Court Opinion

ID: 9667697
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:52:43.136457+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:39.947271
License: Public Domain

V. J. Brennan, J.
(concurring). This case involves a defendant who was allegedly involved in the four separate and distinct criminal offenses of robbery, kidnapping, rape, and murder. Despite the fact that these four crimes each have their own independent elements and that none of them is an included offense of the other, nor do any depend upon the other for proof, we are required to reverse this defendant’s conviction of kidnap*152ping because of the recent decision of our Supreme Court in People v White, 390 Mich 245; 212 NW2d 222 (1973), in which the "same transaction” test of double jeopardy was adopted as the law of this state. In adopting the "same transaction” test of double jeopardy our Supreme Court relied heavily on language contained in the concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Brennan in Ashe v Swenson, 397 US 436, 90 S Ct 1189, 25 L Ed 2d 469 (1970). In Ashe, however, the Court was faced with a defendant who allegedly was one of four persons who had robbed six men at one time during a poker game. The defendant was tried and acquitted of robbing one of the participants but then, six weeks later, was convicted of robbing one of the other participants. There he was tried twice for the same crime. That clearly was not the situation in White and is not the situation in the case at bar. Our Supreme Court, however, chose to apply Mr. Justice Brennan’s language to this type of situation and extend its mandate.
Reluctantly, therefore, I must also vote to reverse this defendant’s conviction.