State v. Murray
Decision Date | 18 June 1999 |
Docket Number | No. CR-98-0202-PR.,CR-98-0202-PR. |
Citation | 982 P.2d 1287,194 Ariz. 373 |
Parties | STATE of Arizona, Respondent, v. Ronald Leslie MURRAY, Petitioner. |
Court | Arizona Supreme Court |
Janet A. Napolitano, Arizona Attorney General, Phoenix By: Paul J. McMurdie, Diane M. Ramsey and Alan K. Polley, Cochise County Attorney, Bisbee By: Patrick M. Elliston for State of Arizona.
Ronald Leslie Murray, Florence, Pro se.
¶ 1 We took review of this case to determine whether the parole eligibility restrictions of A.R.S. §§ 13-604 and 13-604.02, as amended in 1997, could be retroactively applied to a prisoner sentenced before the amendments were adopted. We have jurisdiction pursuant to Ariz. Const. art. VI, § 5(3).
¶ 2 Ronald Leslie Murray (Defendant) was convicted of sexual assault, kidnapping, and several other crimes and sentenced in 1989 to aggravated terms of twenty-one years for sexual assault, concurrent terms for robbery and theft, and a consecutive twenty-one-year term for kidnapping. His convictions and sentences were affirmed on appeal. State v. Murray, No. 2 CA-CR-89-0564 (memorandum decision, Aug. 2, 1990). Defendant is not eligible for parole because a flat-time sentence was imposed for the sexual assault conviction.
State v. Tarango, 185 Ariz. 208, 212, 914 P.2d 1300, 1304 (1996) (emphasis added).
State v. Murray, Nos. 2 CA-CR-96-0459 and 2 CA-CR 97-0205-PR, at 4 (consolidated) (memorandum decision, Nov. 4, 1997).
¶ 5 We do not agree that the legislature may retrospectively overrule court decisions. The legislature, of course, has the power to enact and change sentencing provisions on a prospective basis. San Carlos Apache Tribe v. Superior Court, 193 Ariz. 195, 204-05, 972 P.2d 179, 188-89 (1999) ( ). Thus, the legislature may conclude that Behl is the better rule and reinstate that rule prospectively. But the application made in the present case is retroactive rather than prospective because it would change the meaning of the statute as applied to someone like Defendant, who was sentenced before the statutory changes were enacted.
972 P.2d at 189. Nor may the legislature "change the legal consequence of events completed before [a] statute's enactment." Id. The substantive legal consequence of past events is determined by the law in effect at the time of the event, and the determination of that law is for the courts to decide.
¶ 7 Thus, as we held in San Carlos, the separation of powers doctrine prohibits the legislature "from prescribing rules of decision in pending cases." Id. ). A fortiori, the separation of powers doctrine prevents the legislature from changing the rule of decision in completed cases.
¶ 8 In San Carlos, we quoted with approval a passage from the United States Supreme Court's decision in Klein. Commenting on Congress' attempt to overturn the rule it articulated in a previous case, the Supreme Court made the following comment:
It seems to us that this is not an exercise of the acknowledged power of Congress to make exceptions and prescribe regulations to the appellate power.... What is this but to prescribe a rule for the decision of a cause in a particular way? ... Can we do so without allowing one party to the controversy to decide it in its own favor? Can we do so without allowing that the legislature may prescribe rules of decision to the Judicial Department of the government in cases pending before it? We think not.... We must think that Congress had inadvertently passed the limit which separates the legislative from the judicial power.
San Carlos, 193 Ariz. at 210, 972 P.2d at 194 (quoting from Klein, 80 U.S. at 146-47). We went on in San Carlos to state that "we believe any attempt by the Arizona Legislature to adjudicate pending cases by defining existing law and applying it to fact is prohibited by article III of the Arizona Constitution, which describes the distribution of powers of our government...." Id.; see also Martin v. Moore, 61 Ariz. 92, 95, 143 P.2d 334, 335 (1943) ( ).
¶ 9 These principles, so recently restated in San Carlos, lead to only one conclusion: the legislature cannot overrule and change Tarango's interpretation of the statute and apply it on a retroactive basis. It may change the statute for prospective application, but cases, including the present one, must be decided on the basis of the court's interpretation of the substantive law that existed at the time the events in question occurred. That interpretation, binding under the separation of powers embodied in article III of our constitution, cannot be overruled. As a general matter, the separation of powers doctrine leaves creation of future statutory law to the legislative branch and determination of existing law and its application to past events to the judicial branch.
¶ 10 We conclude that the trial judge correctly granted relief on the portion of Defendant's post-conviction petition alleging that his parole eligibility should be recalculated pursuant to Tarango, and thus the court of appeals erred in reversing the judge's ruling on this issue. Accordingly, we vacate the portion of the court of appeals' decision that conflicts with this opinion. We thus affirm the trial...
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