Court Opinion

ID: 9612736
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:11:00.47825+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:22.681080
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
with whom SIMMS, Justice, joins concurring.
David Walters [appellee or Walters], the Democratic Party’s nominee for governor in the 1986 general election, came under investigation by the Oklahoma Ethics Commission [Commission] for an alleged breach of the Oklahoma Ethics Commission Act [Act].1 After hearings the Commission found the evidence sufficient to show a violation of 74 O.S.Supp.1986 §§ 4202(6), 4216 and 4219 of the Act2 and ordered that a complaint be referred to the district attorney for consideration of criminal charges. Implicit in this referral was the Commission’s conclusion that money obtained by a candidate for campaign use through non-bank loans is within the Act’s limitations on campaign contributions.3
In its opinion today the court holds the Act constitutional. Its pronouncement impresses with specific imprimatur certain investigative procedures prescribed in the Act. Reversed is the trial court’s ruling which held the challenged campaign-related, non-bank loans not to be in violation of the Act, because that declaration clearly was unauthorized by §§ 3064 and 3185 of the Administrative Procedures Act or by §§ 1651 and 16576 of the Uniform Declara-
*180tory Judgments Act. Left unsettled by today’s holding is the controversy over the claimed criminal character of Walters’ non-bank loans. This was an issue clearly and explicitly removed from the district court’s cognizance by this court’s order in an original action brought before it by the Commission to arrest all further proceedings below.
While I concur in today’s judgment and in the court’s opinion, I write separately to explain why this court must, and wisely does, abstain today from deciding whether Walters’ non-bank loans were in violation of the Act.
Because violators of the Act’s pertinent provisions are liable to criminal penalties,7 this court’s failure to grant declaratory relief sought by the parties here and below is persuasively rested on three well-established principles of deference which must always control orderly interaction of civil remedies with criminal process: (1) in a civil suit for injunctive or declaratory relief, unless it is absolutely clear that a penal statute’s construction is necessary to protect from irreparable damage a person’s rights in property, the decision regarding criminal liability for one’s conduct must always be left to the court with cognizance over the offense charged; (2) the sufficiency of evidence to bring a criminal prosecution may not be challenged, before the charge has been brought, in a civil suit for declaratory relief; and (3) declaratory relief is highly inappropriate for testing the legal sufficiency of a charge not yet formally pressed against one who stands as a suspect under government investigation.
I
THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS HAS THE EXCLUSIVE REVIEWING POWER OVER THE MEANING, EFFECT AND VALIDITY OF PENAL ENACTMENTS IMPLICATED IN A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION OR PROSECUTION
The constitutionality or validity of a penal enactment that is to serve as a foundation for the prosecution ordinarily presents an issue which lies within the exclusive cognizance of the court in which the criminal charge is lodged.8
*181A
Extant Oklahoma case law gives a clear exposition of the dichotomy that governs our civil and criminal appellate cognizance.9 The Court of Criminal Appeals has the exclusive power over matters incident or essential to the complete exercise of its appellate jurisdiction in criminal cases.10 Because final decisions upon the meaning of a penal enactment may not be made by any appellate tribunal other than the Court of Criminal Appeals,11 this court’s pronouncement on the legality of the loans here in question would be but a forecast with no authoritative guidance either to the trial bench or to the prosecutorial service, the latter of which is the very organ of government required to act on the Commission’s referral decision. It would indeed be utterly futile for this court to decide now and here whether an act or omission sought to be ascribed to an individual is in violation of some penal law. Its ruling would have no binding effect on anyone if a criminal prosecution were indeed to follow from the Commission’s decision to refer its complaint to a district attorney.12
B
A civil court sitting in equity is not ordinarily concerned with the enforcement of criminal laws; the power to interpret penal provisions is reposed solely in the courts that exercise criminal jurisdiction. Only in those rare circumstances when a void criminal statute impinges vested property rights will a civil court allow its chancery powers to be invoked.13 Absent these exigent cir*182cumstances, courts will not in a civil dispute enjoin criminal proceedings, nor will they otherwise act to fetter the hands of government officials attempting to enforce penal laws.14
