Court Opinion

ID: 9671264
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:33:46.760934+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:09.104300
License: Public Domain

David Newbern, Justice, concurring. The majority correctly holds that “gang activity” is not an essential element of the simultaneous-possession offense created by Ark. Code Ann. § 5-74-106 (Repl. 1993). The Trial Court concluded otherwise and “reduced” the simultaneous-possession charge to a charge of possession of methamphetamine due to the State’s failure to establish that Mr. Zawodniak simultaneously possessed drugs and firearms while engaging in “gang activity.” That was error. Upon remand, Mr. Zawodniak may be retried consistently with the Double Jeopardy Clause of the United States Constitution. My analysis of the important double-jeopardy question presented in this case differs from that of the majority. The majority opinion discusses the decisions of the United States Supreme Court in Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1 (1978); United States v. Tateo, 377 U.S. 463 (1964); and Lockhart v. Nelson, 488 U.S. 33 (1988), as well as our decision in Parker v. State, 300 Ark. 360, 779 S.W.2d 156 (1989), cert. denied 498 U.S. 883 (1990). These cases stand for the proposition that the Double Jeopardy Clause does not prohibit the State from retrying a defendant who has successfully appealed a conviction and obtained a reversal on the basis of “trial error” as opposed to evidentiary insufficiency. A critical distinction between this case and the ones mentioned above is that the “error” committed by the Trial Court with respect to the simultaneous-possession charge resulted not in a conviction of Mr. Zawodniak on that charge but in a “reduction” of it to a charge of possession of methamphetamine. The Burks, Tateo, Nelson, and Parker cases do not hold that the Double Jeopardy Clause permits a defendant to be retried for the same offense after a trial court, as the result of error, has “reduced,” dismissed, or granted a directed verdict on the charge, acquitted the defendant, or otherwise terminated the proceedings in the defendant’s favor. In the absence of a conviction that is reversed on the basis of trial error, these cases are inapposite, and authority for our decision in the case at bar must be found elsewhere. As the majority opinion suggests, such authority lies in the United States Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82 (1978). The controlling principle from that case is that, where a trial court, at the defendant’s request, terminates the proceedings on legal grounds without acquitting the defendant of the offense charged, the State may appeal the trial court’s decision and retry the defendant if the reviewing court determines that the trial court’s ruling was in error. In the Scott case, the Supreme Court held that the Double Jeopardy Clause did not bar the Government from appealing the ruling of the District Court that granted the respondent’s motion to dismiss two counts of narcotics distribution on the basis of preindictment delay. The Government’s appeal from the District Court’s ruling had been dismissed by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on the basis of the Double Jeopardy Clause, and the Supreme Court reversed. The Court acknowledged that a genuine acquittal, “whether based on a jury verdict of not guilty or on a ruling by the court that the evidence is insufficient to convict, may not be appealed and terminates the prosecution when a second trial would be necessitated by reversal.” United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. at 91. The Court also recognized, however, that certain rulings by the Trial Court — such as the District Court’s ruling on the issue of preindictment delay — that terminate the proceedings favorably to the defendant do not constitute acquittals for double-jeopardy purposes and thus do not foreclose an appeal and the possibility of retrial on the same offense. According to the Court, a defendant who does not obtain an acquittal but instead “deliberately choos[es] to seek termination of the proceedings against him on a basis unrelated to factual guilt or innocence of the offense of which he is accused . . . suffers no injury cognizable under the Double Jeopardy Clause if the Government is permitted to appeal from such a ruling of the trial court in favor of the defendant.” Id. at 98-99. According to one commentator’s view of the Court’s double-jeopardy jurisprudence, “[a]ny resolution that falls within the Supreme Court’s definition of an acquittal becomes an absolute bar to further prosecution. Therefore, determining whether a particular result is an acquittal is crucial.” Ann Bowen Poulin, Double Jeopardy and Judicial Accountability: