Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca11-14-14557/USCOURTS-ca11-14-14557-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Attorney General, State of Alabama
Appellee
Tony Lee Smith
Appellant
Warden
Appellee

Document Text:

[DO NOT PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

________________________

No. 14-14557

________________________

D.C. Docket No. 2:11-cv-03271-WMA-JHE

TONY LEE SMITH, 

a.k.a. Wilhelm Von Wolf, 

 Petitioner-Appellant,

 versus

WARDEN, S.C.C.F.,

ATTORNEY GENERAL, STATE OF ALABAMA, 

 Respondents-Appellees.

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Alabama

________________________

(May 27, 2016)

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Before HULL and BLACK, Circuit Judges, and ROTHSTEIN,

* District Judge.

PER CURIAM: 

Tony Smith, an Alabama state prisoner, appeals the district court’s August 

29, 2014 order dismissing his petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2254. After review of the record and with the benefit of oral argument, we 

reverse the district court’s August 29, 2014 dismissal order and remand with 

instructions to grant the writ in part. 

On August 3, 2006, Smith pleaded guilty to resisting arrest, in violation of 

Ala. Code § 13A-10-41. That same day, the state trial court accepted his guilty 

plea and adjudicated him guilty of that offense. At that moment, the Double 

Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment attached, which prohibits successive 

prosecutions for the same offense. See Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161, 164, 97 S. 

Ct. 2221, 2225 (1977).

The next day, on August 4, 2006, Smith pleaded guilty to, and was 

adjudicated guilty of, second-degree assault, in violation of Ala. Code § 13A-6-21. 

All parties agree that the resisting arrest charge and second-degree assault charge 

were based on offense conduct that occurred on the same day, at the same time, 

between Smith and the same officer, and was separated by mere seconds. Given

these undisputed facts and the close temporal proximity, we conclude that Smith’s 

 *

Honorable Barbara Jacobs Rothstein, United States District Judge for the Western

District of Washington, sitting by designation.

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conduct constituted a single criminal offense. See id. at 169, 97 S. Ct. at 2227 

(“The Double Jeopardy Clause is not such a fragile guarantee that prosecutors can 

avoid its limitations by the simple expedient of dividing a single crime into a series 

of temporal or spatial units.”). We conclude, therefore, that the state proceeding to 

obtain Smith’s conviction for resisting arrest in Case No. 05-924 based on certain 

offense conduct estopped the state from subsequently seeking a conviction for 

second-degree assault in Case No. 05-922 based on the same offense conduct. As 

such, Smith’s second-degree assault conviction and sentence in case No. 05-922 

should be vacated by the Alabama state courts, and the district court should grant 

the writ to accomplish that remedy. 

Accordingly, we REVERSE the district court’s dismissal of Smith’s § 2254 

petition and REMAND with instructions to grant the writ, in part, with respect to

Smith’s Alabama state conviction for second-degree assault in Case No. 05-922. 

Nothing in this opinion shall be construed as having any effect on Smith’s 

conviction for first-degree assault in Case No. 05-2209 or his conviction for 

resisting arrest in Case No. 05-924. 

REVERSED IN PART and REMANDED with instructions.

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