The adoption of the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act15 — which authorized the district courts to construe the meaning, or pronounce upon the validity, of a statute— did not change the time-honored rules that traditionally limit the power of equity to construe penal legislation, be it in form of state statutes or municipal ordinances. In Anderson v. Trimble,16 a post-Act decision, we held that the Uniform Act was not intended to license declaratory relief from pending criminal prosecution in any case other than one in which an injunction would have been appropriate under the rules of equity jurisprudence in force anterior to the Act’s adoption.
II
THE RANGE OF THE DISTRICT COURT’S INQUIRY WAS IMPER-MISSIBLY ENLARGED BEYOND THE ISSUES AUTHORIZED BY THIS COURT’S ORDER MADE ANTERIOR TO THE TRIAL BELOW IN THE ORIGINAL ACTION FOR A PREROGATIVE WRIT SOUGHT TO ARREST FURTHER DISTRICT COURT PROCEEDINGS
After its investigation and hearing, the Commission found the evidence sufficient to show a violation of §§ 4202(6), 4216 and 4219 of the Act, construed conjunctively, and referred the complaint against Walters to the district attorney for consideration of criminal charges. Before any prosecutorial action took place on the referral, Walters sought declaratory relief in Oklahoma County’s District Court. He there challenged the constitutionality of certain procedures prescribed in the Act and of those provisions which operate to restrict non-bank campaign loans to a candidate. The Commission then attempted to prohibit the district court’s assumption of cognizance over Walters’ challenge by bringing an original action in this court for a prerogative writ.
The writ issued from this forum17 declared that the district court was without *183cognizance to review the sufficiency of evidence to support the Commission’s referral to the district attorney of the ethics complaint against Walters.18 Our reason for barring the broad review Walters sought from the district court is plainly apparent. The criminality of a person’s conduct may not be challenged in a declaratory judgment suit during the course of a pending law enforcement investigation and before prosecution has been instituted.19 Although explicitly holding that the Commission’s decision to refer was nonreviewable by the district court, we did allow the lower court to entertain a judicial inquiry into those issues which could properly be tendered for declaratory relief either under 75 O.S.1981 § 806 or 12 O.S.1981 § 1651.
*182CHIEF JUSTICE
*183The trial court exceeded its authority when it found that the non-bank loans to Walters were legal and that the Commission’s interpretation of the statutory prohibition of loans to candidates contravened the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. The trial court took notice of the undisputed facts surrounding Walters’ loans and gauged them by its very own view of the applicable law. This was not the function intended for the lower tribunal by this court’s order. When the trial court subjected the critical facts examined by the Commission to an independent legal analysis, it was doing indirectly that which it was prohibited from doing directly. It extended the range of inquiry to include a probe of the substantive-law foundation for the Commission’s investigation and to invalidate that inquest’s product — the referral decision. It is in this oblique manner that the Commission’s nonreviewable investigative action became the target of an unauthorized court review and fell under its axe.
I concur in paragraphs (1), (2) and (4) of the Court’s order, and concur in part and dissent in part to paragraph (3).”
Because both before and after the referral decision20 the district court lacked declaratory power over the investigative phase of the Commission’s process, its inquiry should have been confined to those purely procedural features of the Act which stood before it for constitutional scrutiny. The relief granted Walters below did not avail to him during the Commission’s investigation, during the district attorney’s consideration of the Commission’s referral decision, nor at any other point in time during the pre-charge stage of the process.21 The range of issues litigable below was impermissibly enlarged beyond the course charted by this court’s order in the original action brought here by the Commission to arrest all further proceedings for the relief Walters sought in his district court suit.22
*184I fully join the court’s holding today that Walters’ district court exoneration poses no legal impediment to testing the legality of his campaign-related non-bank loans in a proceeding brought to enforce the Act’s penalties.