When Is an Acquittal Not an Acquittal?, 27 Ariz. St. L.J. 953, 970 (1995). Another commentator agrees that the Double Jeopardy Clause, as interpreted in the Scott case, “protects a defendant from a second trial only if he has been acquitted in the first.” James D. Gordon III, Double Jeopardy and Appeal of Dismissals: A Before-and-After Approach, 69 Calif. L. Rev. 863, 872 (1981). See also Jason Wiley Kent, Double Jeopardy: When is an Acquittal an Acquittal?, 20 B.C. L. Rev. 925, 935 (1979)(stating that, under the Scott case, the availability of a double-jeopardy defense following judgment of dismissal “depends on subtle distinctions in the reason for the judgment”). Our inquiry here is thus broader than the majority opinion suggests it to be. The issue is not merely whether “trial error” occurred below or whether the termination of the first trial occurred at Mr. Zawodniak’s behest. We must resolve the more precise question of whether the Trial Court’s ruling constituted an “acquittal” of the simultaneous-possession charge given the definition of that term announced in the Scott case. We are constrained merely to declare error if we answer the question affirmatively. We may remand for further proceedings, and the State may retry Mr. Zawodniak, if we answer the question in the negative. According to the Scott decision, a defendant is acquitted and thus protected by the Double Jeopardy Clause from an appeal by the State and the possibility of retrial “only when ‘the ruling of the judge, whatever its label, actually represents a resolution [in the defendant’s favor], correct or not, of some or all of the factual elements of the offense charged.’” United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. at 97, quoting United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., 430 U.S. 564, 571 (1977). Thus, “in order to bar appeal the trial court’s judgment must be one that indicates that the government’s factual case has failed either as to the statutory elements of the offense charged, or as to the burden shifted to the government when a defendant raises a prima facie defense that, unrebutted, would justify a finding of innocence.” Kent, supra, at 940. Another commentator understands the Scott case as barring “appeal of midtrial dismissals based on factual grounds but not those based on legal grounds.” Gordon, supra, at 876. In determining whether the Trial Court’s ruling constitutes an acquittal, we are not bound by the “form of the judge’s action” or the manner in which the judge or counsel have characterized the ruling. United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., 430 U.S. at 571. See United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. at 96, quoting United States v. Jorn, 400 U.S. 450, 478 n.7 (opinion of Harlan, J.)(1971); United States v. Wilson, 420 U.S. 332, 336 (1975); United States v. Sisson, 399 U.S. 267, 270 (1970). But see Sanabria v. United States, 437 U.S. 54, 66 (1978) (“While form is not to be exalted over substance in determining the double jeopardy consequences of a ruling terminating a prosecution, . . . neither is it appropriate entirely to ignore the form of order entered by the trial court . . . .”)(citations omitted). Although “the line between an acquittal and a non-acquittal is sometimes hard to draw,” Poulin, supra, at 979, and “the question of what constitutes an acquittal has proven difficult to answer,” United States v. Markus, 604 F. Supp. 736, 739 (D. N.J. 1985), aff'd 786 F.2d 1147 (3d Cir. 1986), in this case it seems clear that there was not an acquittal of the offense charged based on failure to prove any of its elements. Rather, the Trial Court in effect nullified the charge because of failure of the State to prove a non-extant element. The Double Jeopardy Clause therefore does not prevent the State from retrying Mr. Zawodniak because the Trial Court did not find that the State failed to prove any of the factual elements of the offense charged. The result we reach is at odds with our decisions in Brooks v. State, 308 Ark. 660, 827 S.W.2d 119 (1992); State v. Johnson, 317 Ark. 226, 876 S.W.2d 577 (1994); and State v. Young, 315 Ark. 656, 869 S.W.2d 691 (1994). In those cases, however, we failed to consider the definition of “acquittal” espoused by the Supreme Court in the Scott case. The Brooks, Johnson, and Young cases are thus not controlling here. Mr. Zawodniak has urged that a retrial would violate his double-jeopardy rights under both the United States Constitution and the Arkansas Constitution, but he has neither argued that the latter affords greater protection than the former nor presented us with any other “independent and adequate state ground” on which to decide this case. See Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032 (1988).