County of Los Alamos v. Tapia

• Decision Date: 12 April 1990
• Docket Number: No. 18304,18304
• Parties: COUNTY OF LOS ALAMOS, Petitioner, v. Joe D. TAPIA, Respondent.
• Court: New Mexico Supreme Court

Page 1017

790 P.2d 1017

109 N.M. 736

COUNTY OF LOS ALAMOS, Petitioner, v. Joe D. TAPIA, Respondent.

No. 18304.

Supreme Court of New Mexico.

April 12, 1990.

[109 N.M. 737] Byron L. Treaster, Los Alamos, for petitioner.

Griffith, Boone & Cruse, P. Reid Griffith, Jr., Los Alamos, for respondent.

OPINION

MONTGOMERY, Justice.

In the trial of a criminal case, after jeopardy attaches,¹ one of three outcomes is possible: The trial may be completed and the defendant acquitted; the trial may be completed and the defendant convicted; or the trial may not be completed at all, in which case it will have been aborted by some ruling of the trial court. In the first situation, it has been settled for almost a century that the Double Jeopardy Clause of the United States Constitution² precludes further prosecution of the defendant. United States v. Ball, 163 U.S. 662, 669, 16 S.Ct. 1192, 1194, 41 L.Ed. 300 (1896). Ball also firmly established that, in the second situation, reprosecution of the defendant is not barred if his or her conviction is set aside on appeal. Id. at 671-72, 16 S.Ct. at 1195-96.³ The third situation has presented great difficulty for the courts; sometimes, depending on the reasons for the trial court's aborting the trial, double jeopardy will preclude a retrial; sometimes it will not.⁴

This case is one of those falling into the third category. The defendant's trial was aborted during the testimony of the county's first witness when the trial court ruled that his arrest had been illegal and that all evidence in support of the charge had to be suppressed. The court dismissed the charge and the state appealed to the court of appeals. The court of appeals dismissed the appeal, holding that the Double Jeopardy Clause barred further prosecution.⁵ We granted certiorari and now reverse the court of appeals, remanding to the district court for trial.

I.

In the early morning hours of January 27, 1987, a police officer in Los Alamos observed defendant, at a point near the Los Alamos-Santa Fe County line, running a stop sign and driving with an inoperative tail light. The officer pursued defendant with emergency lights flashing, and defendant drove across the county line a short distance into Santa Fe County. There he stopped; and the officer, after observing his behavior, administered a field sobriety test and placed him under arrest. Defendant was cited for driving while intoxicated and later tried in Los Alamos Municipal Court, where he was convicted. He then appealed to the district court in a trial de novo.

At trial, the county first called the arresting officer. His testimony was interrupted by a defense motion to suppress all evidence resulting from the arrest on the ground that the arrest was illegal under the Fresh Pursuit Act, NMSA 1978, Sections 31-2-1 to -8 (Repl.Pamp.1984). Defense counsel questioned the officer on voir dire, establishing the fact that the arrest occurred in Santa Fe County. The evidence in support of the DWI charge consisted of the officer's observations, the field sobriety test, and a breath test. Defense counsel submitted a trial brief seeking suppression of the evidence and dismissal of the charge of driving while intoxicated. The trial judge heard oral argument, following which he granted the motion to suppress and to dismiss and later entered a written decision containing these rulings:

6. Defendant's arrest by Officer Davis and all fruits of that arrest, inlcuding [sic] statements made by the defendant, testimony concerning observations of the defendant made by the officer, testimony concerning field sobriety tests administered to Defendant by the officer and testimony or documentary evidence concerning the results of any chemical or breath tests are inadmissible as fruits of the illegal arrest, and should be suppressed.

7. The charge of driving while intoxicated and the charge of running a stop sign should be dismissed because the arrest of Defendant was illegal and all evidence in support thereof has been suppressed.

The county appealed to the court of appeals. While the appeal was pending, the court of appeals decided another case involving similar facts, ruling that the Fresh Pursuit Act did not authorize an officer deputized in one county to pursue a suspect into another county and arrest him there for DWI. On certiorari, we reversed this ruling and held that an arrest under these circumstances is valid under the Fresh Pursuit Act. Incorporated County of Los Alamos v. Johnson, 108 N.M. 633, 776 P.2d 1252 (1989). In that case the defendant had been convicted by the trial court, so the result of this Court's review was simply to reinstate the conviction. 108 N.M. at 635, 776 P.2d at 1254. In the present case, however, the defendant's trial had not been concluded; accordingly, the county on appeal sought to have the district court's dismissal of the charge reversed and to have the case remanded for trial.

