Court Opinion

ID: 9641088
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:22:48.970454+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:34.904515
License: Public Domain

McEWEN, Judge,
dissenting.
While the expression of the majority reveals a particularly keen perception and provides a most persuasive presentation of view, I am compelled to this statement of dissent.
Nunc pro tunc is a most familiar phrase in the language of the law and means:
Now for then. In re Peter's Estate, 175 Okl. 90, 51 P.2d 272, 274. A phrase applied to acts allowed to be done after the time when they should be done, with a retroactive effect, i.e., with the same effect as if regularly done.
Nunc pro tunc signifies now for then, or, in other words, a thing is done now, which shall have same legal force and effect as if done at time when it ought to have been done. State v. Hatley, 72 N.M. 377, 384 P.2d 252, 254.
Black’s Law Dictionary 964 (5th ed. 1979).
Ex post facto is a hallowed phrase in the language of the law, and even so ancient that the nobles, when they imposed the Magna Carta upon King John in 1215, used the phrase to proscribe the subsequent declaration of earlier conduct as criminal. Surely, nunc pro tunc would also have been addressed by the lords, become part of the Magna Carta, and attained hallowed historical stature had the king been behead*153ing subjects for a crime because they later smelled guilty— but even King John was not beheading citizens for acts that were ex post facto nunc pro tunc.
Thus, as admirable and necessary as is the mission of advocates against drunk driving and as worthy as are the advocates themselves, I am compelled, the Supreme Court of North Dakota notwithstanding, to the conclusion that the current text of subsection 5 of Section 3731 of the Vehicle Code casts a net beyond any lawful perimeter since it impermissibly encroaches upon the rights of an accused by relieving the prosecutor of establishing that any amount of alcohol was in the blood of the driver at the time the driver was operating the vehicle.