State v. Honeycutt

• Decision Date: 24 December 2013
• Docket Number: No. SC 92229.,SC 92229.
• Citation: 421 S.W.3d 410
• Parties: STATE of Missouri, Appellant, v. Joey D. HONEYCUTT, Respondent.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

421 S.W.3d 410

STATE of Missouri, Appellant,

v.Joey D. HONEYCUTT, Respondent.

No. SC 92229.

Supreme Court of Missouri,

En Banc.

Nov. 26, 2013.

Opinion Modified on Court's Own Motion Dec. 24, 2013.

Daniel N. McPherson, Attorney General's Office, Jefferson City, T. Todd Myers, Greene County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, Springfield, for the State.

Margaret M. Johnston, Public Defender's Office, Columbia, Christopher S. Hatley, Attorney, Springfield, for Honeycutt.

ZEL M. FISCHER, Judge.

This Court holds article I, section 13's ban on the passage of any law retrospective in its operation does not apply to criminal laws. Section 571.070.1(1) ¹ is a criminal law, and as such, the circuit court erred in dismissing the charge against Honeycutt on the ground that the statute was unconstitutionally retrospective as applied to him. The circuit court's judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded.

Factual and Procedural Background

The facts are undisputed. The State charged Honeycutt as a prior and persistent offender with two counts of stealing a firearm in violation of § 570.030 and one count of unlawful possession of a firearm in violation of § 571.070.1(1). Section 571.070.1(1) provides that a person commits the crime of unlawful possession of a firearm if such person knowingly has any firearm in his or her possession and that person has been convicted of any felony under the laws of this state. The third count in the indictment alleges that between November 22, 2010, and March 31, 2011, Honeycutt knowingly possessed a shotgun and that he had been convicted of felony possession of a controlled substance in September 2002.

Honeycutt filed a motion to dismiss the indictment's third count, challenging the constitutional validity of § 571.070 as applied to him. Honeycutt alleged that, when he was convicted of possession of a controlled substance, that conviction did not prohibit him from owning a firearm under the version of § 571.070 in effect at that time. Section 571.070 in effect at the time made it a crime for persons convicted of a “dangerous felony” to possess a concealable firearm.² Possession of a controlled substance did not fall into the “dangerous felony” category. Section 556.061(8), RSMo 2000.

The legislature amended § 571.070 in 2008 to make it a crime for a person convicted of any felony to possess any firearm.³ Honeycutt argued that the 2008 amendment, as applied to him and his 2002 conviction, violates the ban on retrospective laws contained in article I, section 13 of the Missouri Constitution by imposing a “new duty or obligation” upon him. The State argued that the constitutional ban on retrospective laws is limited to civil rights and remedies and has no application to criminal laws.

The circuit court sustained Honeycutt's motion to dismiss the third count, finding § 571.070 unconstitutional as applied to Honeycutt. The State appeals. The circuit court's judgment granting Honeycutt's motion to dismiss the third count on constitutional grounds is a final judgment from which the State may appeal. State v. Brown, 140 S.W.3d 51, 53 (Mo. banc 2004).⁴ This Court has exclusive appellate jurisdiction over cases involving the validity of a statute. Mo. Const. art. V, § 3.

Standard of Review

Whether a statute is constitutional is an issue of law that this Court reviews de novo. State v. Vaughn, 366 S.W.3d 513, 517 (Mo. banc 2012). “Statutes are presumed constitutional and will be found unconstitutional only if they clearly contravene a constitutional provision.” Id. “The person challenging the validity of the statute has the burden of proving the act clearly and undoubtedly violates the constitutional limitations.” Id.

The Prohibition Against Any Law Retrospective in its Operation Does Not Apply to Criminal Laws

The United States Constitution ⁵ and the constitutions of every state prohibit ex post facto laws. Only a handful of state constitutions, however, prohibit the passage of laws that are retrospective in their operation.⁶ The Missouri Constitution has included such a provision since 1820.⁷Article I, section 13 currently provides: “That no ex post facto law, nor law impairing the obligation of contracts, or retrospective in its operation, or making any irrevocable grant of special privileges or immunities, can be enacted.”

