Court Opinion

ID: 9606678
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:51:34.852172+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:35.227472
License: Public Domain

LUMPKIN, Presiding Judge,
concurring in part/dissenting in part.
While I concur in the affirmance of the murder and burglary charges, I cannot join in this Court’s decision to remand for re-sentencing. In making its ill-advised “death is different” analysis, this Court overthrows nearly nine decades of jurisprudence holding the proper punishment to be that which is on the books at the time the crime was committed.1 In its rush to “fairness,” this Court creates confusion and uncertainty on a far greater scale that has ever existed before by simply ignoring the facts of this case, which clearly show the option of life without parole just was not requested. Thus, it has effectively overruled Wade v. State, 825 P.2d 1357 (Okl.Cr.1992), which supposedly “clarified” a principle that had no basis in the law of this State from its inception.
Our most recent decision dealing with the subject of retroactive application of punishment is Bowman v. State, 789 P.2d 631 (Okl.Cr.1990). In Bowman, we stated with clarity that the appropriate criminal penalty is the penalty in effect at the time the defendant commits the crime.” Id. at 631 (citing Penn v. State, 13 Okl.Cr. 367, 164 P. 992 (1917) and Alberty v. State 10 Okl.Cr. 616, 140 P. 1025 (1914)). Federal courts repeatedly apply this basic principle of law. In United States v. Towne, 870 F.2d 880 (2d Cir.1989), cert. denied, 490 U.S. 1101, 109 S.Ct. 2456, 104 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1989), the Second Circuit found that the repeal of a statute prior to the defendant’s being sentenced was inapposite because the statute was in effect at the time the underlying offenses were committed and at the time the defendant was convicted. Id. at 887. See also Burge v. Butler, 867 F.2d 247, 250 (5th Cir.1989).
In addition, a review of our jurisprudence reveals this principle was part of the legal foundation laid at statehood. One of the first cases was Sharp v. State, 3 Okl.Cr. 24, 104 P. 71 (1909). The defendant there committed an offense while Indian Territory was governed by the laws of the state of Arkansas. The defendant did not go to trial until after Oklahoma had become a state and enacted its statutes. The question before the Court was whether the laws of Arkansas or Oklahoma should be applied. The Court determined that application of the laws of the state of Oklahoma would seriously harm the defendant and the only choice was to use the laws which controlled at the time of the offense. Relying on a United States Supreme Court case, Kring v. Missouri, 107 U.S. 221, 2 S.Ct. 443, 27 L.Ed. 506 (1883), the Oklahoma *742Court stated: “[t]he accused should be tried and dealt with under the law as it existed at the time of the commission of the crime of which he stands charged.” Sharp, 3 Okl.Cr. at 31, 104 P. at 74. The Court reiterated this principle in Bowman when it determined that the sentence of ten years to life was proper because “[i]t is a well established rule of law that the appropriate criminal penalty is the penalty in effect at the time the defendant commits the crime.” Bowman, 789 P.2d at 631. See also Jones v. State, 3 Okl.Cr. 593, 107 P. 738 (1910). The irony of the Court’s attempt to apply “fairness” in this case is revealed by our decision in Costa v. State, 753 P.2d 393 (Okl.Cr.1988). In that case, the trial judge sentenced the defendant to life without parole, which was not a sentencing option at the time of the crime. Finding that the trial judge committed error with sentencing, this Court did not remand for sentencing, but struck the “without parole” portion of the sentence and remanded for the trial court to correct the error. Id. at 395.
Legal nuances of this type lead to an anomaly of the law. The anomaly then skews the principles of law which are to be applied and creates serious cracks in the foundation of our jurisprudence. In addition, it denigrates the principle that this is a nation of laws, and not of men.
The Court further compounds the error of its analysis through a partial review of the scope of the amendments to 21 O.S. 1981, §§ 701.9, 701.10, 701.11 and 701.15, which became effective November 1, 1987. A review of Senate Bill 15, contained in Chapter 96 of the Laws of the Forth-First Legislature, at page 360 and 361 of the session laws of the first regular session, reveal the only amendment to the then-existing statutory language was the addition of the life without parole language to each of those operative statutes. The session laws do not reflect any intent of the Oklahoma Legislature to attempt a retroactive application of this statutory amendment. In Freshour v. Turner, 496 P.2d 389 (Okl.Cr.1972), a defendant who was seventeen at the time of the offense tried to claim that she should get the benefit of a subsequently enacted bill which defined the term “child” as any person under the age of eighteen. This Court found that, because the language in the enactment did not show it was to be applied retroactively, the law may be applied prospectively only. Id. at 392.
Therefore, based on the principles of statutory construction and legislative intent, Appellant is not eligible for the punishment of life without parole in this case.
This Court, in its analysis, alludes to the often enunciated observation that “death is different.” While the final nature of the death penalty may result in a more microscopic review of the facts of a case, it does not change basic principles of the application of a rule of law, or the manner of consistently applying the law. The basis of the United States Supreme Court’s overturning the application of the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972), was there must be a consistent application of the law, and that the vague, arbitrary applications of the penalty be removed. That concept of consistency in the application of legal principles must be applied fairly to all aspects of the review in a criminal case, whether it applies to the State or a defendant. For the Court to do otherwise creates aberrations in the law which impede the orderly, consistent application of that law in the trial courts of this State.
The actions of the Court in this case, pursuant to some type of “fairness” review, disregard the facts of the case. The Appellant neither objected to the instructions given nor requested an instruction on this optional punishment. This Court should never take the position of trying to reinvent the trial strategy of an appellant’s attorney in a trial. Trial judges are vested with a dual role of being fair and applying the law under the appropriate circumstance. The role of an appellate judge is to apply the law consistently and to ensure the rules of law are set forth to enable trial practitioners and trial judges to rely on those principles of law in the trial of cases. In this case, Judge Brock appropriately applied the substantive law of the crime at *743the time it was committed. Granted, certain statutes were amended after the commission of the offense which had the effect of amending substantive provisions of the law. While procedural aspects may be declared to be applicable retroactively, pursuant to 22 O.S.1991, § 3, substantive amendments of the penal statute cannot. The procedure for conducting a resentencing proceeding is substantially different than an application of the penal provisions of the statutes based on when the crime was committed. The Court’s analysis of a substantive provision skews the rules which apply to the retroactive effect of procedural matters.
It is in this vein that Allen v. State, 821 P.2d 371 (Okl.Cr.1991) was incorrectly decided.2 For whatever reason, this Court allowed itself to get sidetracked on an ex post facto question. Every second-year law student knows that, when dealing with an ex post facto application, we by definition of the term necessarily assume the statute in question is to be applied retroactively. As an example, the cases of Dobbert v. Florida, 432 U.S. 282, 293, 97 S.Ct. 2290, 2298, 53 L.Ed.2d 344 (1977), and Williamson v. State, 812 P.2d 384, 407 (Okl.Cr.1991), both cited by the majority in support of its position, deal with considerations of ex post facto laws. By using these cases in support of its position a law should be applied retroactively, the majority is comparing retroactive apples and ex post facto oranges. The question here, and the core of this dissent, is not whether it is constitutionally permissible to apply a law retroactively, but whether the law was meant to be applied retroactively at all.
But that is not the end of the story. Allen dealt with a guilty plea and a trial judge who was uncertain whether he could consider the life-without-parole option, where the crime was committed before the new law went into effect and plea was taken afterwards. There, the appellant had requested the option and executed a waiver to any constitutional right against the application of any ex post facto law. In Wade v. State, 825 P.2d 1357 (Okl.Cr.1992), a jury trial case, the defendant also requested the life-without-parole option and executed a waiver. We held “[T]his error would not be available if the defendant did not, or refused to, request the life without parole instruction.”
Basically, then, this Court created confusion where there was none by deciding Allen. It nurtured the confusion in Wade, which is wildly inconsistent both with Allen and with principles of retroactive application I have discussed above. Now, it makes the confusion even worse by deciding that an appellant need not even request the option to avail himself of it. Does the majority seek to overturn Wade? . It does not so state.
Death is different; but law is law. This Court in its ruling today stresses the former and ignores the latter. Nearly nine decades of Oklahoma jurisprudence should have taught us better. I respectfully DISSENT to the decision to remand for resen-tencing.

