Court Opinion

ID: 9670798
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:26:21.142473+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:06.572596
License: Public Domain

SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, J.
(concurring). I join the majority opinion because I conclude that it has properly applied the Blockburger test endorsed by United States v. Dixon, 61 LW 4835 (1993), the United States Supreme Court's most recent pronouncement on double jeopardy.
I write separately because I believe it is time for the court to take a fresh look at double jeopardy. As the justices of the United States Supreme Court have openly acknowledged, federal double jeopardy jurisprudence is in disarray. The double jeopardy clause in the federal constitution has become encrusted with numerous conflicting decisions and interpretations. The 5-4 Dixon decision, which overruled a 5-4 decision rendered barely three years earlier,1 produced five *529opinions with the justices joining and rejecting various portions of each other's opinions. When it requires a chart to determine which paragraphs of a United States Supreme Court decision constitute the law of the land, you know you are in trouble.
Rather than commit ourselves to this federal labyrinth, this court and the lawyers who appear before it should return to the words of the Wisconsin Constitution.2 We must look anew at our state constitution's double jeopardy clause and the nineteenth and early twentieth century decisions interpreting it. We must attempt to fashion a workable application of our double jeopardy clause that remains true to its purposes.
Were framing such a test an easy task, no doubt the United States Supreme Court would have unraveled its snarled jurisprudence long ago. However, state courts cannot abdicate the responsibility for developing a modern approach to double jeopardy. Enforcing constitutional rights is as much the responsibility of state courts as it is the federal courts. After all, the vast majority of criminal prosecutions across the country are brought in state courts using state statutes.
HH
Simply stated, the problem is this: What test for multiple prosecutions will protect the individual from the burden of defense against serial prosecutions for essentially the same conduct without unfairly hampering the state in prosecuting and convicting the guilty?
*530The United States Supreme Court's 1932 Block-burger opinion represents one attempt to solve this problem. As the majority opinion explains, the Block-burger test attempts to distinguish among offenses by comparing the elements required for proof of each crime. Generally a subsequent prosecution may go forward if it requires proof of an additional element.
Today the Blockburger test still serves well as an initial inquiry, but it is not sufficiently refined to cope with the plethora of criminal statutes now crowding the statute books. In this case, for example, the very same forged checks could be used as the basis for prosecutions under at least two state criminal statutes. When the state lost its case under one statute, a second case was brought under another.
It is not unusual in Wisconsin for a prosecutor to have at his or her disposal two, three or even more statutes upon which to base a prosecution. Indeed, the legislature adds new criminal statutes each session, some of them designed to criminalize the specific conduct of a high-profile defendant whose conduct is already punishable under one or more existing criminal statutes. The resulting surfeit of overlapping statutes complicates double jeopardy issues relating to multiple prosecutions. If a meaningful test under Wisconsin's double jeopardy clause is not formulated, the bar to successive prosecutions will be evaded simply because the legislature established numerous offenses, each with a slightly different set of legal elements.
As the people of this country and this state understand the double jeopardy clause, an individual cannot be prosecuted twice for essentially the same conduct. Witness the fact that many people found puzzling and even troubling that the police officers accused of beating Rodney King could be acquitted and then prosecuted a second time.
*531Adherence to the Blockburger test today invites the very abuses the double jeopardy clause was designed to protect against. As Justice Souter suggested in Dixon, "the government could . . . bring a person to trial again and again for that same conduct, violating the principle of finality, subjecting him repeatedly to all the burdens of trial, rehearsing its prosecutions, and increasing the risk of erroneous conviction, all in contravention of the principles behind the protection from successive prosecution... ."3
II.
The penis underlying a technical approach to comparison of offenses under Blockburger, and recognition that Blockburger does not sufficiently protect defendants from the burdens of multiple trials, led the United States Supreme Court to the "same conduct" test set forth in Grady v. Corbin, 495 U.S. 508, 520 (1990).4 In Grady the court added to the Blockburger test the requirement that a subsequent prosecution not require *532proof of conduct that constitutes an offense for which the defendant has already been prosecuted.
However, as the majority notes, Grady soon became the target of criticism. Among these criticisms is the valid concern that defendants could be convicted of a misdemeanor in one court, barring prosecution in another court for a felony arising out of the same conduct. Further, some critics contend that the difficulty of defining what constitutes the "same conduct" has rendered the Grady test unworkable.
hH HH HH
. In light of the problems with Blockburger and the criticisms of Grady, a new approach to multiple prosecutions under the Wisconsin constitution should satisfy several important criteria. First, the test must remain true to the principles underlying the double jeopardy clause. It must protect the individual from the continuing anxiety, insecurity, and expense of repeated attempts by the state, with all its resources and power, to obtain a criminal conviction on the basis of the same "offense." Second, the test must produce results that carefully and fairly balance the individual's interest in protection from multiple trials and the public's interest in ascertaining guilt and punishing offenders. Requiring joinder of all charges and prohibiting all serial proceedings does not make sense under all circumstances. For example, under certain circumstances the prosecution should not have to forego more serious charges when less serious charges were initially prosecuted. Third, the test must be usable; prosecutors, defendants and the courts must be able to apply it with relative ease.
I recognize that we are unlikely to find a perfect test for multiple prosecutions under the double jeop*533ardy clause that will fit all cases. I also understand why counsel have not fully developed state constitutional arguments and new approaches to this problem. It is discouraging to expend the time and effort necessary to make state constitutional arguments when this court so often dismisses such claims out of hand. Although our court has in numerous instances recognized its authority to interpret Wisconsin's constitution, it has often adopted federal interpretations of provisions of the Wisconsin constitution without further analysis.
Double jeopardy jurisprudence is an important area of law where state courts have a special responsibility, especially in Wisconsin where the interpretations of the federal constitution do not seem to meet our needs. The application of the fresh thoughts and inspiration of counsel and the academic community to this challenge is welcome.?

 Grady v. Corbin, 495 U.S. 508 (1990), was the case overruled.
The majority concludes, as did Justice Scalia in Dixon, that Grady v. Corbin had no support from prior cases. As long as this court is applying federal constitutional law to this case, I feel bound by Justice Scalia's interpretation adopted by the major*529ity's opinion but I think that Justice Souter's analysis of these earlier cases in Dixon is more persuasive.

 Article I, section 8(1) of the Wisconsin Constitution provides that:"... no person for the same offense may be put twice in jeopardy of punishment...." The state and federal constitutional provisions are not identical.

 United States v. Dixon, 61 LW 4835, 4855 (1993) (Souter, J. concurring and dissenting).

 The Court has distinguished between multiple punishments in one prosecution and multiple prosecutions. The interests at stake in prohibiting multiple punishments and in avoiding successive prosecutions are different. United States v. Dixon, 61 LW 4835, 4851 (1993) (Souter, J. concurring and dissenting).
A prosecutor may bring one lawsuit charging the defendant under several or all of the statutes. On conviction, the defendant may be punished for violation of more than one statute if the legislature intended cumulative punishment. The legislature can impose severe and multiple punishments if it wishes because the legislature determines the penalty for a crime, within the limits of the Eighth Amendment.