Court Opinion

ID: 9559364
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:27:30.954514+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:10:48.545825
License: Public Domain

MARTONE, Justice,
concurring in the judgment.
I agree that the defendant is not entitled to a jury trial for this misdemeanor, but for the quite separate reason that we should not consider the collateral consequences of conviction at all. I agree with the view expressed by Justice Corcoran in State ex rel. Dean v. Dolny, 161 Ariz. 297, 301, 778 P.2d 1193, 1197 (1989) (Corcoran, J., dissenting) that the framework adopted by the United States Supreme Court for the analogous right to jury trial in the federal Constitution is sounder than our own and we ought to adopt it.
1. The Federal Standard
Under the Constitution of the United States, “a defendant is entitled to a jury trial whenever the offense for which he is charged carries a maximum authorized prison term of greater than six months.” Blanton v. City of N. Las Vegas, 489 U.S. 538, 542, 109 S.Ct. 1289, 1293, 103 L.Ed.2d 550 (1989). If the offense carries a maximum prison term of six months or less, there is a presumption that the offense is petty and that “[a] defendant is entitled to a jury trial in such circumstances only if he can demonstrate that any additional statutory penalties, viewed in conjunction with the maximum authorized period of incarceration, are so severe that they clearly reflect a legislative determination that the offense in question is a ‘serious’ one.” Id. at 543, 109 S.Ct. at 1293. And, “[i]n performing this analysis, only penalties resulting from state action, e.g., those mandated by statute or regulation, should be considered.” Id. at 543 n. 8, 109 S.Ct. at 1293 n. 8.
Thus, the defendant here has no right to a jury trial under the federal Constitution because the maximum period of incarceration is six months or less, and the collateral firearm consequence is not a penalty that results from the Arizona penal statute.
This is a superior and straightforward approach to the right to jury trial. It is simple in application. Defendants, lawyers and judges would know at the outset of trial *128whether there is a right to a jury without exploring the uncertain mine field of collateral consequences. This approach also properly defers to legislative judgments about the severity of an offense.
2. The State Standard
Rothweiler v. Superior Ct, 100 Ariz. 37, 410 P.2d 479 (1966), held that one charged with misdemeanor driving under the influence, where the period of incarceration could not exceed six months, was entitled to a trial by jury under the Arizona Constitution. When Rothweiler was decided, the Supreme Court of the United States had not yet held that the Sixth Amendment right to jury trial applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. That did not occur until Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 88 S.Ct. 1444, 20 L.Ed.2d 491 (1968), some two years later. In reaching its conclusion, Rothweiler examined “[1] the severity of the penalty inflictable, as well as [2] the moral quality of the act and [3] its relation to common law crimes.” 100 Ariz. at 42, 410 P.2d at 483.
In Blanton, the Supreme Court of the United States reached a contrary conclusion. It held that there was no right to jury trial under the Sixth Amendment for misdemean- or driving under the influence where the statutory penalty did not exceed six months. In contrast to the three-part Rothweiler test, the Court focused solely on the first element, the question of penalty. It noted that while its earlier decisions also “focused on [2] the nature of the offense and on [3] whether it was triable by a jury at common law,” 489 U.S. at 541, 109 S.Ct. at 1292, in recent years it had moved away from that analysis to a more objective approach, focusing on penalty alone, because of its reliability in gauging society’s evaluation of the seriousness of the offense. Id. The Court stated that “[t]he judiciary should not substitute its judgment as to seriousness for that of a legislature,” id., and that “[djoubts must be resolved, not subjectively by recourse of the judge to his own sympathy and emotions, but by objective standards such as may be observed in the laws and practices of the community taken as a gauge of its social and ethical judgments.” Id. at 541 n. 5, 109 S.Ct. at 1292 n. 5 (quoting District of Columbia v. Clawans, 300 U.S. 617, 628, 57 S.Ct. 660, 663, 81 L.Ed. 843 (1937)).
This analysis, of course, discards two of the three Rothweiler factors. The “moral quality of the act” is to be determined by the legislature, and not the personal proclivities of the court. In light of the diversity that exists over such questions, the people’s representatives are better equipped to do this. And, the “relation to common law crimes” has “been undermined by the substantial number of statutory offenses lacking common-law antecedents.” Blanton, 489 U.S. at 541 n. 5, 109 S.Ct. at 1292 n. 5.
