Twenty-eight years ago, Ronald Rice copped a quick and dirty plea for having run down an 11 year old boy, Edwin Gulbransen, and hidden his body.
In 1980, after Edwin was found dead, Rice stood before a judge and said he couldn’t forgive himself for his role in what was believed then to be a hit-and-run. Rice, who had turned himself in, then was sentenced to 6 months in jail for fleeing the scene of an accident and hiding the boy’s body.
Rice said all the right words at sentence, about how he couldn’t forgive himself and what a terrible thing he had done. Had he kept his mouth shut, that might have been the end of it. But he couldn’t. And it wasn’t.
According to the prosecutors, Rice admitted to at least eight IDOC employees over the past decade that he killed the boy and told at least one of them he didn’t think he could be charged in the boy’s killing because he had pleaded guilty to the lesser charge.
In one instance, according to the prosecutors, he said, “I got away with murder because there was not enough evidence against me.”
The problem, amongst many, was that Rice spent most of the past 28 years in prison, having been convicted in 1984 of a sexual assault on a 12 year old boy. He’s now scheduled for release in four years, after receiving a sentence of 60 years. This happening in California Illinois, I am clueless as to how a 60 year sentence would work this way.
So what happened back in 1980?
“We are very puzzled why there was a rush to judgment,” Dart said this morning, referring to the disposition of the 1980 case. “We are absolutely convinced that this is the truth of what happened in 1980.”
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said investigators believe Rice (right), now 54, purposely struck 11- year-old Edwin Gulbransen as he was riding his bicycle that June day and then persuaded him to get into his car before driving a short distance to a forest preserve, where he sexually assaulted the boy. Rice strangled Edwin, and then jumped up and down on his chest to make sure he was dead, the sheriff said.
The Cook County medical examiner’s office ruled the boy died from several broken cervical vertebrae. After the case was reopened the office reviewed their findings and said the blunt force trauma was more consistent with being manually strangled and stomped than being run over by a car.
Certainly, the forensic evidence would seem to be a world apart, not to mention the questioning of the prosecutorial decisions made long ago.
Regardless, some problematic questions remain. Even though there is no statute of limitations for murder, there remains the small hurdle of double jeopardy. Despite the horrific allegations against Rice, and the potentially grave injustice done by a quickie plea and 6 month sentence after such a sick and brutal crime, the constitutional prohibition of being twice tried would seem to present a significant stumbling block to revisiting this crime now.
Of course, these are the types of horrific crimes that make judges want to jump through hoops to recraft the law to enable “justice”, but leave caselaw behind that wreaks havoc for everyone else. This bears watching to see how the prosecution tries to jump this hurdle, and whether the court (which has already held Rice without bail) will allow it.
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I don’t see how a conviction for “fleeing the scene of an accident and hiding the boy’s body” would bar prosecution for murder.
Isn’t the issue the act committed? If the act was the hit-and-run killing, rather than the murder-by-jumping-on, aren’t they two separate acts?
Hypothetical, just for exaggeration purposes: Bob pleads out for murdering Al, and is sentenced to thirty years in prison. Turns out that Al’s still alive, and in irritation for him not having shown up and mentioned that before, Bob beats Al to death after his release. He doesn’t get to claim double jeopardy, because those are separate acts: the murder that didn’t happen, and the one that did.
I don’t know if that’s close enough to the actual situation, but I’m guessing that it’s the argument that the prosecution is going to make, that what he plead out on was the killing by running over the boy with the car (which didn’t happen, but is a separate act, if only because it was fictional), rather than the actual killing, which took place at another place and another time.
Yes, it is the “act committed,” but not in the sense that you raise (or Bennett, for that matter). The “act committed” are the underlying facts. Here, one of the underlying facts is a dead boy. The prosecution bought the defendant’s story, that it was accidental, and despite the fact of a dead boy, elected to accept a plea to leaving the scene of an accident or concealing a dead body (we’re not sure since the story doesn’t quite say). But that’s the prosecution’s choice, under the given set of facts.
Nothing stopped the prosecution from conducting a more thorough forensics analysis of the body, determining then exactly what they’ve determined now, and charging and prosecuting Rice for murder. They had the same underlying facts with a dead 11 year old boy, and chose to let it go with a 6 month sentence. Now they want a second shot to get it right? That’s a problem.
As to your hypo, entirely different situation.
How can any discussion of double jeopardy omit the Blockburger test?: If the same transaction violates two distinct statutory provisions, the test to determine whether there are multiple offenses is whether each provision requires proof of a fact that the other does not.
I doubt that either fleeing the scene of an accident or hiding a body is a lesser-included of murder.
And it was Illinois, not California.
Blockburger has to do with duplicious counts in the same indictment, implicating double jeopardy, a totally different situation.
Yup. Cooke County is Illinois, not California. My mistake.
You’re not wrong often, but when you’re wrong you’re really wrong. Jeopardy is jeopardy — if you can be prosecuted for the two offenses at the same time, you can be prosecuted for one, convicted or acquitted, then prosecuted for the other without offending double jeopardy.
