State v. Clough

In State v. Clough, 171 Ariz. 217, 829 P.2d 1263 (App. 1992), the defendant argued that his sentence was improperly enhanced based both on a prior Montana felony conviction and his probation status for that conviction because the foreign offense had no analog under Arizona law. 171 Ariz. at 219, 829 P.2d at 1265. The Court concluded, first, that the defendant's sentence could not be enhanced based on the prior Montana felony conviction because the Montana offense--issuing a bad check--did not correspond to any Arizona felony. Id. at 221, 224-25, 829 P.2d at 1267, 1270-71. In making this determination, we engaged in what later became the Crawford analysis and compared the elements of the Montana offense with our criminal statutes. Id. at 220-25, 829 P.2d at 1267-71. Next, the Court considered whether the defendant's sentence was properly enhanced based on his probation status from that Montana offense. Id. at 225, 829 P.2d at 1271. The Court concluded that "as we have explained above, because we cannot be certain that one who was guilty of passing a bad check in Montana would necessarily have committed any felony in Arizona, it was error to sentence the defendant" based on his probation status from the Montana conviction. Id. Thus, the Court applied a Crawford-type analysis equally to prior conviction enhancements and release status enhancements. The 2012 amendments superseded this analysis for prior convictions, but left unaffected the statutes relating to release status. Therefore, the analysis applied to release status enhancement in Clough remains applicable.