State v. WilliamsState v. Williams
- Reporters:
- ,
- Before:
- Per Curiam (per curiam)
Defendant was charged by bill of information filed in the 24th Judicial District Court, Parish of Jefferson, with aggravated flight from an officer in violation of
In denying defendant‘s motion to quash, the trial court observed that “aggravated flight is a separate and distinct [offense] even though those other ones . . . are part of the proof of it.” Disagreeing with that analysis, the court of appeal sought to account for the particular way in which
Although conceding that the police report supported a finding that defendant had forced several other vehicles off the road during the chase with Officers Hill and Matthews, the court of appeal found that the state could not satisfy the statute‘s requirement of “at least” two aggravating acts without violating defendant‘s protection from double jeopardy because
In reaching that conclusion, the court of appeal properly considered the factual submissions made at the hearing on the motion to quash. State v. Solomon, 379 So.2d 1078, 1079 (La.1980) (on a Crosby appeal from a conditional guilty plea following denial of a motion to quash, the Court did not have a trial transcript to review “in order to determine whether evidence in the theft trial would be the `same evidence’ to prove the burglary charge,” but did have “the testimony from the motion to quash which may be utilized for this purpose.“); compare United States v. Broce, 488 U.S. 563, 575-76, 109 S.Ct. 757, 765, 102 L.Ed.2d 927 (1989)(a defendant who has entered an unconditional guilty plea may only attack the convictions on double jeopardy grounds if he shows a double jeopardy violation on the face of the pleadings or record); State ex rel. Boyd v. State, 98-0378 (La.10/9/98), 720 So.2d 667 (same); State ex rel. Adams v. Butler, 558 So.2d 552, 553 n. 1 (La.1990)(same).
In addition, the court of appeal properly considered the double jeopardy aspects of the present case not only under the additional fact (element) test of Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 304, 52 S.Ct. 180, 182, 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932), see United States v. Dixon, 509 U.S. 688, 113 S.Ct. 2849, 125 L.Ed.2d 556 (1993); State v. Knowles, 392 So.2d 651, 654 (La.1980), but also under Louisiana‘s somewhat broader same evidence test, which considers the actual physical and testimonial evidence necessary to secure a conviction, and concerns itself with the “evidential focus” of the facts adduced at trial in light of the verdict rendered, i.e., how the evidence satisfies the prosecution‘s burden of proof. State v. Coody, 448 So.2d 100, 102-03 (La. 1984). The test is similar to the same conduct test adopted briefly by the Supreme Court in Grady v. Corbin, 495 U.S. 508, 510, 110 S.Ct. 2084, 2087, 109 L.Ed.2d 548 (1990)(“[T]he Double Jeopardy Clause bars a subsequent prosecution if, to establish an essential element of an offense charged in that prosecution, the government will prove conduct that constitutes an offense for which the defendant has already been prosecuted.“) (footnote omitted).1 Thus, while aggravated flight from
However, the court of appeal ultimately erred in two respects. First, even assuming that the state could not prosecute defendant for the offense of aggravated flight from an officer without violating his protection against double jeopardy, defendant‘s guilty plea to the offense necessarily encompassed all of the elements of the lesser included misdemeanor offense of flight from an officer, clearly a separate and distinct offense from any of the traffic violations arising out of the same incident. As opposed to quashing the prosecution altogether and setting aside defendant‘s guilty plea and sentence, the court of appeal should have, assuming the correctness of its premise, reduced defendant‘s conviction to the misdemeanor offense of flight from an officer under
Second, and more fundamentally, the court of appeal erred in analogizing the present case to one in which the state prosecutes a defendant for both felony murder and the underlying felony offense. Speeding is not a lesser and included offense of aggravated flight from an officer; nor is it an element of that offense, as opposed to a statutorily prescribed circumstance from which a trier of fact may find the aggravating element of risk to human life enhancing the offense from a misdemeanor to a felony. Thus, the state was not required to prove that offense as one of the circumstances giving rise to a risk to human life for purposes of aggravated flight from an officer if it could establish that element of the offense by other evidence. The police report introduced at the hearing on the motion to quash established that defendant forced other vehicles off the roadway during the chase, a point conceded by the court of appeal, Williams, 06-1898 at 6, and that he may have traveled against the flow of traffic by backing away from Officer McCartney as she approached and nearly collided with the patrol unit occupied by Officers Hill and Matthews. The court of appeal did not concede the latter point, id., but the state correctly notes that by pleading guilty defendant avoided a trial at which it would have the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt the required combination of acts in support of the aggravated circumstances of danger to human life to the satisfaction of a trier of fact. In the present case, the information contained in the police report held open the possibility that
Accordingly, the decision of the court of appeal is reversed, defendant‘s conviction and sentence are reinstated, and this case is remanded to the district court for execution of sentence.