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STATE v. CHAPMAN11/18/1996
Defendant Annette C. Chapman appeals from a judgment entered in the Superior Court (York County, Crowley, J.) convicting her of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicants, a Class D offense, in violation of 29-A M.R.S.A. § 2411(1) (1996). The basis of Chapman's appeal is a ruling entered in the District Court (Biddeford, Levy, J.) denying her motion to dismiss the criminal complaint. The complaint alleged that defendant had a prior criminal. Defendant contends on appeal that application of the minimum mandatory sentence in her case violates the ex post facto and Due Process Clauses of the United States and Maine Constitutions. Because the statute operates prospectively to define penalties for repeat offenses committed after the effective date of the statute, there is no constitutional violation and we affirm the judgment.
The facts may be summarized as follows: Defendant was convicted of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicants in 1986. The present offense took place on September 30, 1995. After the District Court denied defendant's motion to dismiss the complaint, she entered a conditional guilty plea in the Superior Court pursuant to M.R.Crim.P. 11(a)(2) (1996), preserving for appeal the District Court's ruling. The Superior Court entered a judgment of guilty and sentenced defendant, pursuant to the enhanced sentencing provisions of section 2411(5)(B). Defendant now appeals.
Section 2411(5) defines the penalties for operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicants and the temporal limit of a prior offense for sentencing purposes. More severe penalties are established for persons who have two or three previous convictions within a ten-year period. Before 1995, the statute defined previous offenses as those occurring within a six-year period. Effective June 29, 1995, before defendant's September 30, 1995 offense, the temporal limit of section 2411(5) was amended to ten years. Thus, defendant was subjected to an enhanced sentence even though the earlier version of the statute would not have permitted the 1986 conviction to be counted in 1995 as a previous offense.
Defendant argues that the application of the expanded ten-year limit to her case violates the ex post facto prohibitions of the United States and Maine Constitutions. The enactment by the state legislature of any ex post facto law is constitutionally prohibited. A criminal statute will violate these constitutional prohibitions of ex post facto legislation only if:
1) tthe new statute punishes as a crime an act that was
innocent when done, or ii) if it makes more burdensome the
punishment for a crime after its commission, or iii) if it
deprives one charged with crime of a defense available
according to law at the time the act was committed.
State v. Joubert, 603 A.2d 861, 869 (Me. 1992) (summarizing Collins v. Youngblood, 497 U.S. 37, 110 S.Ct. 2715, 111 L.Ed.2d 30 (1990)). Because section 2411(5) prospectively defines the penalties for future repeat offenses, and does not increase penalties for prior offenses, it creates none of the proscribed retroactive effects specified in Joubert and Collins. In State v. Woods, 68 Me. 409 (1878), we upheld a sentence enhancement statute for repeat offenses when the first offense occurred before the statute took effect. We stated:
Nor is the law liable to objection as ex post facto. The
offender is punished, not for
Id. at 411. The same principle has been stated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Gryger v. Burke, 334 U.S. 728, 68 S.Ct. 1256, 92 L.Ed. 1683 (1948):
The sentence as a fourth offender or habitual criminal is not
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