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Robinson v. State6/18/1997
Opinion by Murphy, J.
James Robinson (Appellant), an inmate in the State penal system, was serving a 60-year sentence for robbery-related offenses when he assaulted an officer at the Maryland House of Correction at Jessup on October 4, 1994. This latter misbehavior netted Appellant administrative sanctions: 400 days in segregation and the loss of 400 days' good conduct time. It also resulted in his criminal prosecution. An Anne Arundel County Circuit Court jury convicted Appellant of battery. On February 14, 1996, the court sentenced him to a term of 12 years consecutive to the time he was already serving.
Appellant argues before us that the administrative action taken against him in the prison system was punishment within the contemplation of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment and thus barred the subsequent criminal prosecution. At sentencing, Appellant told the court:
Your Honor, I would like to say that I've been punished more than once for this offense. I was punished by the State and now I'm being punished by the State once again. I was told, and I've read that, you know, a person can't be prosecuted twice. I have been tried by the institution. I've stood trial in here again by another portion of the State. And, I don't feel as though what's been done to me is justifiable. I'm being punished more than once for an offense that occurred . . . . And, I would like to ask that you take that into consideration. The fact that I've been punished more than once.
The trial court responded:
You talk about having been punished once for this offense. I don't know of any law that says it's double jeopardy for the administrative team to exact some type of administrative sanction for what's happened in this case.
The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment proclaims that no person shall "be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb." This constitutional guarantee is made applicable to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Illinois v. Vitale, 447 U.S. 410, 415, 100 S. Ct. 2260, 65 L. Ed. 2d 228 (1980), citing Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 89 S. Ct. 2056, 23 L. Ed. 2d 707 (1969). The 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.
United States v. Halper, 490 U.S. 435, 440, 109 S. Ct. 1892, 104 L. Ed. 2d 487 (1989). We are concerned with the last of the three. See Flaherty v. State, 322 Md. 356, 365, 587 A.2d 522 (1991).
For support of his contention that 400 days in segregation and the loss of 400 days' good conduct time barred his being criminally punished, Appellant directs us to Department of Revenue of Montana v. Kurth, 511 U.S. 767, 114 S. Ct. 1937, 128 L. Ed. 2d 767 (1994). In Kurth, the Supreme Court held that the state could not tax illegal drugs at several times their market value after the defendants had been convicted for drug law violations, because the tax constituted an impermissible second punishment.
This drug tax is not the kind of remedial sanction that may follow the first punishment of a criminal offense. Instead, it is a second punishment within the contemplation of a constitutional protection that has "deep roots in our history and jurisprudence," . . . and therefore must be imposed during the first prosecution or not at all.
511 U.S. at 784, citing U.S. v. Halper, (supra) , 490 U.S. at 440.
Appellant also draws our attention to State v. Jones, 340 Md. 235, 666 A.2d 128 (199
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