Court Opinion

ID: 9627526
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:47:09.873186+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:33:39.144689
License: Public Domain

HARTZ, Judge (dissenting).. I respectfully dissent. Although the majority’s opinion provides a reasonable analysis of March v. State, 109 N.M. 110, 782 P.2d 82 (1989), and related New Mexico case law, the opinion understates the importance of Lott v. Cox, 76 N.M. 76, 412 P.2d 249 (1966). Also, the holding of the majority may lead to inappropriate results in some circumstances. The facts in Lott are crucial. Lott was convicted on May 17, 1961, of breaking and entering. On May 23, 1961, he was sentenced to serve a term of not less than one nor more than three years. On May 19, 1961, the state filed a habitual-offender information against Lott. He was convicted by a jury on October 8, 1962, and sentenced to life imprisonment. The sentence imposed was declared to be void in Lott v. Cox, 75 N.M. 102, 401 P.2d 93 (1965). On April 28, 1965, Lott was resentenced to life imprisonment on the 1961 habitual-offender information. At that time Lott had completely served the maximum permissible sentence on the charge of breaking and entering. Our supreme court stated, “The legislature placed no time limit upon the filing of a recidivist information, at least until expiration of the maximum period of the punishment prescribed for the felony of which he was convicted and such further period as he may be under the control or custody of the penitentiary authorities.” Lott v. Cox, 76 N.M. at 80, 412 P.2d at 252. The court found “no reason, constitutional or otherwise” to prevent resentencing in that case. Id. Thus, in Lott, as in this case, the habitual-offender charge was filed while the defendant was serving his sentence and the habitual-offender enhancement was not imposed until after the defendant had completed serving his sentence. In March, on the other hand, the habitual-offender charge was filed after the defendant had completed his sentence. Lott and this case therefore can be distinguished from March on their facts. Whether that distinction is of legal significance depends upon whether the critical date for determining the jurisdiction of the sentencing court is (1) the date of filing the habitual-information charge or (2) the date of imposition of sentence. Although the March opinion creates doubt about the continuing validity of Lott, March made no direct criticism of Lott’s holding that the date of filing the habitual-offender information is the determinative date. The sole explicit criticism March makes of Lott related to the statement in Lott that the sentencing court had jurisdiction until “expiration of the maximum period of the punishment prescribed for the felony.” Lott v. Cox, 76 N.M. at 80, 412 P.2d at 252. March said that the defendant’s expectation of finality should be determined not by the maximum possible confinement but by the period actually served by the defendant. Yet even though March held that Lott provided district courts with too generous a period of time to exercise jurisdiction over habitual-offender proceedings, it did not specifically disapprove of Lott’s holding that the time of filing the habitual-offender information, rather than the time of sentence enhancement, determines jurisdiction. March explicitly recognized that the statement in Lott which it criticized was mere dictum, not necessary to the result in Lott — the habitual-offender information in Lott was filed years before Lott completed his prison term. March did not say that the Lott holding was incorrect. Nor do I think that other language in March compels the conclusion that Lott’s holding has been overruled. As the majority notes, some statements in March suggest that our supreme court believes that the date of sentencing is the date of importance, but other statements emphasize the date of filing the habitual-offender charge. I believe that this seeming inconsistency can be resolved simply on the basis that the difference between the two dates was irrelevant to the outcome in March. Both the filing of the habitual-offender charge and the sentencing occurred after March had completed serving his underlying sentence. If our supreme court had made a considered determination in March that habitual-offender enhancement cannot be imposed after the defendant has completed serving the underlying sentence, regardless of the date of filing of the. habitual-offender information, then I would expect the description of the specific facts in March to focus on the date of sentencing, rather than the date of filing. Yet March never mentions the sentencing date. Moreover, the supreme court’s decision in March appeared to attach importance to the filing date when it rejected this court’s reasoning (in an unpublished decision) that the information had been filed prior to completion of service of March’s sentence. In sum, although March suggests that our supreme court may overrule the holding in Lott if the opportunity presents itself, I do not read March itself as overruling Lott. Therefore, under Alexander v. Delgado, 84 N.M. 717, 507 P.2d 778 (1973), our obligation is to follow Lott. Moreover, even though the Lott court did not have the benefit of a good bit of double-jeopardy jurisprudence developed by the United States Supreme Court in recent years, Lott is still of controlling importance because of its construction of the New Mexico habitual-offender statute. Double-jeopardy analysis in the present context is essentially a matter of statutory interpretation. United States v. DiFrancesco, 449 U.S. 117, 101 S.Ct. 426, 66 L.Ed.2d 328 (1980), relies heavily, perhaps exclusively, on statutory language in determining whether a defendant has a protected “expectation of finality” that would prohibit an original sentence from being enhanced. In DiFrancesco the Supreme Court rejected a double-jeopardy challenge to a federal law permitting the government to appeal certain sentences. In determining whether the defendant had a legitimate expectation of