Goyer v. State
Goyer v. State
Opinion of the Court
The principal issue on this appeal is whether it was violative of due process to try Goyer by way of an information rather than on presentment or indictment of a grand jury as required by the Fifth amendment of the United States constitution.
Assuming there was no waiver, nevertheless the law is well settled that the presentment or indictment requirements of the Fifth amendment are not made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth amendment.
Counsel for defendant concedes that this is so but asks this court to overrule the Rowan Case
The fundamental rationale of the ruling that due process does not require prosecution only by presentment or indictment growing out of a grand jury proceeding is well stated in Rowan:
“And the words ‘due process of law,’ in this amendment, do not mean and have not the effect to limit the powers of the state governments to prosecutions for crimes by indictments, but these words do mean law in its regular course of administration according to the prescribed forms and in*247 accordance with the general rules for the protection of individual rights. Administration and remedial proceedings must change from time to time with the advancement of legal science and the progress of society, and if the people of the state find it wise and expedient to abolish the grand jury and prosecute all crimes by information, there is nothing in our state constitution as it now stands, and nothing in the 14th amendment to the constitution of the United States, which prevents them from doing so.”5
In Kennedy, the supreme court of errors of Connecticut stated:
“The fact that throughout the more than three centuries this commonwealth has existed grand jury indictments have been required only for the most serious offenses is the strongest evidence that the people of this state do not believe that such indictments are necessary for their protection in other cases.”6
and
"We can find neither in the history of criminal procedure in this state nor in the attitude of the people towards it any basis for a conclusion that grand jury indictments ought to be a necessary foundation upon which all prosecutions for infamous crimes should rest.”7
The United States supreme court held in Hurtado:
“Tried by these principles, we are unable to say that the substitution for a presentment or indictment by a grand jury of the proceeding by information, after examination and commitment by a magistrate, certifying to the probable guilt of the defendant, with the right on his part to the aid of counsel, and to the cross-examination of the witnesses produced for the prosecution is not due process of law.”8
“But since, as this court has so often held, the ‘due process of law’ clause does not require the State to adopt the institution and procedure of a grand jury, we are unable to see upon what theory it can be held that an examination, or the opportunity for one, prior to the formal accusation by the district attorney, is obligatory upon the States.”9
This basic rationale remains unaffected by recent decisions of the United States supreme court holding that certain other Bill of Rights provisions are binding upon the several states in view of the due-process requirement of the Fourteenth amendment.
There is nothing fundamentally unfair about the procedure that permits criminal prosecution by way of information especially as contrasted with a prosecution flowing from a grand jury proceeding. That a prosecution by way of information has many features of fairness also present in the grand jury procedure, was pointed out by this court in Thies v. State, where it was stated:
“The object or purpose of the preliminary investigation is to prevent hasty, malicious, improvident, ánd oppressive prosecutions, to protect the person charged from open and public accusations of crime, to avoid both for the defendant*249 and the public the expense of a public trial, and to save the defendant from the humiliation and anxiety involved in public prosecution, and to discover whether or not there are substantial grounds upon which a prosecution may be based.”12
There is nothing inherently fairer, in the quest to provide defendant with a fair trial, about a procedure allowing prosecution by indictment by grand jury rather than by way of an information.
The remaining issue is whether it was error to impose a sentence for conviction of a single crime which runs concurrently in part and consecutively in part. The judge had no authority to split the sentence.
By the Court. — Judgment modified to provide that sentence is for a ten-year concurrent term and, as so modified, affirmed.
“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, „ . ”
Sec. 955.09 (3), Stats.: “Defenses and objections based on defects in the institution of the proceedings, . . . must be raised before trial by motion or be deemed waived. . . .”
Thies v. State (1922), 178 Wis. 98, 189 N. W. 539; Rowan v. State (1872), 30 Wis. 129; Kennedy v. Walker (1948), 135 Conn. 262, 63 Atl. (2d) 589, affirmed, 337 U. S. 901, 69 Sup. Ct. 1047, 93 L. Ed. 1715, rehearing denied, 337 U. S. 934, 69 Sup. Ct. 1491, 93 L. Ed. 1740; Lem Woon v. Oregon (1913), 229 U. S. 586, 33 Sup. Ct. 783, 57 L. Ed. 1340; Hurtado v. California (1884), 110 U. S. 516, 4 Sup. Ct. 111, 28 L. Ed. 232.
Supra, footnote 3.
