DocketNumber: No. AP-76,547
Citation Numbers: 369 S.W.3d 880
Judges: Alcala, Cochran, Heryey, Johnson, Keasler, Keller, Meyers, Price, Womack
Filed Date: 6/27/2012
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 10/2/2021
OPINION
announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion
This is a post-conviction application for writ of habeas corpus brought under Article 11.07 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.
On December 10, 2004, in cause number F-0485746-K, the applicant was indicted for the offense of engaging in organized criminal activity. The indictment alleged that, on July 26, 2004, as a member of a criminal street gang, he committed aggravated assault “by intentionally, knowingly, and recklessly causing serious bodily injury to DAVID CUNNIFF by striking DAVID CUNNIFF to and against the floor ... and by striking DAVID CUN-NIFF with [his] hand[.]” Also on December 10, 2004, the applicant was indicted for aggravated assault, in cause number F-0401705-RE. This indictment also alleged that, on July 26, 2004, the applicant committed aggravated assault by “intentionally, knowingly, and recklessly causing serious bodily injury to DAVID CUNNIFF by striking DAVID CUNNIFF to and against the floor ... and by striking DAVID CUNNIFF with [his] hand[.]” The only difference in the two indictments is that in cause number F-0485746-K, the applicant is alleged to have committed the assault “as a member of a criminal street gang.”
On April 6, 2005, after a jury trial, the applicant was convicted in cause number F-0485746-K, the engaging-in-organized-criminal-activity offense and sentenced to nineteen years’ imprisonment and a $10,000 fíne. On May 26, 2005, he pled guilty and was convicted in cause number F-0401705-RE, the aggravated assault offense, and sentenced to ten years’ confinement. The applicant now contends that his conviction for the aggravated assault offense in cause number F-0401705-RE should be set aside because his prosecution for that offense, after he was convicted of the greater-inclusive offense in cause number F-0485746-K, violated the Fifth Amendment prohibition against being “subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb[.]”
The Double Jeopardy Clause, enforceable against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment,
Nevertheless, in Missouri v. Hunter;
In Dixon, the Supreme Court overruled its own opinion of three terms previously in Grady v. Corbin.
We have often noted that the [Double Jeopardy] Clause serves the function of preventing both successive punishment and successive prosecution, but there is no authority, except Grady, for the proposition that it has different meanings in the two contexts. That is perhaps because it is embarrassing to assert that the single term “same offence” (the words of the Fifth Amendment at issue here) has two different meanings—*885 that what is the same offense is yet not the same offense.22
From this language in Dixon, the State extrapolates the proposition that the double jeopardy protections are necessarily identical in the multiple-punishments and successive-prosecutions contexts. And because we have authoritatively held in Garza that multiple punishments were constitutionally tolerable, the State insists, we are constrained now to hold that successive prosecutions are also constitutionally allowed.
We disagree. Like Grady, Dixon is a successive-prosecutions case. While the Supreme Court in Dixon scaled back from the more protective “same conduct” approach to sameness for double jeopardy purposes in the successive-prosecutions context, it did not affirmatively adopt the Hunter primacy-of-legislative-intent approach. The various opinions in Dixon applied only the Blockburger standard, and did not go on to examine any independent indicia of legislative intent for purposes of determining “sameness.” Indeed, based solely upon its Blockburger analysis, a plurality of the Court in Dixon concluded that there existed at least a partial jeopardy bar to successive prosecution, without pausing to inquire whether a legislative intent to permit successive prosecutions might independently be found elsewhere that would trump a Blockburger statutory construction presumption, as would have been the Court’s modus operandi in the multiple-punishments context under Hunter.
Nor do we read the language of Dixon quoted above as any indication that we reached the wrong result in Garza. Since Dixon was decided, the Supreme Court has unanimously recognized that, in the multiple-punishments context, Hunter abides.
Elsewhere in Dixon, writing for a majority of the members of the Court, Justice Scalia held that, “[i]n both the multiple punishment and multiple prosecution contexts, this Court has concluded that where the two offenses for which the defendant is punished or tried cannot survive the [Blockburger] ‘same-elements’ test, the double jeopardy bar applies.”