finality, the Court did little more than look to the controlling statute. The Court wrote: The defendant, of course, is charged with knowledge of the statute and its appeal provisions, and has no expectation of finality in his sentence until the appeal is concluded or the time to appeal has expired. Id. at 136, 101 S.Ct. at 437. Respondent was ... aware that a dangerous special offender sentence is subject to increase on appeal. His legitimate expectations are not defeated if his sentence is increased on appeal any more than are the expectations of the defendant who is placed on parole or probation that is later revoked. Id. at 137, 101 S.Ct. at 437. Although it might be argued that the defendant perceives the length of his sentence as finally determined when he begins to serve it, and that the trial judge should be prohibited from thereafter increasing the sentence, that argument has no force where, as in the dangerous special offender statute, Congress has specifically provided that the sentence is subject to appeal. Id. at 139, 101 S.Ct. at 438. Such reliance on a statute to determine whether a defendant’s rights under the Double Jeopardy Clause have been violated is not unique to the sentence-enhancement situation. The question of merger — whether a defendant can be sentenced consecutively for two offenses — is another double-jeopardy issue decided on the basis of legislative intent. See State v. Ellenberger, 96 N.M. 287, 629 P.2d 1216 (1981). For example, if a defendant is convicted at a single trial of setting an explosive that killed two people, double-jeopardy doctrine prohibits imposition of consecutive sentences for the two murders only if the legislature did not intend to permit such consecutive sentences. Thus, whether defendant has an expectation of finality that would prohibit enhancement of his sentence after he has completed serving the term of his underlying sentence turns on whether the habitual-offender statute permits such a belated sentencing procedure. That matter of statutory interpretation was decided in Lott. Although the habitual-offender statute has been modified, there has been no material change in the language upon which Lott relied in deciding that a sentence could be enhanced pursuant to a timely filed information even if the enhanced sentence is imposed after the defendant has served all of the underlying sentence. Compare NMSA 1953, § 41-16-4 with NMSA 1978, §§ 31-18-19 and -20 (Repl.Pamp.1987). (The interpretation of the statutory language in Lott was apparently the majority view among other jurisdictions at that time. See Lott v. Cox.) Thus, even if one discounts the value of Lott as precedent with respect to constitutional double-jeopardy principles, the statutory interpretation that it provides is, until overruled by our supreme court, compelling authority on the double-jeopardy issue presented by this case. Cf. State v. Travarez, 99 N.M. 309, 657 P.2d 636 (Ct.App.1983) (statute changed to forbid revocation of probation after expiration of period of deferred sentence). Finally, although the facts of this case make it attractive to forbid imposition of a sentence enhancement after the underlying sentence has been fully served, in other situations the opposite result would seem more appropriate. For example, in State v. George, 218 La. 18, 48 So.2d 265 (1950), a case cited by Lott, the defendant had been discharged on the date he was sentenced because his pre-sentence confinement exceeded the sentence imposed. The Louisiana Supreme Court permitted the habitual-offender proceeding to be held shortly after sentencing on the underlying charge. The rule proposed by the majority here would foreclose this possibility even if the habitual-offender information had been filed concurrently with the underlying charge. As a practical consequence, cautious prosecutors will henceforth ordinarily seek to complete habitual-offender proceedings prior to sentencing on the underlying charge — perhaps a desirable result, but certainly not one that the legislature has seen fit to compel. Permitting imposition of an enhanced sentence after complete service of the underlying sentence also seems fair if delay in the habitual-offender proceeding was caused by the defendant or by reversal on appeal of a previous enhancement imposed on the same habitual-offender information. In my view, delay in imposition of a habitual-offender enhancement can be evaluated more appropriately under speedy-trial doctrine than under double-jeopardy doctrine. Once the sentence imposed has been completed, the defendant has a strong claim to repose, to be left alone. I would weigh this right to repose rather strongly in applying the balancing test for determining whether the right to a speedy trial has been violated. See Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972) (balance length of delay, reason for the delay, assertion of the right to a speedy trial, and prejudice to the defendant). Only in the case of a quite short delay, as in State v. George, or when there are compelling reasons for the delay, could imposition of an enhanced sentence be permissible after defendant has completed serving the sentence on the underlying conviction. Although in measuring the length of the delay in a habitual-offender proceeding we have used the time of filing the habitual-offender information as the starting point, see State v. Santillanes, 98 N.M. 448, 649 P.2d 516 (Ct.App.1982), it may be more appropriate to consider the habitual-offender proceeding as simply part of the sentencing on the underlying charge and therefore to measure the delay from the time of the conviction on the underlying charge. Despite the failure of defendant’s appellate briefs to rely specifically on the right to a speedy trial, the gist of defendant’s complaints is analogous to such a claim. Because the law in this area has been particularly murky, I would not be overly strict about defendant’s pigeonholing of his contentions. I would remand for further proceedings before the district court on the question of defendant’s right to a speedy trial.