Court Opinion

ID: 9762498
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:25:32.098824+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:35.053675
License: Public Domain

HOLSTEIN, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
*595I believe the majority goes beyond the plain and ordinary meaning of the constitutional language in construing the words “penal laws” to include civil proceedings under § 513.607, et seq., RSMo 1986, and § 195.145.4, RSMo 1986. The words “penal laws,” found in article IX, § 7 of the Missouri Constitution, have never been construed to have the broad meaning applied here. In general, the words refer to statutes that define criminal offenses and specify corresponding fines and punishment. Black’s Law Dictionary 1133 (6th ed. 1979). Statutes of a civil nature declaring that certain moneys or property associated with criminal activity are subject to forfeiture and establishing a civil procedure for the forfeiture are not statutes imposing fines or imprisonment. No criminal charge need be filed, no person’s guilt determined and no assessment of punishment imposed against an individual defendant to obtain the forfeiture. The term “penal laws,” as used in the context of article IX, § 7, means laws that are punitive in nature, not remedial. See Mussallam v. Mussallam, 321 N.C. 504, 364 S.E.2d 364, 367 (1988) (construing language similar to that used in Missouri’s Constitution). If, as the majority suggests, the forfeiture provisions were enacted for the remedial purpose of taking the profit out of crime and preventing the use of property to further criminal activities, it necessarily follows that these statutes are not penal laws.
The majority seems convinced by cases involving forfeitures under federal statutes that our construction of the state forfeiture statutes as “penal laws” will not give rise to problems of double jeopardy. I am not nearly so certain. If a defendant’s property is forfeited under one penal law, may the defendant be tried and sentenced to jail under another penal law based on precisely the same set of facts? Ultimately, that question will not be answered by state courts but by federal courts. If those courts use our state determination that the forfeiture provisions are “penal” and not merely remedial in nature, they may conclude that double jeopardy prohibits the criminal prosecution. Stretching the concept of “penal laws” beyond its traditional limits is fraught with danger.
I would affirm.