Court Opinion

ID: 9686329
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 15:42:43.789408+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:17.860959
License: Public Domain

SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, CHIEF JUSTICE
¶ 47. (dissenting). There is no question that repeat drunk driving is a grave offense that demands drastic societal measures. There is also no question that the legislature may authorize forfeiture of a vehicle in cases of operating a vehicle while under the influence of an intoxicant. The legislature, however, may not adopt an unconstitutional method to provide for forfeiture of a vehicle in repeat drunk driving cases. In my opinion the legislature, in enacting Wis. Stat. § 346.65(6), unfortunately has done just that.
¶ 48. Wisconsin Stat. § 346.65(6) provides that after a conviction of operating a vehicle while under the influence, the State may seize "a motor vehicle. . .owned by" the convicted driver. It is undisputed that under § 346.65(6) the vehicle seized need not be the vehicle driven by the offender during the drunk driving offense.
¶ 49. The defendant argues that Wis. Stat. § 346.65(6) creates criminal punishment and thus permits a successive prosecution and punishment in *322violation of the double jeopardy clauses of the federal and Wisconsin Constitutions.1
¶ 50. The majority opinion concludes that "Wis. Stat. § 346.65(6) constitutes a remedial in rem civil forfeiture proceeding even under Ursery given the facts in this case" and that the double jeopardy bar is, therefore, inapplicable. Majority op. at 308.2
*323¶ 51. United States v. Ursery, 518 U.S. 267, 116 S. Ct. 2135, 2145 (1996), sets forth a two-part test to determine whether a statute is a civil in rem forfeiture proceeding or criminal punishment under double jeopardy analysis: (1) Did the legislature intend the forfeiture proceeding to be civil? (2) If so, is there the "clearest proof" that the forfeiture proceeding is so punitive in form and effect as to render the proceeding criminal despite the legislature's intent to the contrary? See Ursery, 116 S. Ct. at 2147.
¶ 52. I agree with Justice Stevens that the Ursery Court's distinction between civil in rem forfeitures and civil in personam penalties is "pedantic" and does not lend itself to easy understanding by legislatures drafting forfeiture statutes or courts interpreting such statutes. Ursery, 116 S. Ct. at 2160 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). The Ursery Court did not engage in extensive statutory construction and thus left many questions unanswered about how courts are to determine whether a statute provides for a valid civil in rem forfeiture. I interpret and apply Ursery as best as I can, relying on the two-part test and the classification of in rem proceedings and in per-sonam proceedings discussed in the Supreme Court cases.3
*324¶ 53. I dissent because I conclude that Wis. Stat. § 346.65(6) imposes criminal punishment for double jeopardy purposes.
¶ 54. The first question to be answered under the Ursery two-part test is whether the legislature intended the forfeiture under Wis. Stat. § 346.65(6) to be civil or criminal. See Ursery, 116 S. Ct. at 2147.
¶ 55. The majority opinion concludes that the legislature chose to target a motor vehicle owned by the offender and that the legislature, therefore, intended "to remove from the offender's use a vehicle that has the highest probability of being used in any future offense." Majority op. at 309. The majority opinion characterizes the legislative intent as remedial.
¶ 56. The majority opinion reaches this conclusion by examining a Department of Transportation fiscal report stating that 85 percent of drunk drivers were driving their own cars when stopped by the police. Adopting one of the State's positions, the majority opinion reasons that "[i]n light of legislative awareness that vehicle 'ownership' and 'use' tend to go hand in hand, the legislative decision to link forfeiture with ownership and not purely use suggests that 'punishment' of the offender was not the 'principal' purpose of sec. 346.65(6)." Brief for State at 34. Thus the majority opinion concludes that the legislature intended the statute to be remedial by making it harder for drunk drivers to have vehicles to drive.4
¶ 57. The majority opinion's reasoning presents several problems. First, the majority opinion fails to confront Ursery and the line of Supreme Court cases *325dealing with civil in rem forfeitures. Ursery and the other cases make clear that in a civil in rem forfeiture proceeding the property to be seized is, "by resort to a legal fiction," the defendant in the case, and the issue to be tried is whether the property is "guilty [of a crime] and condemned." Ursery, 116 S. Ct. at 2140 (quoting Various Items of Personal Property v. United States, 282 U.S. 577, 581 (1931)).5 The theory underlying a civil in rem forfeiture is that the property in question committed the crime and is, therefore, subject to punishment and forfeiture. See Ursery, 116 S. Ct. at 2145. Civil forfeiture is "designed primarily to confiscate property used in violation of the law, and to require disgorgement of the fruits of illegal conduct." Ursery, 116 S. Ct. at 2145.
