Duffy v. State3/21/1990
sive sales constitutes a distinct offense, however closely they may follow each other."
The second issue addressed in Blockburger was whether separate offenses could be sustained because a single act of criminal conduct, the sale of narcotics, amounted to a violation of two distinct statutes. The court answered that question in the affirmative because, in that case, each of the statutes required proof of a fact that the other did not. Later, in Ciucci v. State of Illinois, 356 U.S. 571, 78 S.Ct. 839, 2 L.Ed.2d 983, reh. denied 357 U.S. 924, 78 S.Ct. 1367, 2 L.Ed.2d 1375 (1958), the Supreme Court of the United States concluded that the murder of four people, in what apparently was a single criminal episode, created four separate offenses. The court held that it did not violate the double jeopardy clause to prosecute the four indictments in separate proceedings.
A dissenting opinion urged the proposition that the Fourteenth Amendment inhibits a state from subjecting a defendant to double jeopardy through multiple prosecutions when the charges arise out of a single criminal act, occurrence, episode, or transaction. In later cases, the Supreme Court has held that the same evidence may not be used to sustain multiple offenses in separate proceedings if one was a lesser included offense of the other. Illinois v. Vitale, 447 U.S. 410, 100 S.Ct. 2260, 65 L.Ed.2d 228 (1980); Harris v. Oklahoma, 433 U.S. 682, 97 S.Ct. 2912, 53 L.Ed.2d 1054 (1977); Brown, 432 U.S. 161, 97 S.Ct. 2221. The thrust of these later opinions is that a defendant cannot be subjected to multiple trials for those included and greater offenses even though the offenses are supported by different evidence. The rule of these cases is that no different result is obtained by trying a lesser included offense separately from the greater offense than would ensue if they were tried together. See Nowack.
Similarly, in Ladner v. United States, 358 U.S. 169, 79 S.Ct. 209, 3 L.Ed.2d 199 (1958), a single gunshot which caused injury to two police officers was not held to result in separate offenses because the court concluded that was not the intent of Congress. In that case, the Court carefully noted that if two shots had been fired each injuring a different officer, separate offenses could be sustained. See Baum, 745 P.2d 877; Tuggle, 733 P.2d 610; Carter, 714 P.2d 1217; Hamill, 602 P.2d 1212; Vigil, 563 P.2d 1344; Ladner; Ciucci; Blockburger; Ebeling v. Morgan, 237 U.S. 625, 35 S.Ct. 710, 59 L.Ed. 1151 (1915).
When a court decides that the legislature intended a violation of two statutory provisions by a single act to be punished only once, double jeopardy results even though separate evidence might be used to support multiple offenses. Schultz, 751 P.2d 367; Birr, 744 P.2d 1117; Garrett; Hunter. This rule is quite like the rule relating to alternative means of violating the same statute or a conclusion as to a continuing offense. If the legislature has expressed its intent in unambiguous language in the statute, the inquiry ends. Schultz; Hunter. The Wyoming legislature has not provided any definitive statutory guidance in this instance and, therefore, we resort to the usual rules of statutory construction to discern the legislative intent. Compare Hunter; United States v. Harris, 832 F.2d 88 (7th Cir. 1987); United States v. Springfield, 829 F.2d 860 (9th Cir. 1987); State v. Frank, 416 N.W.2d 744 (Minn.App. 1987); Nevada Department of Prisons v. Bowen, 103 Nev. 477, 745 P.2d 697 (1987) (applying statutes expressing a clear legislative intent without resorting to rules of statutory construction).
In Goodman v. State, 573 P.2d 400 (Wyo. 1977), our examination of the relevant statutes convin
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