Case Notes

• Jurisdiction: Hawaii,United States
• Citation: Vol. 20 No. 01
• Publication year: 2016

CASE NOTES

Supreme Court

Criminal

Schwartz v. State, No. SCWC-10-0000199, November 19, 2015, (Pollack, J.; Nakayama, J. and Recktenwald, C.J., concurring separately). Appellant applied for a writ of certiorari from the judgment on appeal of the Intermediate Court of Appeals to determine whether omission of an element of a charged offense renders the trial court without subject-matter jurisdiction over the case. The Hawaii Supreme Court found no deficiency of jurisdiction and affirmed the judgment on appeal. In accordance with the prior decisions of this court, the criminal jurisdiction of the district court is provided by Hawaii Revised Statutes Chapter 604. Here, the district court had jurisdiction over the OVUII charge alleged against Appellant by satisfaction of the requirements set forth in that chapter. Subject-matter jurisdiction is not abrogated by a charging instrument that fails to allege a culpable state of mind or a statutory element defining the offense. The fact that the OVUII charge failed to allege an element of the offense therefore did not extinguish the criminal jurisdiction of the district court. Based on the foregoing, the Hawaii Supreme Court overruled State v. Cummings, 101 Hawaii 139, 63 P.3d 1109 (2003) and State v. Walker, 126 Hawaii 475, 273 P.3d 1161 (2012) insofar as the holdings of those decisions indicated that a charge, information, or indictment that failed to allege either the requisite mental state or an element of the charged offense deprives a trial court of subject-matter jurisdiction. In addition, the decision in Christian v. State, 131 Hawaii 153, 315 P.3d 779 (App. 2013) was also overruled.

Nakayama, J. concurred separately joined by Recktenwald, C.J. Nakayama, J. concurred with the majority's determination that charging defects were not jurisdictional in nature and that the District Court of the Second Circuit properly denied Appellant's Hawaii Rules of Penal Procedure Rule 40 petition. Nakayama, J. believed that State v. Wheeler established a new rule that should not apply to convictions that were final when Wheeler was decided. Indeed, this court had already determined that Wheeler worked a fundamental change in Hawaii's OVUII charging requirements.

Appeal Pointers

An appeal may be dismissed or other sanctions may be imposed if the Civil Appeals Docketing Statement ("CADS") is not filed for a required case. HRAP 3.1(b), 3.1(f). The CADS will be stricken if a copy of the judgment or order appealed from is not...