¶ 58. In contrast, a forfeiture that is characterized as criminal is designed to impose punishment on the wrongdoer. The owner of the property, who has been convicted of an offense, is stripped of his or her property as punishment for the offense. In many situations, confiscating property used in a crime and punishing and deterring the wrongdoer are overlapping legislative purposes.
¶ 59. In this case the legislature did not authorize the seizure of property "guilty of a crime" but instead authorized seizure of the offender's property to *326deter and punish the offender by confiscating a vehicle that might be used in a future offense. Under Wis. Stat. § 346.65(6) a nexus exists between the seized property and the offender, but not between the seized property and the specific crime committed.6
¶ 60. Thus the statute in issue in this case is significantly different from the statutes discussed in Ursery and the prior Supreme Court cases. The majority opinion in this case concedes that "absent a nexus between the motor vehicle and the crime,.. .compelling constitutional claims could be raised." Majority op. at 320-21.
¶ 61. Second, the majority opinion's characterization of the legislative intent contravenes the text and legislative history of Wis. Stat. § 346.65(6). I conclude, as did the State, that the text and legislative history are ambiguous as to the legislative intent.
¶ 62. The majority opinion omits any discussion of the statutory text in discerning the legislature's intent. The text of Wis. Stat. § 346.65(6) refers to "a motor vehicle.. .owned by" the convicted drunk driver, not the vehicle driven by the driver. The text of § 346.65(6) is silent as to legislative intent. The State's brief acknowledges that "there is no clear expression of legislative intent in the language of sec. 346.65(6), Stats., and the provision reflects a mixture of traditionally civil and criminal features." Brief for State at 31.
*327¶ 63. If the legislature had intended Wis. Stat. § 346.65(6) to be remedial, it would have written the statute to permit seizure of the motor vehicle owned and driven by the convicted driver at the time of the drunk driving offense. But the legislature did not write the statute this way, and the court should not interpret the statute to mean what the legislature did not say.7
¶ 64. Finally, the majority opinion's conclusion about legislative intent contradicts the legislative history. The State's brief concedes that the legislative history "reflects mixed remedial and punitive goals." Brief for State at 32. The majority opinion selectively ignores portions of the legislative history. The full legislative history reveals that the. legislature considered limiting forfeiture to the vehicle driven by the convicted driver but chose not to do so. The drafting file contains several memoranda discussing the choice between forfeiture of the vehicle driven by the convicted driver and forfeiture of a vehicle owned by the convicted driver. An early draft of Wis. Stat. § 346.65(6) provided for seizure of "the motor vehicle in which the violation.. .was committed if the person convicted of that violation has 3 or more prior convictions in a 5-year period." A staff member of then-Senator Lynn Adelman, a sponsor of the bill, asked that this language be amended so that "[o]nly vehicles owned by *328the offender would be subject to confiscation, not necessarily the car being driven by the offender."
¶ 65. I conclude that because Wis. Stat. § 346.65(6) permits seizure of a vehicle owned by the convicted driver, regardless of whether the vehicle was used to commit the offense, the legislature directed the statute to the person of the convicted driver and intended to deter and punish the driver; the legislature did not direct the forfeiture toward "the guilty property."
¶ 66. I therefore conclude under the first part of the Ursery test that the legislature did not intend Wis. Stat. § 346.65(6) to be a civil in rem forfeiture statute directed to the "guilty property." Because I conclude § 346.65(6) is not a civil in rem forfeiture statute, I need not, and do not, reach the second part of the Ursery test.
¶ 67. The only remaining question is whether a vehicle forfeiture proceeding under Wis. Stat. § 346.65(6) is a successive proceeding or part of the drunk driving prosecution. The State concedes that "it is not clear whether the legislature intended sec. 346.65(6), Stats, to be part of the original criminal prosecution (as an adjunct to sentencing) or to be a totally independent proceeding, because the provision contains a hybrid of criminal and civil features." Brief for State at 24.
¶ 68. Wisconsin Stat. § 346.65(6)(c) provides that "[t]he district attorney of the county where the motor vehicle was seized shall commence an action to forfeit the motor vehicle within 30 days after the motor vehicle is seized. . . . The forfeiture action shall be commenced by filing a summons, complaint and affidavit of the law enforcement agency with the clerk of circuit court." Wis. Stat. § 346.65(6)(c). On balance *329§ 346.65(6)(c) seems to make the vehicle forfeiture proceeding a separate proceeding from the criminal prosecution. I, therefore, conclude that vehicle forfeiture under § 346.65(6) following a criminal conviction violates the double jeopardy bar against successive punishments.
¶ 69. For the reasons set forth, I dissent.
¶ 70. I am authorized to state that Justice Ann Walsh Bradley joins this opinion.

