State v. Kauble

• Decision Date: 30 October 1997
• Docket Number: No. S-97-436,S-97-436
• Citation: 948 P.2d 321
• Parties: 122 Ed. Law Rep. 838, 1997 OK CR 70 The STATE of Oklahoma, Appellant, v. Ian Deki KAUBLE, Appellee.
• Court: United States State Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma. Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma

Page 321

948 P.2d 321

122 Ed. Law Rep. 838, 1997 OK CR 70

The STATE of Oklahoma, Appellant, v. Ian Deki KAUBLE, Appellee.

No. S-97-436.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma.

Oct. 30, 1997.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 17, 1997.

Richard Stevens, Assistant District Attorney, Trisha Misak, Legal Intern, Norman, for Appellant.

Cindy Foley, Rodney Uphoff, Cody Towns, Legal Intern, Norman, for Appellee.

OPINION

CHAPEL, Presiding Judge.

The State of Oklahoma appeals an order of the Cleveland County District Court dismissing a criminal case on the grounds of double jeopardy. For the reasons set forth below, we now reverse and remand.

On December 26, 1996, Ian Deki Kauble, a University of Oklahoma student, falsely reported a car-jacking to the University of Oklahoma Police Department. On January 15, 1997, the University of Oklahoma [University] instituted a disciplinary proceeding against Kauble charging him with violating Title 16.1 ¹ and 16.25 ² of the University of Oklahoma Student Code of Responsibility and Conduct for the Norman Campus, 1996-1997, (hereinafter Student Code) based on the false car-jacking report. Kauble negotiated a settlement with the University and pleaded guilty to the charge. The University placed him on disciplinary probation for one year and ordered him to complete 100 hours of community service in the University's Department of Student Support Services. Kauble and the University entered into this agreement on January 24, 1997.

On January 3, 1997, the State of Oklahoma charged Kauble in Cleveland County District Court, Case No. CM-97-20, with the misdemeanor offense of false reporting of a crime, in violation of 21 O.S.1991, § 589. In late March 1997, the defense moved to dismiss the criminal case. The defense argued that double jeopardy barred prosecution because the University had previously punished Kauble in a disciplinary proceeding for the same conduct. The district court agreed and dismissed the case. The State appealed.

The State's reserved question of law now before the Court is whether a sanction of probation and/or community service imposed by the University of Oklahoma in a school disciplinary proceeding bars future criminal proceedings for the same conduct in state court. This is an issue of first impression for this Court. However, the Court is not without guidance in answering this question. Both the United States Supreme Court ³ and this Court ⁴ have addressed the effect of the Double Jeopardy Clause on criminal and administrative proceedings.

"[T]he Double Jeopardy Clause protects against three distinct abuses: a second prosecution for the same offense after acquittal; a second prosecution for the same offense after conviction; and multiple punishments for the same offense." ⁵ At issue here is the third "abuse" multiple punishment. Over the past ten years, the United States Supreme Court has expounded on multiple punishment in civil and criminal proceedings on several occasions. The first key case in this area is United States v. Halper. ⁶

In Halper, the defendant was convicted in a criminal proceeding of presenting sixty-five false medical claims to Medicare and receiving $585 in overpayment from the federal government. Halper was sentenced to jail and fined $5000. After the criminal proceeding, the government instituted a civil proceeding concerning the same sixty-five false claims. The civil action would have subjected Halper to $130,000 in fines. The Court found that although the second proceeding was "civil," that characterization alone did not resolve the question of whether the penalty was punishment under the Double Jeopardy Clause. Rather the question of whether the penalty was punishment could be determined "only by assessing the character of the actual sanctions imposed on the individual by the machinery of the state." ⁷

[A] civil sanction that cannot fairly be said solely to serve a remedial purpose, but rather can only be explained as also serving either retributive or deterrent purposes, is punishment ... We therefore hold that under the Double Jeopardy Clause a defendant who already has been punished in a criminal prosecution may not be subjected to an additional civil sanction to the extent that the second sanction may not fairly be characterized as remedial, but only as a deterrent or retribution. ⁸

In remanding the case to the lower court, the Supreme Court stated the civil penalty was grossly disproportionate to the actual damages suffered by the government and bore "no rational relation to the goal of compensating the Government for its loss, but rather appears to qualify as 'punishment' in the plain meaning of the word...." ⁹