The applicant is entitled to relief. The judgment in cause number F-0401705-RE is vacated and the indictment in that cause is dismissed with prejudice.
KELLER, P.J., filed a concurring opinion.
. Tex.Code Crim. Proc. art. 11.07.
. U.S. Const, amend. V.
. Id.
. Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 793, 89 S.Ct. 2056, 23 L.Ed.2d 707 (1969).
. North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 717, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969).
. Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 304, 52 S.Ct. 180, 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932).
. See Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161, 168, 97 S.Ct. 2221, 53 L.Ed.2d 187 (1977) (applying Blockburger to hold that a "greater offense is ... by definition the ‘same’ for purposes of double jeopardy as any lesser offense included in it”).
. 459 U.S. 359, 103 S.Ct. 673, 74 L.Ed.2d 535 (1983).
. Id. at 366, 103 S.Ct. 673.
. 284 U.S. at 304, 52 S.Ct. 180.
. Hunter, supra, at 368-69, 103 S.Ct. 673.
. Ex parte Amador, 326 S.W.3d 202, 205 (Tex.Crim.App.2010); Gonzales v. State, 304 S.W.3d 838, 845 (Tex.Crim.App.2010); Littrell v. State, 271 S.W.3d 273, 275-76 & n. 10 (Tex.Crim.App.2008); Villanueva v. State, 221 S.W.3d 744, 747 (Tex.Crim.App.2007); Langs v. State, 183 S.W.3d 680, 685 & n. 15 (Tex.Crim.App.2006); Ervin v. State, 991 S.W.2d 804, 807 (Tex.Crim.App.1999); Ex parte Ko-pecky, 821 S.W.2d 957, 959 (Tex.Crim.App.1992).
. 213 S.W.3d 338, 351-52 (Tex.Crim.App.2007).
. Id. at 352 (citing Tex. Penal Code § 71.03(3), which provides that "[i]t is no defense to prosecution under Section 71.02 [Engaging in Organized Criminal Activity] that ... a person has been charged with, acquitted, or convicted of any offense listed in Subsection (a) of Section 71.02[.]”).
. Id.
. State's Brief at 12.
. 509 U.S. 688, 113 S.Ct. 2849, 125 L.Ed.2d 556 (1993).
. 495 U.S. 508, 110 S.Ct. 2084, 109 L.Ed.2d 548 (1990).
. Id. at 510, 110 S.Ct. 2084.
. Id. at 522, 110 S.Ct. 2084.
. Id. at 515-22, 110 S.Ct. 2084.
. Dixon, supra, at 704, 113 S.Ct. 2849 (citation omitted).
. Id. at 700, 113 S.Ct. 2849 (plurality opinion) ("Because Dixon's drug offense did not include any element not contained in his previous contempt offense, his subsequent prosecution violates the Double Jeopardy Clause.”).
. See id. at 735, 113 S.Ct. 2849 (White, J., concurring) ("[A]dherence to legislative will has very little to do with the important interests advanced by double jeopardy safeguards against successive prosecutions.”).
. Rutledge v. United States, 517 U.S. 292, 303, 116 S.Ct. 1241, 134 L.Ed.2d 419 (1996).
.Pearce, supra.
. Hunter, supra, at 366-67, 103 S.Ct. 673.
. Tibbs v. Florida, 457 U.S. 31, 41, 102 S.Ct. 2211, 72 L.Ed.2d 652 (1982).
. Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184, 187-88, 78 S.Ct. 221, 2 L.Ed.2d 199
. Tibbs, supra. Indeed, at least one legal scholar has plausibly argued that any constitutional protection against multiple punishments in a single prosecution ought to be recognized as rooted, not in the Fifth Amendment’s Double Jeopardy Clause at all, but in ordinary principles of due process — an accused should never be punished for a single instance of conduct under a greater number of penal provisions than the appropriate legislative body intended to authorize. See Anne Bowen Poulin, Double Jeopardy and Multiple Punishment: Cutting the Gordian Knot, 77 U. Colo. L. Rev. 595 (Summer 2006).
. Dixon, supra, at 696, 113 S.Ct. 2849.
. See note 25, ante.