. The Court's opinion seeks to summarily dismiss the reasoning in this dissent by labeling the punishment provision a "procedural” provision. Apparently in addition to Oklahoma case-law, the majority's "death is different” analysis would also completely ignore hornbook law, learned by every first-year law student: that punishment provisions are substantive, not procedural, in nature. See 22 C J.S. Criminal Law § 2 (1989) ("The substantive law is that which as distinguished from the procedural law which provides or regulates the steps by which one who commits a crime is to be punished." (emphasis added)); 1 LaFave and Scott, Substantive Criminal Law § 1.2; see also State v. Elmore, 179 La. 1057, 155 So. 896, 897-98 (1934); Gaspin v. State, 76 Ga.App. 375, 45 S.E.2d 785, 788 (1947).

. The Court’s opinion correctly points out I concurred in result in Allen, and concurred in Wade. As this discussion both before this footnote and after it illustrates, further research and discussion at oral argument in this case has convinced me this Court was simply incorrect in its analysis. Unlike the majority, I am delighted to take this opportunity to admit I made a mistake in my vote in those two cases. Also unlike the majority, I would use this opportunity to correct that mistake and attempt to eliminate confusion that has arisen on the issue. In so doing, I am in no way attempting to use 22 O.S.1981, § 3. That deals with procedural issues. As I pointed out in footnote 1, this is a question of substantive law.