To enforce this constitutional limitation, the Court must first decide what is meant by law “retrospective in its operation.” Honeycutt argues that the phrase should be given its plain meaning and applied in the broadest sense, affecting—and potentially invalidating—both criminal and civil statutes. The State argues that the phrase had a technical legal meaning when adopted that limited its reach only to statutes affecting civil rights and remedies. Therefore, the State argues that § 571.070 cannot be a law “retrospective in its operation” because it is a criminal law. After reviewing the structure of article I, section 13, the debates of this State's constitutional conventions, the historical legal definition of the phrase, and the relevant authorities from Missouri and other jurisdictions, this Court holds that the constitutional prohibition against enacting a law “retrospective in its operation” applies only to laws affecting civil rights and remedies and was never intended to apply to criminal statutes.

This Court's primary goal in interpreting Missouri's constitution is to “ascribe to the words of a constitutional provision the meaning that the people understood them to have when the provision was adopted.” Farmer v. Kinder, 89 S.W.3d 447, 452 (Mo. banc 2002). This Court must assume that every word contained in a constitutional provision has effect, meaning, and is not mere surplusage. City of Arnold v. Tourkakis, 249 S.W.3d 202, 206 (Mo. banc 2008). When words do not have a technical or legal meaning, “they ‘must be given their plain or ordinary meaning unless such construction will defeat the manifest intent of the constitutional provision.’ ” Mo. Prosecuting Attorneys v. Barton Cnty., 311 S.W.3d 737, 742 (Mo. banc 2010). “The grammatical order and selection of the associated words as arranged by the drafters is also indicative of the natural significance of the words employed” and “[t]o this extent the intent of the amendment's drafters is influential.” Id. at 742. Weight should be given to cases interpreting constitutional provisions at or near the time the constitution was adopted because contemporaries of the drafters had the greatest opportunity to fully understand the meaning and intent of the language used. Ogden v. Saunders, 25 U.S. 213, 290, 12 Wheat. 213, 6 L.Ed. 606 (1827) (Johnson, J., concurring); 16 Am.Jur.2d Constitutional Law § 89 (2013).

Article I, section 13 clearly contains four separate provisions prohibiting the enactment of: (1) ex post facto laws; (2) laws impairing the obligation of contracts; (3) laws retrospective in their operation, or; (4) the making of any irrevocable grant of special privileges or immunities. Honeycutt argues that “retrospective” should be given its plain, literal meaning. But to read “retrospective” in the manner Honeycutt urges would swallow the ex post facto clause of article I, section 13, which applies solely to criminal laws. If the prohibition against any law “retrospective in its operation” is also read to apply to criminal laws, then the ex post facto clause of article I, section 13 would be mere surplusage. This Court is not inclined to give the provision such a meaning. Instead, the retrospective laws clause should be given a meaning separate and apart from the ex post facto provision. This is achieved by recognizing that both the phrase “ex post facto” and the prohibition against any retrospective law had established technical legal meanings when that language was added to our Constitution. ⁸

The debates of the constitutional convention of 1875 support this conclusion. During the debate, one delegate proposed a general limitation on the passage of retrospective laws, which he argued would curb the powers of the state and encompass the prohibition against ex post facto laws contained in the federal constitution. Debates of the Missouri Constitutional Convention 1875, vol. II at 370 (Isidor Loeb & Floyd C. Shoemaker, eds., State Historical Soc'y of Mo., 1938). This delegate argued vehemently that the general “prohibition to pass a retrospective act without qualification necessarily carries with it the prohibition to pass a retrospective criminal law; that is to say an ex post facto law[,]” as well as the prohibition to pass a law that impaired the obligation of a contract or a law that defeated a vested civil right or remedy. Id. at 405–10. This delegate firmly believed the previous drafters of the provision used more words than necessary. Id. at 410–11.

While this delegate attempted to limit the language of this constitutional provision to a blanket prohibition against the passage of all retrospective laws, other delegates wanted to expand the language of the provision by defining the term “retrospective.” One delegate proposed that the provision include language that a retrospective law was one that impaired any vested right, created a new obligation, or attached a new disability. Id. at 376. Yet another delegate wanted to limit the legislature's authority to pass retrospective laws that would be curative or confirmatory in nature. Id. at 398.

All of these proposals to amend, redefine or clarify were rejected, and the delegates voted to retain the same language used by the drafters of the 1865 Constitution. These rejections indicate that the drafters understood the prohibition against laws “retrospective in their operation” already had an accepted technical legal meaning. The established understanding of the term retrospective was made particularly clear by one of the delegates of the convention. That delegate stated: “A retrospective law, as is well known to every lawyer on this floor.... It means...