. 74 O.S.Supp.1986 §§ 4200 et seq.

. For the text of 74 O.S.Supp.1986 §§ 4216, 4202(6) and 4219 see footnote 3 infra.

. The terms of 74 O.S.Supp.1986 § 4202(6) are:
"6. 'Contribution' means and includes money, property, or in-kind services, including but not limited to, printing or engraving, radio or television time, billboards, advertising, subscription, forgiveness of indebtedness, personal or professional services or any other thing of value whatsoever which is given or loaned to be used in a campaign, except for part-time voluntary services performed by the person donating such services;" [Emphasis supplied.]
The terms of 74 O.S.Supp.1986 § 4216 provide:
"No person or family may contribute more than Five Thousand Dollars ($5,000.00) to a political party or organization. No person or family may contribute more than Five Thousand Dollars ($5,000.00) to a candidate for state office, nor more than One Thousand Dollars ($1,000.00) to a candidate for local office. No political party, organization or candidate shall receive contributions in excess of the amounts provided herein." [Emphasis supplied.]
The terms of 74 O.S.Supp.1986 § 4219 provide in pertinent part:
"... Nor shall any such corporations, except a banking corporation in this state, directly or through such other person, make any loan of money or anything of value, or give or furnish any privilege, favor or other thing of value to any political party, or to any representative of a political party, or to any other person for it, or to any candidate upon the ticket of any political party_" [Emphasis added.]

. The terms of 75 O.S.1981 § 306 provide in pertinent part:
“The validity or applicability of a rule may be determined in an action for declaratory judgment in the district court of the county of the residence of the person seeking relief or, at the option of such person, in the county wherein the rule is sought to be applied, if it is alleged the rule, or its threatened application, interferes with or impairs, or threatens to interfere with or impair, the legal rights or privileges of the plaintiff. * * * " [Emphasis added.]

No rule was tendered to the district court for a declaratory ruling.

. The terms of 75 O.S.1981 § 318 provide in pertinent part:
"(1) Any person or party aggrieved or adversely affected by a final order in an individual proceeding ... is entitled to certain, speedy, adequate and complete judicial review thereof under this act....” [Emphasis added.]

The Commission’s referral decision was neither final nor adjudicative in character. It was not hence subject to § 318 review.

. Section 1651 of the general declaratory judgments act, which allows the trial court to determine the construction or validity of any statute, is explicitly inapplicable to orders, judgments or decrees of any state agency or commission. See the terms of 12 O.S.1981 § 1657 which provide:
"This act shall not be applicable to orders, judgments, or decrees made by the State Industrial Court, the Corporation Commission, or any other administrative agency, board or commission of the State of Oklahoma.” [Emphasis supplied.]

Even if the Commission’s referral decision were to be viewed as an adjudicative order rather 
*180
than as an investigative report, its terms would lie beyond the reach of reviewing powers granted to a district court. See § 1657 of the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act in this footnote.

. The terms of 74 O.S.Supp.1986 § 4221(A) provide:
“Every person who knowingly and willfully violates any of the provisions of Sections 15-103 through 15 — 111 of this title shall, upon conviction, be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by the imposition of a fine of not more than One Thousand Dollars ($1,000.00) or by confinement in the county jail for not more than six (6) months, or by both such fine and imprisonment. Prosecutions for such violations shall be prosecuted in the county in which said reports are required to be filed."

. See Carder v. Court of Criminal Appeals, 595 P.2d 416, 419 (Okl.1979); Anderson v. Trimble, 519 P.2d 1352, 1354-1355 (Okl.1974) and Hinkle v. Kenny, 178 Okl. 210, 62 P.2d 621, 622 (1936).
A dual criminal/civil appellate court system similar to Oklahoma’s is found in Texas. Texas jurisprudence is most instructive here. See discussion in Anderson v. Trimble, supra; see also State v. Stovall, 168 Tex.Cr.R. 207, 324 S.W.2d 874, 875-876 (1959); Law v. Texas Delivery Service, Inc., 335 S.W.2d 653, 656 (Tex.Civ.App. 1960); City of Houston v. Adams, 326 S.W.2d 627, 630 (Tex.Civ.App.1959); Stecher v. City of Houston, 272 S.W.2d 925, 928 (Tex.Civ.App. 1954); Chevron Oil Company v. City of El Paso, 537 S.W.2d 472, 474 (Tex.Civ.App.1976); Better Home Products of Texas Co. v. City of Dallas, 517 S.W.2d 373, 374 (Tex.Civ.App.1974) and Malone v. City of Houston, 278 S.W.2d 204, 205 (Tex.Civ.App. 1955). Texas law appears to be settled that equity will not enjoin criminal proceedings or attempt to stay the hands of police officers in enforcing criminal law except where the statute to be enforced is unconstitutional or void and its enforcement will result in irreparable injury to vested property rights. The enactment of declaratory judgment legislation did not change the rules that limited equity's power to construe penal statutes.
At the time Texas passed a declaratory judgment act, jurisdiction to determine the validity of penal statutes and ordinances — where irreparable injury to vested property rights was not involved — resided exclusively in the criminal courts. This rule evolved from case law construing pertinent articles of the Texas constitution which provide that courts of record "within their respective jurisdictions" shall have the power to declare rights, status and other legal relations. See Stecher v. City of Houston, supra.

