Court Opinion

ID: 9791406
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:10:19.180933+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:35.981546
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Frantz
dissenting:
For a number of compelling reasons I cannot concur with the opinion of the Court. These reasons persuade me that Spinuzzi has never been in jeopardy. Believing they have validity and strength, I particularize them, and urge that these reasons require a different result *128in this case than the one issuing from the majority opinion.
1. Spinuzzi has not been placed in jeopardy as that concept receives scope and definition in Sec. 18, Art. II of the Constitution of this state.
Originally the trial court determined the evidence to be insufficient to permit submission to the jury of the charge of murder lodged against Spinuzzi, and directed the jury to return verdicts of not guilty as to either degree of murder and as to either grade of manslaughter. Upon review, invoked by the People, we held that the trial court erred: that the evidence quantitatively and qualitatively required submission of the charge of first degree murder to the jury. People v. Spinuzzi, 149 Colo. 321, 369 P. (2d) 427.
To say of a set of proven facts that it requires a verdict of acquittal because of its insufficiency to establish a jury problem regarding an accusation when indeed it is sufficient constitutes an error in law. State v. Ward, 75 Iowa 637, 36 N.W. 765. To raise the question of the sufficiency of the evidence is to call upon the law-determining power of the court; if it were a fact problem, it would have been a matter for jury resolution. Hence, the motion for directed verdict presented questions of law to the trial court.
A familiar syllogistic formula may now be applied. “[I]f the judgment be reversed for error in law, the accused shall not be deemed to have been in jeopardy,” Sec. 18, Art. II; the Spinuzzi judgment was reversed for an error in law, People v. Spinuzzi, supra; therefore, Spinuzzi shall not be deemed to have been in jeopardy.
2. Sec. 18, Art. II has been definitively interpreted, and such interpretation does not sustain the theory that Spinuzzi has been in jeopardy.
I believe that the most definitive decision on the constitutional provision is Young v. People, 54 Colo. 293, 130 Pac. 1011. Spinuzzi can find no solace in the definitive *129passages of this decision. I quote generously from the opinion:
“By section 18 of article II of the constitution of the state, it is provided:
“ ‘That no person shall be compelled to testify against himself in a criminal case nor shall any person be twice put in jeopardy for the same offense. If the jury disagree, or if the judgment be arrested after the verdict, or if the judgment be reversed for error in law, the accused shall not be deemed to have been in jeopardy.
“This provision of the constitution needs no construction; it is as plain and clear as language can make it. It means: First. If the jury disagree, that the accused may be tried again upon the charge as if no trial had been had; Second. If the judgment be arrested after the verdict, for any reason, that the defendant shall be deemed not to have been in jeopardy, and may again be tried as originally; and Third. If the judgment be reversed for error in law, that then the defendant shall be deemed not to have been in jeopardy, and may be again tried under the information, upon every charge contained in it. If the defendant in this case had not been in jeopardy, and such is declared to be the fact upon the record, by this provision of the constitution, the former judgment having been reversed for error in law, then he could be lawfully tried for and convicted of the highest degree of crime contained in the charge. Upon a reversal of a conviction for error of law, under this provision, one accused of murder stands as though there never had been a former trial; his second trial is de novo. * * * The accused stands upon a second trial as though the former trial had never taken place, and the state stands in precisely the same position. This is the evident purpose and intent of the framers of our constitution. Unless it be assumed that the criminal laws are designed to facilitate the escape from just punishment of those charged with offenses, instead of for the protection of society through punishment of those *130who violate its laws, the above interpretation must be accepted as correct.
* * *
“It is to be noticed that section 18 of article II, above quoted, upon the question of former jeopardy, differs widely from corresponding provisions found in the constitutions of those states where the doctrine is held that one convicted of murder in the second degree, under an information charging murder, cannot, on a new trial, be tried for a greater degree of crime than that of which he was first convicted. The constitutions of states so holding simply have the provision, in substance, that no person shall be twice put in jeopardy for the same offense. They do not have the further provision, found in our constitution, that if the judgment be reversed for error in law the accused shall not be deemed to have been in jeopardy. For this reason the cases from the various states, holding as above indicated, are not in point in determining the question of former jeopardy under a constitutional provision such as ours.” (Emphasis supplied.)
Ballensky v. People, 116 Colo. 34, 178 P. (2d) 433, and Bustamante v. People, 136 Colo. 362, 317 P. (2d) 885, are to like effect.
3. It must be remembered that Spinuzzi was tried the second time in the same action. This is not a case where the People filed anew for the same offense. In fact, this last trial is but a continuation of the cause originally filed.
This theory was first advanced by Justice Holmes in the case of Kepner v. United States, 195 U.S. 100, 24 S.Ct. 797, 49 L. Ed. 114, 1 Ann. Cas. 655, in his dissent.