Tapia moved to dismiss the appeal on double jeopardy grounds. The court of appeals granted the motion holding, in a two-to-one decision, that the constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy barred further proceedings. The court reasoned, relying on Smalis v. Pennsylvania, 476 U.S. 140, 106 S.Ct. 1745, 90 L.Ed.2d 116 (1986), and Sanabria v. United States, 437 U.S. 54, 98 S.Ct. 2170, 57 L.Ed.2d 43 (1978), that the district court's dismissal constituted an "acquittal." In his opinion for the court, Judge Hartz said:

The district court's ruling was as much a determination of the facts in this case as is a directed verdict in a civil case resulting from the failure of a plaintiff to offer any admissible evidence on an element of the cause of action * * *. The prosecution had no admissible evidence to convict defendant; so it failed to satisfy its burden of proof. An acquittal is nothing more than a determination that the prosecutor has failed to meet the burden of proof.

Dissenting, Chief Judge Bivins took the view, in reliance on United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 98 S.Ct. 2187, 57 L.Ed.2d 65 (1978), and United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., 430 U.S. 564, 97 S.Ct. 1349, 51 L.Ed.2d 642 (1977), that the trial court's dismissal was not an acquittal because it was not an adjudication of defendant's factual guilt or innocence; it was instead a ruling on a question of law and one that, moreover, the defendant himself had procured through his motion to abort the trial.

We granted certiorari to resolve these conflicting views and to provide our own input into the confusing welter of cases that suffuse this area of double-jeopardy jurisprudence.⁶

II

We think that Judge Bivins had the better of the analysis. Despite the court of appeals' statement, the district court's ruling was not a determination of the facts in the case and, while it may have had the same effect insofar as the defendant was concerned, it was quite unlike a directed verdict in which the plaintiff or the state fails to offer sufficient evidence to satisfy its burden of proof. The trial court's ruling was in no sense a decision on the quantum of proof offered by the county, on its probative value, on the credibility of the evidence, or on any other question relating to the sufficiency of the county's case; it was purely and simply a ruling on the legality of defendant's arrest and the consequent admissibility vel non of the prosecution's evidence. The charge of DWI was dismissed, not because of an insufficiency of evidence to prove that defendant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but because "the arrest of Defendant was illegal and all evidence in support thereof ha[d] been suppressed." Thus, the court of appeals was simply wrong when it said, later in its opinion, that "the basis of the dismissal was factual innocence;" the basis of the dismissal was that all evidence in support of the charge had been suppressed (albeit, as we now know, incorrectly). For this reason, the decision in Smalis v. Pennsylvania --that a defendant who demurs to the evidence as "insufficient to establish his factual guilt" has been acquitted, 476 U.S. at 144, 106 S.Ct. at 1744--is inapposite to this case.

In this area of the law, as in many others, characterizations and labels abound. What was the trial court's "dismissal," really? Was it really an "acquittal"--in which case the interdictions of Smalis and Sanabria absolutely prohibit retrial (and hence mandate dismissal of the appeal)--or was it, really, the "functional equivalent"⁷ of a mistrial requested by the defense, in which "the Double Jeopardy Clause is not offended by a second prosecution." United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. at 93, 98 S.Ct. at 2195 (citing United States v. Jorn, 400 U.S. 470, 485, 91 S.Ct. 547, 557, 27 L.Ed.2d 543 (1971)). Or was it, really, not the equivalent of a mistrial but a "termination" of the trial in defendant's favor before any determination of factual guilt or innocence, like the dismissal for preindictment delay in Scott, 437 U.S. at 94-95, 98 S.Ct. at 2195-96?

In Scott, the midtrial dismissal for preindictment delay was held not to bar further prosecution, and the distinction referred to above between an acquittal for insufficient evidence and a termination of the trial on a basis unrelated to factual guilt or innocence was firmly recognized.

We think that in a case such as this the defendant, by deliberately choosing to seek termination of the proceedings against him on a basis unrelated to factual guilt or innocence of the offense of which he is accused, suffers no injury cognizable under the Double Jeopardy Clause if the Government is permitted to appeal from such a ruling of the trial court in favor of the defendant.

Scott, 437 U.S. at 98-99, 98 S.Ct. at 2198. The Court relied on the definition of "acquittal" provided in United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., 430 U.S. at 571, 97 S.Ct. at 1354:

[A] defendant is acquitted only when "the ruling of the judge, whatever its label, actually represents a...