 The double jeopardy clauses of the federal and Wisconsin Constitutions prohibit successive punishments for the "same offense." See United States v. Dixon, 509 U.S. 688, 696 (1993); State v. Kurzawa, 180 Wis. 2d 502, 525, 509 N.W.2d 712 (1994). That is, the double jeopardy bar prevents the state from "attempting a second time to punish criminally for the same offense." United States v. Ursery, 518, U.S. 267, 116 S. Ct. 2135, 2139-40 (1996) (internal citations omitted).

 The majority opinion concludes that because Wis. Stat. § 346.65(6) is constitutional as applied to the defendant, he has no standing to bring a facial challenge to the statute. See majority op. at 306. The majority opinion cites United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745 (1987), which requires a showing that "no set of circumstances exists under which the [statute] would be valid."
I conclude that standing is not a barrier to deciding the constitutionality of the statute. The continued vitality of the Salerno standard has been called into question. See Washington v. Glucksberg, 117 S. Ct. 2258, 2304-05 (1997) (Stevens, J., concurring) (noting that appropriate standard to be applied in facial challenges to state statutes has been the subject of debate within the Supreme Court and that the Court has never applied Salerno standard, even in Salerno itself); Kraft Gen. Foods, Inc. v. Iowa Dept. of Revenue and Finance, 505 U.S. 71, 82 (1992) (Rehnquist, C.J., dissenting) (unsuccessfully arguing for the application of the Salerno standard in facial challenge to state tax statute); Jane L. v. Bangerter, 102 F.2d 1112, 1116 (10th Cir. 1996) (noting that the Court did not apply Salerno standard to facial challenge of abortion regulation statute in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992)); Michael C. Dorf, *323Facial Challenges to State and Federal Statutes, 46 Stan. L. Rev. 235, 239-40 (1994) (asserting that the Court inconsistently applies Salerno and fails to articulate why it departs from Salerno).

 United States v. One Assortment of 89 Firearms, 465 U.S. 354 (1984); One Lot Emerald Cut Stones v. United States, 409 U.S. 232 (1972); Various Items of Personal Property v. United States, 282 U.S. 577 (1931).

 The State acknowledges that 15 percent of drunk driving offenders "would be at risk each year for mandatory forfeiture of a vehicle not being driven at the time of the offense." Brief for State at 34 n.9.

 The reasoning of the Ursery Court, however, is not entirely clear. While discussing at length prior Supreme Court cases that resorted to the legal fiction that the property is held guilty and condemned, the majority opinion also stated, in response to Justice Stevens's concurring/dissenting opinion, that the Court does not rest its "conclusion in this case [Ursery] upon the long-recognized fiction that a forfeiture in rem punishes only malfeasant property rather than a particular person." Ursery, 116 S. Ct. at 2148 n.3.

 The majority opinion attempts to salvage Wis. Stat. § 346.65(6) by stating that the statute is remedial because it excludes "innocent owners." Majority op. at 309-10 n.17. The fact that the statute excludes "innocent owners" does not save the statute from being constitutionally infirm since it still permits in rem seizure of "innocent vehicles" (vehicles owned by the convicted driver but not used in the drunk driving offense).

 The majority opinion asserts that "the primary purpose of the statute. . .is to keep the highways safe and protect the public" and cites to State v. McMaster, 206 Wis. 2d 30, 45, 556 N.W.2d 673 (1996), as support for this legislative purpose. Majority op. at 309. McMaster involved Wis. Stat. § 343.305, an entirely different statute, and provides for in personam penalties in relation to intoxication tests. The majority opinion makes a large, unsupported leap by equating the legislative purpose of § 343.305 with the legislative purpose of Wis. Stat. § 346.65(6).