Supra, footnote 3, at page 149.
Supra, footnote 3, at page 270.
Kennedy v. Walker, supra, footnote 3, at page 271.
Supra, footnote 3 at page 538. See reference to Hurtado rule in footnote 2 of majority opinion, Malloy v. Hogan (1964), 378 U. S. 1, 4, 84 Sup. Ct. 1489, 12 L. Ed. (2d) 653.
Supra, footnote 3, at page 590.
Escobedo v. Illinois (1964), 378 U. S. 478, 84 Sup. Ct. 1758, 12 L. Ed. (2d) 977; Malloy v. Hogan (1964), 378 U. S. 1, 84 Sup. Ct. 1489, 12 L. Ed. (2d) 653; Massiah v. United States (1964), 377 U. S. 201, 84 Sup. Ct. 1199, 12 L. Ed. (2d) 246; Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), 372 U. S. 335, 83 Sup. Ct. 792, 9 L. Ed. (2d) 799; Spano v. New York (1959), 360 U. S. 315, 79 Sup. Ct. 1202, 3 L. Ed. (2d) 1265.
Gideon v. Wainwright, supra, footnote 10, at page 340.
Supra, footnote 3, at page 103.
Sec. 959.07, Stats. . . The court may impose as many sentences as there are convictions and may provide that any such sentence shall commence at the expiration of any other sentence; and if ;the defendant is then serving a sentence, the present sentence may provide that it shall commence at the expiration of the previous sentence.”
Concurring Opinion
{concurring). I fully concur in the opinion of the court. This concurring opinion will be directed solely to the contention of appellant that the provision of the Fifth amendment to the United States constitution that, “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, . . .” has application to a prosecution for felony in a state court.
As Mr. Justice Cardozo pointed out in Palko v. Connecticut (1937), 302 U. S. 319, 323-325, 58 Sup. Ct. 149,
There are those who maintain that the Fourteenth amendment originally was intended to incorporate the entire Bill of Rights. A complete refutation of this hypothesis is to be found in Professor Fairman’s great contribution to legal history, “Does the Fourteenth Amendment Incorporate the Bill of Rights?” 2 Stanford Law Review (1949), 5. One of the telling facts marshaled by Fairman is that a number of states which ratified the Fourteenth amendment had provisions in their own state constitutions or statutes which were in direct conflict with certain provisions of the Bill of Rights. Included among these states were Connecticut, Indiana, Kansas, and Michigan which did not require grand jury indictments in all felonies. For example, the supreme court of Connecticut in State v. Hayes (1941), 127 Conn. 543, 581, 18 Atl. (2d) 895, declared that proceeding in criminal prosecutions by information was “in accordance with the practice in this state for nearly two centuries and approved by our courts.”
Fairman relates in some detail what transpired in Wisconsin as reflecting the understanding that this state could not have ratified the Fourteenth amendment with any idea that it incorporated the Bill of Rights. When the legislature ratified this amendment in 1867, sec. 8, art. I, of the Wisconsin constitution provided, “No person shall be held
Over the years there has been a rather steady movement away from grand jury indictments and substituting in its place the initiation of criminal prosecutions by complaint or information. Even England in 1933 abolished the grand jury.
While some present justices of the United States supreme court favor incorporation of all provisions of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth amendment, it seems unlikely that a majority of the court will so decide thus freezing upon the states compulsory presentment or indictment by grand jury when so many jurists and students of criminal law do not regard it as essential to ordered liberty, and the trend for many years has been steadily toward its abolition.
Administration of Justice (Misc. Provisions) Act, 1933, 23 & 24 Geo. 5, c. 36, sec. 1. See also Elliff, Notes on the Abolition of the English Grand Jury, 29 J. Crim., C. & P. S. (1938) 3. In 1827 Jeremy Bentham declared that long before that time the grand jury had outlived its usefulness. 2 Bentham Rationale of Judicial Evidence, 313, cited in 74 Harvard Law Review (1960), 591, footnote 12.
See Historical Note, USCA, Constitution of the United States Annotated, Amendments 1 to 5, page 10.
Watts, Grand Jury: Sleeping Watchdog or Expensive Antique. 37 N. C. Law Review (1959), 290, 291.
Oliver, The Grand Jury: An Effort to Get a Dragon out of His Cave, 1962 Washington University Law Quarterly, 166, 183.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Goyer, Plaintiff in Error, v. State, Defendant in Error
- Cited By
- 13 cases
- Status
- Published