The question of multiple punishment again arose in the context of civil tax proceedings. In Department of Revenue v. Kurth Ranch, ¹⁰ the Court found that Montana's state tax on illegal drugs was punishment subject to the Double Jeopardy Clause. The factors that persuaded the Court that the tax was a punishment included: (1) the high rate of the tax; (2) the deterrent purpose behind the tax; (3) a person had to commit a crime, i.e. possess illegal drugs, in order to become subject to the tax; and (4) the tax was levied only after the property, i.e., the illegal drugs, had been destroyed or confiscated by the government. The Court reasoned, "Taken as a whole, this drug tax is a concoction of anomalies, too far-removed in crucial respects from a standard tax assessment to escape characterization as punishment for the purpose of Double Jeopardy analysis." ¹¹ Accordingly, Montana could not institute a separate proceeding to exact a tax against a defendant where that tax was designed to punish the defendant a second time for the same conduct.

Since its decisions in Halper and Kurth Ranch, the Supreme Court in United States v. Ursery ¹² has held that in rem civil forfeiture proceedings are not punishment for the purpose of the Double Jeopardy Clause. In so holding the Court noted that historically in rem forfeiture proceedings have not been viewed as punishment, ¹³ distinguished civil forfeitures from civil penalties, ¹⁴ and stated that civil forfeiture statutes were not so punitive as to render the statutes criminal. ¹⁵ Although the civil forfeiture statutes had "certain punitive aspects," the statutes served important non-punitive goals ¹⁶ and did not implicate the Double Jeopardy Clause. ¹⁷

The key Oklahoma case addressing the Double Jeopardy Clause in administrative proceedings is Kane v. State. ¹⁸ The question in Kane was whether the Double Jeopardy Clause barred prosecution for the misdemeanor offense of Driving Under the Influence after the State had revoked the defendant's driver's license in an administrative proceeding. The Kane Court stated that "license revocation would constitute multiple punishment if: (1) the State subjected the defendant to separate proceedings; (2) the conduct precipitating the separate proceedings consisted of one offense; and (3) the penalties in each of the proceedings could be considered 'punishment' for purposes of the Double Jeopardy Clause." ¹⁹ After finding that the defendant was subject to two separate proceedings for the same conduct, the Court turned to the question of whether the license revocation constituted punishment. The Court stated:

To determine whether the revocation of a driver's license is punishment for double jeopardy purposes, one must review the purposes the revocation serves. If the revocation may be fairly characterized only as a deterrent or as retribution, then it is punishment. If the revocation may be fairly characterized as remedial, then it is not punishment for double jeopardy purposes. In order to ascertain whether license revocation is punitive, this Court must look at the purposes that the revocation serves rather than the effect of the revocation on a defendant. ²⁰

The Court found the license revocation proceeding served "the legitimate nonpunitive purpose of protecting the public from the dangers presented by drunk drivers and helps enforce regulatory compliance with the laws governing the licensed activity of driving." ²¹ Thus, the license revocation statute "may be fairly characterized as remedial" and did not implicate the Double Jeopardy Clause.

We now turn to Kauble's case. The State of Oklahoma, acting through the University of Oklahoma, ²² conducted a disciplinary proceeding against Kauble in which Kauble pleaded guilty to falsely reporting a car-jacking in violation of school rules and was placed on academic probation and ordered to perform community service at the University. The State instituted a criminal proceeding against Kauble charging him with violating Oklahoma statutes by falsely reporting a car-jacking. The false reporting in both cases is based on the same conduct. Thus, Kauble is subject to two separate proceedings for the same conduct. The State does not dispute this characterization. The pivotal question is: Whether the sanction imposed by the University of Oklahoma was punishment within the meaning of the Double Jeopardy Clause.

Although Oklahoma courts have not directly addressed this issue, other courts have and not one court has found that sanctions imposed in a school disciplinary proceeding constitute punishment under the Double Jeopardy Clause. ²³ For example, in State v Sterling, ²⁴ the University of Maine suspended a student and revoked part of his athletic scholarship because the student assaulted another student. The lower court found that the partial revocation of the scholarship constituted punishment within the meaning of the Double Jeopardy Clause and barred criminal prosecution for the same conduct. The Supreme Court of Maine reversed holding that the partial revocation of the scholarship was remedial, that it served the non-punitive purpose of "safeguarding the integrity" of the university and that it did not constitute punishment within the meaning of the Double Jeopardy Clause. ²⁵ Likewise, in In re...