Court Opinion

ID: 9705788
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:21:08.560928+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:15.463442
License: Public Domain

CARTER, Justice
(concurring specially).
I concur with the opinion of the court that Daniels has shown no right to relief based on double jeopardy grounds or on section 701.9. I write separately to express my belief that this court’s approach to the double-punishment issue needs to be revised. As our opinion in State v. Perez, 563 N.W.2d 625, 627 (Iowa 1997), correctly notes, the Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits successive prosecutions for the same offense and does not directly apply to multiple convictions and punishments in the same prosecution. After the decisions in Missouri v. Hunter, 459 U.S. 359, 103 S.Ct. 673, 74 L.Ed.2d 535 (1983), and Garrett v. United States, 471 U.S. 773, 105 S.Ct. 2407, 85 L.Ed.2d 764 (1985), there is virtually no federal constitutional limitation against multiple conviction and punishments on separately charged counts in the same prosecution. Under these Supreme Court decisions, the question of what punishments are constitutionally permissible is no different from the question of what punishments the legislature intended to be imposed. See State v. McKettrick, 480 N.W.2d 52, 57 (Iowa 1992).
Unfortunately, some of the language used by this court in applying the constitutional law to statutory claims under section 701.9 has been inaccurate and confusing. Foremost in the confusion is a misguided two-step analysis described as follows in State v. Halliburton, 539 N.W.2d 339, 344 (Iowa 1995):
In detecting legislative intent, we first decide whether the crimes meet the legal elements test for lesser included offenses. If they do, we then study whether the legislature intended multiple punishments for both offenses.
(Citations omitted.)
Although Garrett makes clear that the included offense test of Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 52 S.Ct. 180, 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932), “is not controlling when the legislative intent is clear from the face of the statute or legislative history,” Garrett, 471 U.S. at 777-78, 105 S.Ct. at 2410-11, 85 L.Ed.2d at 770-71, there are no proscriptions in the Garrett or Hunter cases that preclude a state legislature from adopting the Block-burger included offense rule as a legislative prohibition against double punishment.1 That is what our legislature has done by enacting section 701.9. Section 701.9 is a general statute that governs all crimes contained in our criminal code. Consequently, all included offenses meeting the Blockbur-ger analysis must be merged within the greater offense because this is the intent of the legislature as expressed in that statute.
The two-step analysis that this court has been applying improperly allows included of*686fenses under the Blockburger test to be separately punished based on this court’s intuitive conclusions concerning a presumed legislative intent. This is an unwarranted judicial abrogation of the clear directive contained in section 701.9.2

. Garrett states:
There is nothing in the Constitution which prevents Congress from punishing separately each step leading to the consummation of a transaction which it has the power to prohibit and punishing also the completed transaction.
Id. at 779, 105 S.Ct. at 2411, 85 L.Ed.2d at 771.

. Of course, a two-step analysis is required if a defendant's argument based on section 701.9 fails, and there are other indicia of an intent to merge the crimes. See State v. Willard, 568 N.W.2d 813, 814 (Iowa 1997) (intent found in statute reading “arson which is not arson in the first degree is arson in the second degree").