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| These loops are usually more fun unless you're SCOV-Law-level nerdy |
By Elizabeth Kruska
Does the State have the statutory right to appeal a trial court’s post-guilty judgment of acquittal? Nope. You can stop here.
Here’s the history of this matter. Ms. Roy got charged with custodial interference. Her daughter was in the custody of the Department for Children and Families (DCF), and she took her daughter on a two-day trip out of state without permission from DCF. She was charged and went to trial. After the State rested, she moved for a judgment of acquittal, arguing that the evidence presented didn’t demonstrate that she interfered with DCF’s custody to the point it fell under the criminal statute of custodial interference. The judge denied the motion at that point.
The trial continued forward, and when Ms. Roy was done presenting her evidence, again she moved for a judgment of acquittal. Again, the judge denied the motion. The case went to the jury, who convicted Ms. Roy of the charge. The elements to consider were whether: (1) Ms. Roy; (2) intentionally; (3) took a relative under the age of 18; (4) in a manner that unlawfully deprived the custodian of custody. There was an additional instruction under the fourth element that a person acts unlawfully if they do something contrary to a specific custody order, but that it’s more than preventing the legal custodian from exercising physical control over the child.
After the jury found her guilty, Ms. Roy moved to set aside the verdict or for a new trial. She argued that there was nothing in the juvenile court’s order that would put her on notice that she acted contrary to the order. The trial court agreed, and in an unusual move (trust me, this is unusual), granted her motion for a judgment of acquittal. The trial court agreed that it had made an error in its jury instructions by not instructing the jury that the State would have had to produce evidence detailing parent-child contact. It would be hard to say someone violated the order when it wasn’t known what the parameters of the order even were. And also, there’s got to be a difference between someone committing non-criminal violations of a custody order and full-on deprivation of custody. The whole point of this statute is to punish parental kidnapping, which doesn’t seem to be what the case was here.
The State appealed and SCOV reversed the judgment of acquittal and ordered the trial court to reinstate the judgment of conviction and to sentence Ms. Roy.
But wait, there's more!
SCOV thought about it a little bit more and, also in a highly unusual move, reversed itself saying it isn’t so sure the State is even allowed to appeal in this circumstance. SCOV asks the Attorney General’s office and Defender General’s office to weigh in. The State, unsurprisingly, argues that review of a post-guilty verdict judgment of acquittal does not violate the Double Jeopardy clause of the Constitution. The Defense side weighs in and says there was just no authority for the court to even entertain such an appeal.
First, SCOV looks to see whether there was a common law right to appeal. The common law was the old law of the land, which developed over time. This was generally before statutes were written. Lots of statutes have incorporated principles of the common law. As our time and lives have evolved, we have developed additional statutes for things that weren’t covered by the common law. For example, our trespassing statutes are fairly deeply rooted in historical common law because trespassing has been something that people have done for centuries. But there is no such thing as common law DUI, because that just wasn’t a thing.
The same is true for other principles of law. In the United States, the State historically does not have a common law right to appeal a judgment in a criminal defendant’s favor. There are some very limited statutory exceptions for when the State is even permitted to take an appeal in a criminal case. Spoiler alert: this situation isn’t one of them. The statute is clear about what is appealable by the state, and nothing including the word “acquittal” is on that list. The State tries to argue that this was analogous to a dismissal, which can be appealed in some circumstances. SCOV says that the legislature would have known the difference between a dismissal and an acquittal, and if it meant to say acquittal in its list of appealable things it would have. And there’s a footnote! Citing the dictionary definition of dismissal! Bravo on the footnote. SCOV also looks at an older version of the statute, and concludes that the current version’s drafting is very clear in what the legislature meant.
SCOV also reasons that the State’s double-jeopardy argument isn’t relevant here because there’s no statute that even permits this appeal to be taken.
SCOV then turns to the question of whether it’s allowed to provide a remedy in an extraordinary situation. Sometimes things come up that just aren’t covered by any sort of law or statute. It seems like many of our statutes are reactionary. Something happens, we go, “Huh. So that happened. We should make a statute.” It’s not possible to think of All The Things and make laws in case something happens. For example, as I’m writing this, our legislature is working on a bill involving remote will signings. Nobody had thought to do this before, but we currently find ourselves in a situation where it’s necessary.
Sometimes there’s a situation that doesn’t neatly fit into an existing box, so sometimes it’s necessary to ask for a writ of relief.
Oh, wait. We abolished writs. (Although, I’ll note in an early 2017 SCOV case, it entertained a petition for writ of quo warranto because that was literally the only way something extraordinary could get addressed on a very short timeframe.) We have a rule of appellate procedure that says if there was something that used to be covered by a writ, that it can be raised under this rule. The court has to exercise its discretion to permit extraordinary relief.
SCOV decides NOT to exercise its discretion under the rule that permits granting extraordinary relief. If you’re all looped up in where we are procedurally, it’s that the State asked SCOV to allow it to appeal this post-guilty acquittal, and that SCOV decided it won’t let the State do that. It cites to an older case (yay, precedent!) that established a rule saying in terms of the State appealing in criminal cases, the State is limited to what is permitted by statute. In terms of extraordinary relief, there must be a truly extraordinary circumstance for it to be able to be appealed. The phrase “usurpation of power” is used a few times. That’s pretty strong language, and is an incredibly high bar to get over to get to the point of extraordinary relief eligibility. And even then, it doesn’t mean the relief sought will be granted, it just means SCOV might be willing to hear the argument.
To bring it back around, SCOV is allowed to exercise its power under the rules and statutes, but where the circumstance presents itself, may still fall back on its historical common law power and issue writs where necessary. And because a defendant’s acquittal is so strongly rooted in our constitutional law (and common law), the State attempting to say it somehow needed extraordinary relief sort of looks like a workaround for where no appeal is permitted.
Because SCOV finds that the bar was set so high for when extraordinary relief can be granted, that it declines to grant that relief to the State. It doesn’t like that the trial court entered a post-guilty verdict judgment of acquittal, but decides to leave that alone.
The trial court didn’t overstep its authority in terms any sort of statutory directive. Under the Rules of Criminal Procedure, a defendant is allowed to move for a judgment of acquittal at certain times, and the defendant did that properly. The court is allowed to consider it, and is allowed to grant that motion. Although SCOV feels the trial court misinterpreted the criminal statute at hand, the fact of granting the motion itself did not violate any authority the trial court had. Basically, SCOV says “the trial court is allowed under the rules to perform duty X; the trial court just did duty X incorrectly.” Because duty X is not something that the state is allowed to appeal, and because it wasn’t so egregious that it must be reversed, there’s no space for the court to grant the state the extraordinary relief of taking the appeal.
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