In State ex rel. Dean v. Dolny, 161 Ariz. 297, 778 P.2d 1193 (1989), this court had an opportunity to compare the pre-Duncan common law approach of Rothweiler to the more contemporary analysis expressed by Justice Marshall in Blanton. The court not only chose not to follow the Blanton approach, but created a framework of analysis that was even more subjective than Rothweiler. Rothweiler limited its consideration of the penalty prong to the penalties that flowed directly from the statute under which the defendant would be sentenced. In contrast, in holding that a misdemeanor possession of marijuana charge required a trial by jury, the court looked beyond the statutory penalty to such things as “decreased employment opportunities” and the possible loss of “certain occupational and professional licenses.” Dolny, 161 Ariz. at 300, 778 P.2d at 1196. The court said that “[tjhese types of consequences bring the crimes out of the category of petty cases and into the category of serious cases, despite the possible penalty being ‘only’ a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.” Id. Justice Corcoran dissented and accurately noted that even under the three-part Rothweiler test, the consequences to be considered are those flowing from the conviction itself and that “[a]dverse consequences that are not provided by the statute, but which nevertheless flow from a conviction, are insufficient to require a jury trial.” 161 Ariz. at 303, 778 P.2d at 1199. In this sense, then, instead of moving forward in the direction of Blanton, or at least preserving Rothweiler, Dolny retreated into the uncer*129tain realm of speculative collateral consequences.
The defendant’s argument here that the possible application of a federal statute is a collateral consequence follows directly from Dolny’s expansion of Rothweiler. But today, the court says that we shall look “only to the consequences of conviction under Arizona law,” ante, at 125, 945 P.2d at 1256, because it is neither practicable nor possible “to conjure up all possible consequences that might flow from a state court conviction when those consequences do not flow from the law of the state.” Ante, at 125, 945 P.2d at 1256. I thus read the majority as retreating from the Dolny expansion of Rothweiler and returning to the Rothweiler focus on statutory penalty. This, I believe, is a positive development but I would go further, follow Blanton, focus solely on statutory penalty, and abandon the quagmire and subjectivity of personal judgments about factor number 2, “moral quality of the act,” and factor number 3, “its relation to common law crimes.” This would not only bring us up to date but would promote certainty and consistency in the law. As noted by two municipal court judges, the subjective nature of the Rothweiler factors leads to unintelligible inconsistencies. They contrast the right to jury trial for driving under the influence, with no right to jury trial for domestic violence assault even though spousal abuse is “viewed with great alarm in our society.” B. Robert Dorfman and George T. Anagnost, Revisiting the Right to Trial by Jury in Misdemeanor DUI Cases, Arizona Attorney, Jun. 1996, at 28, 32. Contrast also today’s decision on domestic violence with Frederickson v. Superior Ct., 187 Ariz. 273, 928 P.2d 697 (App.1996), in which we denied review, which held that one was entitled to a jury trial for the offense of leaving the scene of an accident. The court of appeals said the offense “adversely relect[ed] on his honesty and integrity,” and therefore “involv[ed] moral turpitude.” Id. at 274, 928 P.2d at 698. In a separate opinion, Judge Gerber noted that the definition of moral turpitude was “so broad that it fits most, if not all, crimes.” Id. at 275, 928 P.2d at 699.
The majority is rightly concerned about the practical problems in administering a jury system in which a judge “would be required to delve into the complexities of federal law in each case to determine whether the individual defendant before the court is entitled to a jury trial.” Ante, at 125, 945 P.2d at 1256. But the subjective nature of the so-called Rothweiler/Dolny three factor test ensures that this will be so in Arizona. The Blanton approach under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution avoids all of this. By focusing on statutory penalty, the defendant, counsel, and the court will know when a jury must be convened. And it leaves the question of seriousness to the people through their legislative representatives rather than to a temporal majority of any court.
I would, therefore, get Arizona in line with contemporary federal law and adopt the Blanton approach as our own. Under that approach, the defendant here is not entitled to a trial by jury because the maximum period of incarceration for his offense cannot exceed six months, and there are no “additional statutory penalties” that are “so severe that they clearly reflect a legislative determination that the offense in question is a ‘serious’ one.” Blanton, 489 U.S. at 543, 109 S.Ct. at 1293.