What I believe may be the confusion is that while you can be tried, at the same time and by the same sovereign, for the same conduct under multiple laws and theories, and you can be tried by different sovereigns at different times for violating the law of each sovereign independently, you can’t be tried by the same sovereign for crimes arising from the same conduct at different times. That would be serial prosecution. From US v. Long :
You would be correct if the prosecuting government were a different sovereign, prosecuting under its own law. For example, if the federal government prosecuted Rice for violating Gulbransen’s civil rights by murdering him. But the Cooke County DA only gets one try, even if they get it wrong.
But hey, I could be wrong. I just haven’t heard anything to make me think so yet.
The Blockburger test is used to determine whether two separate charges are the same crime. If they’re not the same crime — if each charge has a statutory element that the other doesn’t — there is no jeopardy problem.
But Blockburger only applies to multiple charges arising from the same course of conduct in the same accusatory instrument prosecuted by the same sovereign. Blockburger doesn’t apply to serial prosecutions or serial punishments.
For example, A murders B. A is charged in the same accusatory instrument with intentional murder, reckless murder and negligent murder, placing A in jeopardy for the same conduct under three separate accusations. But A can only be convicted of one, and sentenced for one.
If A is charged with only intentional murder, then acquitted, the same sovereign cannot then indict and try A for reckless murder. Nor can they later charge and try A for assault against B. Nor can they later charge and try A for possession of the weapon used to murder B. Etc. The sovereign can charged multiple crimes for the same conduct, but has to do so at one time to avoid the serial prosecutions problem. They can’t keep retrying A for the same conduct under different charges.
Your A-B murder is a good counterexample. Reckless murder and negligent murder are lesser-included offenses of intentional murder. They don’t include elements that intentional murder does not.
A could be tried for reckless, negligent, and intentional murder at the same time, but could only be punished for one of them. Having been punished for one, he couldn’t be prosecuted for another.
Rice wasn’t punished, as I understand it, for killing Gulbransen, but rather for leaving the scene of the “accident” and for concealing his body.
The test for “same crime” is the same — the Blockburger test — whether we’re talking about subsequent prosecution after conviction, subsequent prosecution after acquittal, or concurrent prosecutions.
No, no, no. Reckless and negligent murder are not lessers of intentional murder in New York at all. Maybe in Texas, though I can’t imagine how that’s possible since they have different, and mutually exclusive, mental states. My analogy works the same if it’s murder, assault, possesion of a weapon and jaywalking.
Back to Blockburger, trying varying crimes at the same time is totally different than trying them one after another. This was the substance of the quote above, including the cite to US v. Dixon.
Rice was punished for his conduct, whatever that may be, relative to the death of Gulbransen. That’s their one shot to punish. Serial prosecutions are prohibited, whether they start with the top charge (murder) or the bottom (jaywalking).
Hm. In Texas recklessness is sort of a lesser-included mental state of intentional. . . ness.
Aside from that, I feel like I’ve fallen through the looking glass.
The quote from Long doesn’t at all say that trying varying crimes at the same time is totally different than trying them one after another.
According to Dixon (which was the Court’s rejection of the Grady “same conduct” test) . . .
“In both the multiple punishment and multiple prosecution contexts, this Court has concluded that where the two offenses for which the defendant is punished or tried cannot survive the “same-elements” test, the double jeopardy bar applies. See, e. g., Brown v. Ohio, 432 U. S. 161, 168-169 (1977); Blockburger v. United States, 284 U. S. 299, 304 (1932) (multiple punishment); Gavieres v. United States, 220 U. S. 338, 342 (1911) (successive prosecutions). The same elements test, sometimes referred to as the “Blockburger” test, inquires whether each offense contains an element not contained in the other; if not, they are the “same offence” and double jeopardy bars additional punishment and successive prosecution. In a case such as Yancy, for example, in which the contempt prosecution was for disruption of judicial business, the same-elements test would not bar subsequent prosecution for the criminal assault that was part of the disruption, because the contempt offense did not require the element of criminal conduct, and the criminal offense did not require the element of disrupting judicial business.1
We recently held in Grady that in addition to passing the Blockburger test, a subsequent prosecution must satisfy a “same-conduct” test to avoid the double jeopardy bar. The Grady test provides that, “if, to establish an essential element of an offense charged in that prosecution, the government will prove conduct that constitutes an offense for which the defendant has already been prosecuted,” a second prosecution may not be had. 495 U. S., at 510.”
Rice’s case is analogous to Foster’s case, consolidated in Dixon. There, Foster was held in criminal contempt for assaulting his wife, and then, on the same facts, was charged with assaulting her with intent to kill her.
In order to prove a murder (intentionally causing death, say), the government doesn’t have to prove the hit-and-run or the corpse-concealment.
Who are you, and what have you done with Scott?!?
Hey, but this was fun. How often do we get to argue arcane issues of law amongst ourselves? Usually, someone’s life hangs in the balance.
It really bothers me that you two haven’t figured out who was right, or found a hidden assumption that allows both of you to be right. I’m a little disappointed.
The law requires a substantial tolerance for ambiguity. It happens all the time.
Yeah, but you guys are my go-to source for right answers on this stuff. What am I supposed to do now? Ask a lawprof?
Tell us what answer you want, and we’ll tell you what it will cost.
lol.
Heh. I knew I liked you guys for a reason.
Mark, have you ever considered entering Chicago politics?