. Oklahoma jurisprudence is based on judicial construction of Art. 7 § 4, Okl. Const., as well as on similar language in the pre-1967 counterpart version in Art. 7 § 2, Okl. Const. The earlier version of § 2 was repealed by the 1967 amendment of Article 7, Okl. Const. (State Question No. 448, Legislative Referendum No. 164, adopted at election held July 11, 1967).
The terms of Art. 7 § 4, Okl. Const, provide in pertinent part:
"The appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court shall be coextensive with the State and shall extend to all cases at law and in equity; except that the Court of Criminal Appeals shall have exclusive appellate jurisdiction in criminal cases until otherwise provided by statute and in the event there is any conflict as to jurisdiction, the Supreme Court shall determine which court has jurisdiction and such determination shall be final....” [Emphasis added.]
See Hinkle v. Kenny, supra note 8, 62 P.2d at 622; Anderson v. Trimble, supra note 8; Carder v. Court of Criminal Appeals, supra note 8 and Corley v. Adair County Court, infra note 10.

. See Hinkle v. Kenny, supra note 8, 62 P.2d at 622 where this court reiterated its settled policy to follow the decisions of the Court of Criminal Appeals in matters of criminal law and the construction of criminal statutes. The stated purpose of this policy is to avoid "a conflict of opinions and decisions between the two courts.” See also State ex rel. Ikard v. Russell, 33 Okl. 141,124 P. 1092 (1912); Ex parte Buchanan, 113 Okl. 194, 240 P. 699 (1925) and Ex parte Meek, 165 Okl. 80, 25 P.2d 54 (1933).
In Ex parte Meek, supra, we said:
"Separate courts for the trial of criminal cases and civil cases are common, as are separate appellate courts to entertain appeals in cases falling within these respective divisions. The settled and reasonable policy of the law is that there should be no conflicts in their jurisdictions or in their acts or decisions, where such conflicts are avoidable. The makers of our Constitution had this policy in mind and so indicated that this was their mind by using the term ‘exclusive appellate jurisdiction in criminal cases’ when they prescribed the jurisdiction to be given to the Criminal Court of Appeals."
The Court of Criminal Appeals in Corley v. Adair County Court, 10 Okl.Cr. 104, 134 P. 835, 836 (1913), acknowledged this doctrine, relying upon the principle that two bodies of equal density cannot occupy the same space at the same time.

. Ex parte Anderson, 33 Okl. 216, 124 P. 980, 981 (1912); Ex parte Meek, supra note 10; Hin-kle v. Kenney, supra note 8; see Ex parte Barnett, 180 Okl. 208, 69 P.2d 643, 644 (1937); Corley v. Adair County Court, supra note 10; and Hurst v. Pitman, 90 Okl.Cr. 329, 213 P.2d 877, 882 (1950).

. Reed v. Littteton, 249 A.D. 310, 292 N.Y.Supp. 363, 366 (1936).
The Act’s critical provisions — on which the prosecution would be rested — are far from crystal-clear. Walters’ legal advisers, the Commission, and the trial judge, each arrived at a somewhat different analysis of the loans’ legality. Our own gloss upon this all-important public-law issue would add to criminal jurisprudence but a gratuitous commentary and an exercise in futility-

. Whitson v. City of Cherokee, 173 Okl. 208, 46 P.2d 907, 908 (1935); Wright v. City of Guthrie, 150 Okl. 171, 1 P.2d 162, 164 (1931); Board of Trustees of Town of Canton v. Gunning, 191 Okl. 448, 130 P.2d 817, 818 (1942) and State v. Eu-banks, Okl.Cr., 368 P.2d 253, 255 (1962).

