Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-13-56952/USCOURTS-ca9-13-56952-1/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Doug Gingrich
Appellant
James Kendell Wilkinson
Appellee

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

JAMES KENDELL WILKINSON,

Petitioner-Appellee,

v.

DOUG GINGRICH, Orange County

Probation,

Respondent-Appellant.

No. 13-56952

D.C. No.

8:12-cv-01441-

GAF-FFM

ORDER AND

AMENDED

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

Gary A. Feess, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

July 7, 2015—Pasadena, California

Filed September 3, 2015

Amended November 3, 2015

Before: William A. Fletcher, Richard A. Paez,

and Marsha S. Berzon, Circuit Judges.

Order;

Opinion by Judge W. Fletcher

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2 WILKINSON V. GINGRICH

SUMMARY*

Habeas Corpus

The panel filed an amended opinion, denied a petition for

panel rehearing, and denied on behalf of the court a petition

for rehearing en banc, in a case in which the panel affirmed

the district court’s judgment granting James Kendell

Wilkinson’s habeas corpus petition challenging his conviction

for perjury for testifying in a traffic court proceeding that he

was not the driver of a car that had been stopped for speeding.

The State of California brought the perjury prosecution

after Wilkinson was acquitted of the speeding offense. The

panel agreed with the district court that the state appellate

court unreasonably applied Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436

(1970), when it held that Wilkinson’s acquittal in traffic court

did not bar the subsequent perjury prosecution. The panel

held that the traffic court actually and necessarily decided, in

Wilkinson’s favor, an issue that was critical to both the traffic

court and perjury proceedings—that Wilkinson was not the

driver of the speeding car—and that the State was therefore

precluded by the Double Jeopardy Clause from bringing the

perjury prosecution.

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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WILKINSON V. GINGRICH 3

COUNSEL

Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, Julie L. Garland, Senior

Assistant Attorney General, Peter Quon, Jr. (argued) and

Kevin R. Vienna, Supervising Deputy Attorneys General;

Office of the Attorney General, San Diego, California, for

Respondent-Appellant.

Hilary Potashner, Acting Federal Public Defender; K.

Elizabeth Dahlstrom (argued), Deputy Federal Public

Defender, Office of the Federal Public Defender, Santa Ana,

California, for Petitioner-Appellee.

ORDER

The opinion filed on September 3, 2015, and published at

800 F.3d 1062, is hereby amended and replaced by the

amended opinion filed concurrently with this order. With

these amendments, all judges on the panel have voted to deny

the petition for panel rehearing. The petition for panel

rehearing is DENIED. The petition for rehearing en banc was

circulated to the judges of the court, and no judge requested

a vote for en banc consideration. The petition for rehearing

en banc is therefore DENIED. Fed. R. App. P. 35. No

further petitions for rehearing or rehearing en banc will be

entertained.

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4 WILKINSON V. GINGRICH

OPINION

W. FLETCHER, Circuit Judge:

The State of California appeals the district court’s grant

of James Kendell Wilkinson’s petition for a writ of habeas

corpus.1 Wilkinson was convicted of perjury for testifying in

a traffic court proceeding that he was not the driver of a car

that had been stopped for speeding and whose driver had been

ticketed. The State brought the perjury prosecution after

Wilkinson was acquitted of the speeding offense. We agree

with the district court that the state appellate court

unreasonably applied Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436 (1970),

when it held that Wilkinson’s acquittal in traffic court did not

bar the subsequent perjury prosecution. See 28 U.S.C.

§ 2254(d)(1). The principle of collateral estoppel embodied

in the Fifth Amendment’s protection against double jeopardy,

as clearly established in Ashe, precludes relitigation of

ultimate issues that were necessarily decided in a prior

proceeding between the parties. Ashe, 397 U.S. at 443. In

this case, the traffic court necessarily decided, in Wilkinson’s

favor, an issue that was critical to both the traffic court and

perjuryproceedings—that Wilkinson was not the driver of the

speeding car. The State was therefore precluded by the

Double Jeopardy Clause from bringing the perjury

prosecution.

1 Wilkinson filed his habeas petition under the name “James Kendell

Wilkinson.” In other documents in the record, including the jury form

from the conviction he collaterally attacks, his name appears as “James

Kendall Wilkinson.”

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WILKINSON V. GINGRICH 5

I. Background

A. The Traffic Court Proceeding

On January 20, 2007, Officer Mark Magrann of the

California Highway Patrol pulled over a car he recorded

traveling at 101 miles per hour, well over the speed limit. 

The driver identified himself as Kendall Wilkinson and

presented a United Kingdom driver’s license bearing that

name. The license did not include a photograph. The car was

registered to Charmaine Wilkinson,2 who was a passenger in

the car and who is married to the appellant. Charmaine

testified in the later perjury trial that Kendall Wilkinson is her

husband’s cousin. During the brief traffic stop, the driver

remarked to Officer Magrann that traveling at high speeds is

normal in other countries. Officer Magrann issued a citation

that ordered the driver to appear in Superior Court (the

“traffic court”) for a hearing. The signature on the citation

appears to read “J. Wilkinson.”

