Stogner v. California - Opinion Announcement

Argument of Speaker

Mr. Speaker: The opinion of the Court in No. 01-1757 Stogner against California will be announced by Justice Breyer.

Argument of Justice Breyer

Mr. Breyer: According to the State of California the Marion Stogner who is the petitioner committed acts of sex-related child abuse between the years 1955 and 1973.

By 1976, the three years after the last act, all the relevant statutes of limitation had expired.

So, at that point the law forbid any prosecution.

About 20 years later, in 1993 and 1996, they are two different statutes, California enacted new laws which in effect extended limitations periods almost indefinitely, and they also permitted a retroactive revival of a prosecution, one that would have originally been barred.

California then applied this new law to Stogner and in 1998, it brought a prosecution against him based upon the acts which he had allegedly committed between 43 and 25 years earlier.

Now, Stogner has argued that the Constitution's Ex Post Facto Clause bars California's effort retroactively to revive this long dead prosecution.

We conclude that Stogner is right and we hold that the statute is applied to his prosecution is unconstitutional.

Our conclusion rests upon three sets of considerations: first, we think that the statute threatens the kinds of harm that the Ex Post Facto Clauses seek to avoid.

Judge learned at hand once wrote that extending a limitations period after the State has "ensured" a man that he has become safe from its pursuit seems to most of us unfair and dishonest.

The Government has refused "to play" by its own rule. It has deprived the defendent of that fair warning that might have led him to preserve evidence.

In the words of Calder versus Bull, a very old but still a leading Supreme Court case in the Ex Post Facto area, the law before us is "manifestly unjust and oppressive".

The second set of considerations is that statute falls literally within the terms of one of two descriptions of Ex Post Facto laws that Justice Chase provided nearly 200 years ago in Calder versus Bull.

This description refers to instances in which the British Parliament "inflicted punishments where the party was not by law liable to any punishment", and we think that is what California's Law does.

After the expiration of the statute, he was not liable by law to any punishment and California then passed a law which inflicted a punishment.

We recognized that Justice Chase also described this category of Ex Post Facto laws in a different way with the words "law that aggravates a crime or makes it greater than it was when committed", but we find no inconsistency here for one can easily read the phrase law making a crime greater than it was when committed as including a law that inflicts punishment where when the law is passed the party is not liable to punishment.

And as so read the former words cover the case as well. Third, legislators, courts and commentators all have believed for more than a century that a law that like the present law revives a forbidden prosecution is an Ex Post Facto law.

With virtual unanimity, American Courts have said this and when necessary they have held it.

Outside of California, we have found no authority to the contrary.

We discuss these matters further in our opinion, we recognize that we are talking about a law, not a law that was extending the statute of limitations enacted before the statute expired here where one have a law that extends the statute of limitations enacted after the earlier stature has expired, and it is that latter case that we are considering, and we hold that this latter case, the laws are unconstitutional.

We also have in the opinion quite a lengthy discussion, I call it a discussion with the dissent which took a contrary view of a number of these matters.

The bottom line is that we hold California's effor to prosecute Marion Stogner unconstitutional and we reverse the California Court's decision to the contrary.

Justice Kennedy has filed a dissenting opinion which the Chief Justice, Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas have joined.