. State v. Eubanks, supra note 13 at 255; see also State v. Stovall, supra note 8 324 S.W.2d at 875-876; Flowers v. Woodruff, 150 Tex.Cr.R. 255, 200 S.W.2d 178, 181-182 (1947); Malone v. City of Houston, supra note 8 at 205; City of Houston v. Adams, supra note 8 at 630; Chevron Oil Company v. City of El Paso, supra note 8 at 474; and City of Amarillo v. Griggs Southwest Mortuary, Inc., 406 S.W.2d 230, 232 (Tex.Civ. App.1966).

. 12 O.S.1981 §§ 1651 et seq.

. See footnote 8 supra.

. Our October 13, 1986 writ of prohibition directs:
"ORDER
Original jurisdiction is assumed and writ of prohibition issue for the limited purpose of prohibiting any proceeding in Cause No. CJ-86-10855, District Court, Oklahoma County, the object of which is to review the action of the Oklahoma Ethics Commission in making a referral of the matter under its investigatory power to a prosecutor. 74 O.S.Supp.1986, § 4207(G)(2).
The decision of the Commission to refer a matter to a prosecutor is non-adjudicative in character, but rather investigatory and non-final in nature and therefore non-reviewable in district court. Tweedy v. Oklahoma Bar Association, 624 P.2d 1049, 1052 (Okl., 1981).
This order does not bar the district court’s cognizance over issues now tendered, or to be tendered in that court under the provisions of 75 O.S.1981, § 306, or under 12 O.S.1981, § 1651. See also: C.F. Braun & Co. v. Corporation Commission, 609 P.2d 1268, 1273, 1274 (Okl., 1980).
An in camera inspection of confidential material is authorized only to the extent that it is essential to a determination of the issues properly tendered in the declaratory judgment action.
DONE BY ORDER OF THE SUPREME COURT IN CONFERENCE this 13th day of October, 1986.
Robert D. Simms
SIMMS, C.J., LAVENDER, OPALA, WILSON, KAUGER, JJ., CONCUR.
HODGES, J., CONCUR IN PART; DISSENT IN PART.
HARGRAVE, J., DISQUALIFIED DOOLIN, VCJ, DISSENTS.
HODGES, J., Concurring in Part, Dissenting in Part:
In my opinion the Oklahoma Ethics Commission is not subject to the provisions of the Administrative Procedures Act. Therefore, I *183would limit the trial court's inquiry solely to constitutional issues.

. The referral decision was nonreviewable because the Commission lacks adjudicative power. Its function is to investigate and, if warranted, to refer the complaint for prosecution to a district attorney. The referral is neither an adjudication nor a rule. See 75 O.S.Supp.1985 § 301(2) and (6) for definitions of "rule” and "order"; see also Grand River Dam Authority v. State, 645 P.2d 1011, 1019 (Okl.1982).

. The sufficiency of the government's case cannot ordinarily be tested by a declaratory judgment in advance of prosecution. Zemel v. Rusk, 381 U.S. 1, 85 S.Ct. 1271, 14 L.Ed.2d 179 (1965). In Zemel, the Court, while stating the general rule that equity will not interfere with the criminal process by entertaining actions for injunction or declaratory relief in advance of criminal prosecution, did note certain circumstances under which courts are allowed to make an exception to this rule. None of these exceptions is applicable to this case.

. In essence and in its legal effect the Commission’s referral decision was not one iota different from a police chiefs directive to carry a crime investigation report to the local prosecutor for further handling and action, if one were indeed legally appropriate.

. The law discourages piecemeal litigation of the legal issues in multiple suits and seeks to prevent the needless proliferation of litigation. If multiplicity of suits were to be allowed, an unnecessary burden would be cast on the courts and law enforcement authorities. See Norcisa v. Board of Selectmen of Provincetown, 368 Mass. 161, 330 N.E.2d 830, 834 (1975).

. See State ex rel. Smith v. District Court of Osage County, 188 Okl. 663, 112 P.2d 381, 382 (1941) and Parks v. Hughes, 312 P.2d 435, 437 (Okl.1957).