Evans v. State

• Decision Date: 11 April 2005
• Docket Number: No. 67,2004.,67,2004.
• Citation: 872 A.2d 539
• Parties: Ward T. EVANS, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee.
• Court: Supreme Court of Delaware

872 A.2d 539

Ward T. EVANS, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee.

No. 67,2004.

Supreme Court of Delaware.

Submitted: March 16, 2005.

Decided: April 11, 2005.

Reargument Denied April 22, 2005.

James Brendan O'Neill, Esquire, Bernard J. O'Donnell, Esquire and James D. Nutter, Esquire, Assistant Public Defenders, Wilmington, Delaware, for appellant.

Loren C. Meyers, Esquire, Gregory E. Smith, Esquire and Kim E. Ayvazian, Esquire, Department of Justice, Wilmington, Delaware, for appellee.

Thomas J. Allingham, II, Esquire, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Wilmington, Delaware, amicus curiae.¹

Before STEELE, Chief Justice, HOLLAND, BERGER, JACOBS and HARTNETT,² Justices, constituting the Court en Banc.

PER CURIAM.

This is an appeal from a final judgment of the Superior Court. In an opinion issued by this Court on November 23, 2004, that judgment was reversed. As a matter of Delaware law, however, our prior decision in this proceeding did not become final.

During the pendency of this appeal, House Bill No. 31³ was enacted by the General Assembly and signed into law by the Governor, although the Governor questioned its constitutionality.⁴ House Bill No. 31 declares the November 23, 2004 decision in this specific proceeding "null and void," directs this Court generally on matters of statutory construction, and states that the "General Assembly asserts its right and prerogative to be the ultimate arbiter of the intent, meaning, and construction of its laws." In this opinion, we hold that House Bill No. 31 is unconstitutional in its entirety. That legislation, therefore, has no bearing on our reconsideration of the merits of Evans' appeal.

The question presented in this appeal is whether the life sentence currently being served by Evans makes him eligible for release from incarceration only if parole is granted. The answer depends upon whether Evans' life sentence is controlled by this Court's holding in Jackson⁵ or by our holding in Crosby v. State.⁶ We conclude that Evans' life sentence is controlled by the holding in Jackson. Therefore, unless he is granted parole, Evans is not eligible for release from incarceration prior to his death.

In this opinion, we reconsider our prior decision. Although en Banc opinions are not withdrawn frequently, it does happen occasionally.⁷ We have concluded that the opinion issued by this Court on November 23, 2004, must be withdrawn. We have also concluded that the judgment of the Superior Court must be affirmed.

Facts

On September 29, 1982, a jury convicted Evans of Rape in the First Degree. Evans was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. The status sheet completed by the Department of Correction did not give Evans a conditional release date. Rather, it listed Evans' maximum release date as "death" and recites his maximum sentence, less good time, as "life."

In 1993, 1996 and 1999, the Board of Parole denied Evans' requests for parole. On January 8, 2004, Evans filed a motion for post-conviction relief in the Superior Court, claiming that his sentence was illegal. Evans argued that under the conditional release statute in existence when his crimes were committed, he was entitled to have a conditional release date calculated as if his life sentence were a term of forty-five years.

The Superior Court denied Evans' motion. It did so without any analysis and without issuing an opinion. The Superior Court's ruling is simply a checked box on a preprinted form. Evans then appealed.

On appeal, Evans argues that this Court's decision in Crosby v. State⁸ requires that his life sentence be calculated as a forty-five year term for purposes of determining his qualification for conditional release. In its initial answering brief with this Court, the State admitted that Evans' argument was correct. Thereafter, this Court granted the State's motion to withdraw that brief, after which the State filed a "Substituted Answering Brief," now arguing that Evans' case is controlled by this Court's decision in Jackson.⁹

As earlier noted, our opinion of November 23, 2004 did not become final. We later decided to reconsider that opinion and asked the parties to file supplemental memoranda. Unfortunately, despite the serious issues presented in this case, the State initially failed to address one of our inquiries, and we directed the State to file a complete response. The supplemental briefing is now concluded.

House Bill No. 31

House Bill No. 31 declares that the November 23, 2004 decision of this Court in this very proceeding to be "null and void."¹⁰ House Bill No. 31 also declares that the Delaware Constitution "vests authority and sole responsibility for lawmaking in the General Assembly." House Bill No. 31 further provides that "the General Assembly asserts its right and prerogative to be the ultimate arbiter of the intent, meaning, and construction of its laws, and to vigorously defend them."¹¹

Separation of Powers

The defining principle of the American constitutional form of government is separation of powers.¹² In the United States, the foundation for both our national and state governments are three separate branches — the legislative, executive, and judicial, each coordinate and in the main independent of the others.¹³ As the United States Supreme Court stated over one hundred years ago:

It is believed to be one of the chief merits of the American system of written constitutional law, that all powers intrusted to government, whether State or national, are divided into the three grand departments, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. That the functions appropriate to each of these branches of government shall be vested in a separate body of public servants, and that the perfection of the system requires that the lines which separate and divide these departments shall be broadly and clearly defined. It is also essential to the successful working of this system that the persons intrusted with power in any one of these branches shall not be permitted to encroach upon the powers confided to the others, but that each shall by the law of its creation be limited to the exercise of the powers appropriate to its own department and no other.¹⁴

The American tripartite system of separating governmental authority was the result of a combination of historical experience and contemporary political theory. The desirability of dividing the power of government into three main divisions is traceable to numerous philosophers beginning with Aristotle.¹⁵ The more immediate influences on colonial America, however, were philosophers such as Charles Montesquieu,¹⁶ Jean Jacques Rousseau,¹⁷ and John Locke;¹⁸ and English common law scholars like Edward Coke, Henry deBracton, and William Blackstone.¹⁹ In advising against the concentration of governmental power, Montesquieu wrote:

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistracy, there can be then no liberty.... Again, there is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would be then the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with all the violence of an oppressor. There would be an end to everything, were the same man, or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals.²⁰

These principles — derived from philosophies and theories of political science — were well known to American statesmen in 1776. Because separation of powers was generally considered by American colonists to be a fundamental maxim of proper government, its absence under the English rule of King George III eventually became intolerable and led to the American Revolution.

First State Constitutions

The Declaration of Independence was the catalyst that elevated the separation of powers doctrine into what is now known as "a first principle of free government."²¹ The Declaration of Independence expressed the concerns that required "dissolv[ing] the political bands" with England. Those concerns included interference with the judicial process by the King and Parliament, by: obstructing "the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers;" making "Judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries;" and "depriving us in many cases of the benefits of Trial by Jury."

Independence from England meant that each of the former colonial states became a new sovereign entity. In 1776, that status required each colonial state to draft its own constitution. The framers of the first state constitutions had lived under a system of intermingled legislative and judicial powers. In the 17th and 18th centuries colonial legislatures in America functioned as courts of equity of last resort, by either hearing original actions or providing appellate review of judicial judgments.²² Often, however, those hybrid legislative and judicial assemblies decided to inject themselves into the judicial process by enacting special bills. It was common for such legislation to nullify the judicial judgment in a particular case.²³

The first state constitutions reflect the desirability of separating the legislative from the judicial power, prompted by royal and legislative interference with judgments of the American colonial courts. Notably, Delaware's 1776 Constitution²⁴ and all of the other first state constitutions, provided for the same three departments. Six of those constitutions contained a general clause expressly allocating the powers of government among these three branches — the legislative, executive, and judicial. Although...