Court Opinion

ID: 9794699
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:09:37.272827+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:16:18.226171
License: Public Domain

Finley, C. J.
(dissenting) — Appellant was found guilty of two counts of second-degree assault. As to Count I, charging assault with intent to rob Michael Joyce, appellant claims that he was denied the benefit of constitutional protection prohibiting “double jeopardy.” Washington Constitution, Art. I, § 9. The rationalization by the majority of appellant’s claim is quite orthodox and seems to be the prevailing rule for whatever significance that may be. The logic of the rule is perhaps flawless, but it seems to me the result is too harsh and legalistic and too little fair and *826realistic. The approach taken by the majority has been criticized in the law reviews. See Lugar: Criminal Law, Double Jeopardy and Res Judicata, 39 Iowa L. Rev. 317, 344-347 (1954); and Kirchheimer: The Act, The Offense, and Double Jeopardy, 58 Yale L. J. 513 (1949).
The basic issue is: What is an offense within the meaning of the constitutional concept of former jeopardy? The majority’s inarticulate major premise is that an offense is a violation of one of those categories designated by the legislature as a crime. If we use the premise that an offense includes all crimes against the same person, growing out of the same transaction or the same antisocial conduct, we reach a different result, and one which is in my opinion more in conformity with the intent of our constitutional protections against “double jeopardy.” The prosecutor can of course charge a defendant with several crimes growing out of the same transaction by using separate counts in a single trial. But a defendant, once convicted, should not be forced to defend against a charge of another crime in a separate trial. The concept of former jeopardy should protect him from this, because he has already been tried for his offense.
Under the rule announced by the majority, a convicted defendant could be harassed again and again, depending upon the disposition of the particular prosecutor. He can be put to the trouble and the financial burden of defending charges in separate trials, not to mention the embarrassment or stigma of repeated criminal prosecutions. Further, punishment might be made cumulative by refusal to charge the defendant once and for all time with all the possible legal consequences of his antisocial conduct.
The same transaction test referred to above is not a new one. There is admittedly little, but some, support for it in the older cases. State v. Mowser (1919), 92 N. J. L. 474, 106 Atl. 416, 4 A. L. R. 695, is perhaps the most significant case emphasizing this test.
In a recent case on a related aspect of the problem the United States Supreme Court said:
“The constitutional prohibition against ‘double jeopardy’ was designed to protect an individual from being subjected *827to the hazards of trial and possible conviction more than once for an alleged offense. In his Commentaries, which greatly influenced the generation that adopted the Constitution, Blackstone recorded:
“ ‘. . . the plea of auterfoits acquit, or a former acquittal, is grounded on this universal maxim of the common law of England, that no man is to be brought into jeopardy of his life more than once for the same offence.’
“Substantially the same view was taken by this Court in Ex parte Lange, 18 Wall. 163, at 169:
“ ‘The common law not only prohibited a second punishment for the same offence, but it went further and forbid a second trial for the same offence, whether the accused had suffered punishment or not, and whether in the former trial he had been acquitted or convicted.’
“The underlying idea, one that is deeply ingrained in at least the Anglo-American system of jurisprudence, is that the State with all its resources and power should not be allowed to make repeated attempts to convict an individual for an alleged offense, thereby subjecting him to embarrassment, expense and ordeal and compelling him to live in a continuing state of anxiety and insecurity, as well as enhancing the possibility that even though innocent he may be found guilty ” Green v. United States (1957), 355 U. S. 184, 187, 78 S. Ct. 221, 2 L. Ed. (2d) 199, 61 A. L. R. (2d) 1119. (Italics mine.)
I think what was said in the Green case is quite pertinent to the situation involved in the case at bar.
I have a healthy respect for the role of precedent in the development of our law. But when our cases expound a rule contrary to ordinary notions of fair play and justice, it is time to advocate another rule. I therefore dissent.
Hunter, J., concurs with Finley, C. J.