Court Opinion

ID: 9719535
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:55:27.696803+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:08.027632
License: Public Domain

Boslaugh, J.,
dissenting.
In abandoning the interpretation of Grady v. Corbin, _ U.S. __, 110 S. Ct. 2084, 109 L. Ed. 2d 548 (1990), which this court adopted on November 2, 1990, in State v. Harrington, 236 Neb. 500, 461 N.W.2d 752 (1990), the majority appears to have accepted the position of the Wyoming Supreme Court in Eatherton v. State, 810 P.2d 93, 99 (Wyo. 1991), wherein that court stated, “The Supreme Court did not really develop any new law in Grady with respect to successive prosecutions.” I find that concept hard to accept. Apparently the four dissenting members of the U.S. Supreme Court in Grady reached the same conclusion.
In Justice O’Connor’s estimation, the decision rendered null the Court’s very recent holding in Dowling v. U.S., 493 U.S. 342, 110 S. Ct. 668, 107 L. Ed. 2d 708 (1990), that the collateral estoppel component of the double jeopardy clause did not bar in all circumstances the later use of evidence relating to prior alleged criminal conduct for which a defendant has been acquitted. See Grady, supra (O’Connor, J., dissenting).
The dissent written by Justice Scalia characterizes the decision as a departure “from clear text and clear precedent” and advises that “[t]he effects of this innovation upon our criminal-justice system are likely to be substantial.” Grady, supra at 110 S. Ct. 2096. In particular, Justice Scalia believes that the practical effect of the decision “will come down to a requirement that where the charges arise from a ‘ “single criminal act, occurrence, episode, or transaction,” ’ they ‘must *733be tried in a single proceeding.’ ” 110 S. Ct. at 2102. In other words, the Court’s decision “to extend the Double Jeopardy Clause to prosecutions that prove a previously prosecuted offense will lead predictably to extending it to prosecutions that involve the same facts as a previously prosecuted offense.” (Emphasis in original.) 110 S. Ct. at 2104 (Scalia, J., dissenting).
If indeed the Grady Court “did not really develop any new law” with respect to successive prosecutions, then it would seem that the issues in this case could have been resolved under our decision in State v. Milenkovich, 236 Neb. 42, 458 N.W.2d 747 (1990).
The majority’s analysis of the Grady case seems to ignore the Supreme Court’s concern that “a technical comparison of the elements of the two offenses as required by Blockburger does not protect defendants sufficiently from the burdens of multiple trials.” Grady, supra at 110 S. Ct. at 2093.
In Chief Justice Urbigkit’s dissent in the Eatherton case, he noted that in another case since argued before the Wyoming court, the attorney general had suggested that “the United States Supreme Court opinion in Grady was ‘difficult to understand’, a ‘muddled up piece of logic’, ‘confused’ and perhaps questionable in future validity.” Eatherton, supra at 104. Chief Justice Urbigkit then stated, “If that is the foundation upon which this decision is structured, it sits not even on sand but only on imagination. Grady was a constitutional case and is now controlling.” Id.
The Grady case was decided on May 29,1990. In a dissenting opinion to the denial of certiorari in Parker v. Arkansas, _ U.S__, 111 S. Ct. 218, 112 L. Ed. 2d 186 (1990), filed on October 1,1990, Justice Marshall suggests that the subsequent prosecution for “ ‘causing the death of two or more persons in a single criminal episode’ ” was barred under the Grady case by the prior prosecution for felony murder because in the second prosecution, “the State clearly reproved the conduct for which the petitioner was originally convicted — breaking into the Warrens’ home and killing them — in order to establish essential elements of the offense of causing the death of two or more persons in a single criminal episode.” (Emphasis in original.) Ill S. Ct. at 219 n.3.
*734The critical question in applying the Grady case is to determine what the U.S. Supreme Court meant by the term “conduct.” Ordinarily, conduct refers to acts as distinguished from status. In the Harrington case, the first offense involved possession of and the discharging of a firearm. The only conduct involved in the second offense was the possession of the firearm. That was conduct for which the defendant had already been prosecuted.
Caporale, J., j oins in this dissent.