Court Opinion

ID: 9861785
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 00:31:41.596742+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:28:58.434126
License: Public Domain

Peters, J.
(dissenting). While I agree with my colleagues that Bartkus v. Illinois, 359 U.S. 121, 79 S. Ct. 676, 3 L. Ed. 2d 684 (1959), and Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187, 79 S. Ct. 666, 3 L. Ed. 2d 729 (1959), establish a rule of dual sovereignty that has continued to have vitality, I disagree about the implications of dual sovereignty for this court.
Dual sovereignty is one example of the recognition of the principle of federalism. Bartkus and Abbate hold no more than that the fourteenth and the fifth amendments to the United States constitution do not forbid one sovereign the right to reprosecute a criminal defendant because of his prior involvement with the other sovereign. Nothing in those cases compels, or even legitimates, automatic reprosecution as a matter of state law. That the rule of dual sovereignty is permissive rather than mandatory is clear from Bartkus, the case more directly relevant because it too involved state reprosecution after federal acquittal. Bartkus stated (pp. 138-39): “[Tjhese problems are ones with which the States are obviously more competent to deal than is this Court. Furthermore, the rules resulting will intimately affect the efforts of a State to develop a rational and just body of criminal law *79in the protection of its citizens. We ought not to utilize the Fourteenth Amendment to interfere with this development.”
It is furthermore clear that the formal absence of a provision in our constitution expressly forbidding double jeopardy is not a barrier to consideration of the claim raised by the defendant. The prohibition against double jeopardy is, as my colleagues acknowledge, implicit in the common law, and our cases have so held. State v. Langley, 156 Conn. 598, 600-601, 244 A.2d 366 (1968), cert. denied, 393 U.S. 1069, 89 S. Ct. 726, 21 L. Ed. 2d 712 (1969); Kohlfuss v. Warden, 149 Conn. 692, 695, 183 A.2d 626, cert. denied, 371 U.S. 928, 83 S. Ct. 298, 9 L. Ed. 2d 235 (1962). This case comes to us as a matter of first impression as to which there are no binding precedents until today.
The facts of the case before us present a compelling argument for invocation of the prohibition against double jeopardy. The defendant is charged in this state with the same conspiracy for which he was indicted and acquitted in federal court. The incident that gave rise to both prosecutions was, from the outset, investigated jointly by federal and state authorities. There is no discernible prosecutorial interest that was not fully vindicated in the original federal trial. The state has made no affirmative showing why this defendant should twice be forced to run the gauntlet of criminal prosecution.
I believe this court should adopt the view of the Model Penal Code § 1.10 (Proposed Official Draft, 1962) barring reprosecution after acquittal in another jurisdiction unless “the offense of which the defendant was formerly . . . acquitted and the offense for which he is subsequently prosecuted each *80requires proof of a fact not required by the other and the law defining each of such offenses is intended to prevent a substantially different harm or evil . . . This position has recently been accepted by a number of state courts; Commonwealth v. Cepulonis, Mass. , 373 N.E.2d 1136, 1141-42 (1978); People v. Cooper, 398 Mich. 450, 460-61, 247 N.W.2d 866 (1976); State v. Hogg, 118 N.H. 262, 266, 385 A.2d 844 (1978); Commonwealth v. Mills, 447 Pa. 163, 169-72, 286 A.2d 638 (1971).1 It is unarguable that the instant reprosecution cannot meet the test proposed by the Model Penal Code.
My colleagues fear that a limitation on state authority to reprosecute could result in an unseemly race between the federal and the state authorities to obtain early jurisdiction. It seems to me at least as likely that the state and federal authorities will, as in the case before us, cooperate to assure two functionally identical opportunities to try a defendant more than once for one and the same offense. Unless there is a substantial independent state interest to be vindicated, scarce state prosecutorial resources might better be allocated to trying new crimes rather than to retrying old ones.
I would, therefore, find error on the part of the trial court.

 The Final Report of the National Commission on Beform of Federal Criminal Laws (“The Brown Commission”) in 1971 recommended the enactment of federal legislation to modify Barfkus and Abbate. See Report on Proposed Federal Criminal Code, 34 Business Lawyer 725, 730 and 753 (January, 1979). The American Bar Association's Study Committee urges amendment of S. 1437, the proposed Criminal Code Reform Act of 1978, to incorporate the proposals of the Brown Commission. Id., 754.