Justice Holmes stated:
“It is more pertinent to observe that it seems to me that logically and rationally a man cannot be said to be more than once in jeopardy in the same cause, however often he may be tried. The jeopardy is one continuing jeopardy from its beginning to the end of the cause. *131Everybody agrees that the principle in its origin was a rule forbidding a trial in a new and independent case where a man already had been tried once. But there is no rule that a man may not be tried twice in the same case.” (Emphasis supplied.)
In State v. Brunn, 22 Wash. (2d) 120, 154 P. (2d) 826, 157 A.L.R. 1049, the Court said, in adopting the view of Justice Holmes:
“There was, however, a dissent in the Kepner case by Mr. Justice Holmes, in which two other justices joined, which has been accepted as the true rule by the majority of legal writers and by some of the courts. It is not often that so much weight is accorded to a mere dissenting opinion, * * * ”
Among those states which have followed the doctrine proposed by Mr. Justice Holmes is Colorado. We said in the case of Bustamante v. People, supra, “It is apparent that Art. II, § 18 of our Constitution means that in the same action, upon retrial, if the judgment was reversed for errors of law a defendant shall not be deemed to have been in jeopardy due to the first trial.”
4. When Spinuzzi moved for a directed verdict in the first trial, the error of law committed in the granting of the motion was induced by him. He argued that there was insufficient evidence to constitute the crime of which he was charged. He is now estopped to say that he was put in jeopardy for a crime when he took a position to the contrary in the original trial, maintaining that the facts presented did not constitute a crime.
I believe the following language from the case of State v. Davis, 61 N.J. Super. 536, 161 Atl. (2d) 552, is pertinent:
“In general, an acquittal in a matter laid upon a sufficient indictment bars a subsequent prosecution for the same offense under another indictment or accusation. 2 Anderson, Wharton’s Criminal Evidence, supra § 653. If the acquittal, however, is obtained, or the indictment quashed, on defendant’s own motion it has been held *132that defendant is estopped from advancing any theory in support of his claim of double jeopardy which is inconsistent with the theory advanced or position taken to secure his first acquittal.”
See Owens v. Abram, 58 N.M. 682, 274 P. (2d) 630; State v. Arnold, 142 Kans. 589, 50 P. (2d) 1008.
5. We have heeded the plain words of Sec. 18, Art. II, expressly providing “that ‘if the jury disagree * * * the accused shall not be deemed to have been in jeopardy.’ * * * [U]nder the foregoing constitutional provision, there can be no doubt as to the view we should favor. It is expressly declared that the jury, upon failure to agree, may be discharged without prejudice to another trial.” In re Allison, 13 Colo. 525, 22 Pac. 820, 10 L.R.A. 790.
Is this Court consistent in holding that the provision (“[i]f the jury disagree, or if the judgment be arrested after the verdict, or if the judgment be reversed for error in law, the accused shall not be deemed to have been in jeopardy”) should be construed in regard to jury disagreement as avoiding jeopardy, but in regard to a reversal for error in law as constituting jeopardy? I believe the answer is too obvious to require any extended discussion.
I fear the damaging effect of what constitutes double jeopardy as defined and accepted by Mr. Justice McWilliams in his majority opinion, because if there is former jeopardy under his definition even though the constitution says the accused shall be deemed not to have been in jeopardy where the judgment is reversed for error in law, may it not be said that under the same definition there is former jeopardy: (a) if the jury disagrees, or (b) if the judgment be arrested after the verdict? I fear much of what is said not to be former jeopardy in the constitutional provision is placed in serious jeopardy by the majority opinion.
6. By C.R.S. ’53, 39-7-27, the People are permitted to seek a review under certain circumstances of a judgment *133adverse to the state in a criminal case. The statute directs that “nothing in this section shall be construed so as to place a defendant in jeopardy a second time for the.-, same offense.” Constitution and statute must be read together, and the mandate of the Constitution made part of the statute.
It is my conviction that what constitutes jeopardy is what Sec. 18, Art. II says constitutes jeopardy. It must be read into C.R.S. ’53, 39-7-27, and if it is read into the statute, then Spinuzzi was not in jeopardy when the People sought to try him after we held that as a matter of law the evidence was sufficient to generate a jury question as to whether Spinuzzi was guilty of murder.
This concludes my bill of particulars. I perceive each reason appearing in it as being sufficient in itself to show that Spinuzzi has never been placed in jeopardy. My views, I maintain, are obedient to the constitutional precept.
And I do not believe the recent case of Menton v. Johns, 151 Colo. 276, 377 P. (2d) 104, to be contrary to-my views. Hence, I am unable to agree with the majority that Menton v. Johns factually is “most analogous to that in the instant case.” An appraisal of both cases reveals a distinction in depth.
There is a vast difference between the Menton case in which the trial court through inadvertence believed that the state had failed to introduce evidence on an essential matter when, in fact, it had, and directed a verdict of acquittal because of such mistaken belief, and the present case in which the trial court in considering all of the evidence held that it was insufficient to permit submission to the jury. In the Menton case there was' a mistake as to the existence of certain evidence; in the latter case there was an awareness of the evidence adduced, but a mistake as to its value. The Menton case involved an error of fact, the present case an error of law.