under the Silver Bullet, 37 Drake L.Rev. 33 (1987-88). Like Chief Justice Shepard in Indiana, I am determined that the Wyoming Constitution and the Wyoming Supreme Court be strong protectors of those rights.
Finally, I cannot endorse the language of apology for our first appellate decision. I do not think it is “[pjerhaps unfortunate[ ], however, [that] we did not remand the district court’s original ‘sentencing package,’ in its entirety, for resentencing.” We affirmed that portion of the district court’s sentence which was proper and remanded that which was improper. We should never apologize for exercise of our responsibility to “support, obey and defend” the Wyoming Constitution. The first article of our state constitution establishes guarantees and protections to citizens from abuse by the imperial sovereignty of state power. Rules are not only for the governed, but also those who govern.
This case should not be endorsed into the controlling state body of law to authenticate an unacceptable double jeopardy constitutional violation in the factual circumstance here presented.

. The flawed particular structure of the majority's argument is:
If X, then Y. [If the court increases the earlier sentence, then double jeopardy is violated]
X_ [The court increased the earlier sentence.]
Therefore, not Y. [However, there is no double jeopardy violation.]

. See Lawrence-Allison and Associates West, Inc. v. Archer, 767 P.2d 989, 995 (Wyo.1989); City of Mesquite v. Aladdin’s Castle, Inc., 455 U.S. 283, 293, 102 S.Ct. 1070, 1077, 71 L.Ed.2d 152 (1982); PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74, 91, 100 S.Ct. 2035, 2046, 64 L.Ed.2d 741 (1980); Michigan v. Mosley, 423 U.S. 96, 120, 96 S.Ct. 321, 334, 46 L.Ed.2d 313 (1975); Oregon v. Hass, 420 U.S. 714, 728, 95 S.Ct. 1215, 1223, 43 L.Ed.2d 570 (1975); Lego v. Twomey, 404 U.S. 477, 489, 92 S.Ct. 619, 626, 30 L.Ed.2d 618 (1972); People v. Wheeler, 22 Cal.3d 258, 148 Cal.Rptr. 890, 583 P.2d 748, 768 (1978); State v. Neil, 457 So.2d 481, 486 (Fla.1984); Abrahamson, Criminal Law and State Constitutions: The Emergence of State Constitutional Law, 63 Tex.L.Rev. 1141 (1985); Brennan, State Constitutions and the Protection of Individual Rights, 90 Harv.L.Rev. 489, 491 (1977); O’Connor, Our Judicial Federalism, 35 Case W.Res.L.Rev. 1, 5-6 (1984-85); O'Connor, Trends in the Relationship Between the Federal and State Courts from the Perspective of a State Court Judge, 22 Wm. & Mary L.Rev. 801, 804 (1981); Wright, In Praise of State Courts: Confessions of a Federal Judge, 11 Hastings Const.L.Q. 165, 188 (1984).

. See Keiter, supra, XXI Land and Water L.Rev. at 543.