When the driver did not show up for the scheduled

hearing, the traffic court issued an arrest warrant for “Kendal

[sic] Wilkinson.” The sheriff’s department arrested

Wilkinson on the warrant.

The traffic court held a trial on July 30, 2007, at which

Wilkinson and Officer Magrann appeared. There is no

transcript of the trial, but the parties do not dispute the

essentials of what transpired. Wilkinson testified that he was

not the driver of the car. He also provided a Nevada license

bearing the name “James Kendell Wilkinson” and a

photograph. Both Officer Magrann and the judge examined

 

2

 Charmaine also goes by the name “Deborah Charmaine Wilkinson.”

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6 WILKINSON V. GINGRICH

the driver’s license. Officer Magrann testified in the later

perjury trial that the photograph on the Nevada driver’s

license “appear[ed] to be” Wilkinson. He testified further

that “once [Wilkinson] put that driver’s license down with the

different name, different date of birth, it was authentic, I’ve

seen Nevada driver’s licences before and it just made me

question—made me doubt as to whether he was actually

driving the vehicle.” Officer Magrann recounted that he had

testified in traffic court that he was “approximately . . . about

98 percent sure” that Wilkinson had been the driver.

The traffic court judge acquitted Wilkinson. The

following entry appears on the court’s docket sheet: “The

Court finds the defendant NOT GUILTY as to all counts as

charged in the Original Citation. The person in court states

that they are not the same person named in the Citation.”

After the traffic court hearing ended, Officer Magrann

spoke with Wilkinson in the hallway. Wilkinson noted that

driving over one hundred miles per hour is not a big deal in

other countries. Wilkinson spoke with what Officer Magrann

described as the same arrogance of the driver he had stopped. 

At that point, it “clicked” for Officer Magrann, and he

concluded that Wilkinson had indeed been the driver.

B. The Perjury Proceeding

The next day, Officer Magrann initiated an investigation

of Wilkinson. About six months later, nine or ten police

officers, with their guns drawn, broke down the door to

execute a search warrant at Wilkinson’s home. Once inside

the home, the officers discovered folders containing traffic

citations. One folder was labeled “Jim’s tickets.” Another

folder was labeled “Kendall Wilkinson,” and contained the

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WILKINSON V. GINGRICH 7

speeding ticket from January 20, 2007. Police also

discovered a ticket issued to Reginald Freuchet, a French

citizen. Charmaine testified during the perjury trial that

Freuchet had stayed at their house and driven her husband’s

car, and that he had features similar to those of her husband.

The State charged Wilkinson with perjury in violation of

California Penal Code § 118(a). At the start of the perjury

trial, Wilkinson objected that the prosecution was barred by

collateral estoppel and the Double JeopardyClause. The trial

judge overruled the objection, reasoning that “if the court

were to accept the theory of collateral estoppel, then the end

result would mean that nobody could ever be prosecuted for

perjury if they were successful in maintaining the perjury or

the fraud.”

In his testimony, Officer Magrann recounted what had

happened in the traffic court trial and identified Wilkinson as

the driver he stopped on January 20, 2007. Charmaine

testified that Kendall, her husband’s cousin, was the driver

and that she had not spoken to him since the day of the stop. 

Wilkinson testified that he was not the driver. Kendall did

not testify or otherwise appear.

The trial judge instructed the jury that, in order to convict

Wilkinson of perjury, it must find, among other things, that

Wilkinson “willfullystated that the information was true even

though he knew it was false,” and that when “[Wilkinson]

made the false statement, he intended to testify falsely while

under oath.” The judge also informed the jury that “[t]he

People allege that the defendant made the following false

statement: that he was not the driver of the vehicle on January

20th, 2007.”

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8 WILKINSON V. GINGRICH

The jury convicted Wilkinson. He was sentenced to

forty-five days in the county jail and three years of probation.

The California Court of Appeal affirmed Wilkinson’s

conviction. The court discussed several state court opinions

refusing to apply collateral estoppel to subsequent perjury

prosecutions for fear of incentivizing or rewarding perjury. 

The Court of Appeal wrote, however, that there was no need

to “wade into the thicket of competing policy considerations”

because Wilkinson had not established the “threshold

requirements of collateral estoppel.” The court held that

collateral estoppel did not bar the perjuryprosecution because

Wilkinson had not shown that the traffic court judge

necessarily determined that he testified truthfully in traffic

court. The Court of Appeal reasoned that the traffic court

judge did not necessarily make a finding as to Wilkinson’s

veracity because it could have acquitted Wilkinson based on

Officer Magrann’s doubt about whether Wilkinson was the

driver. The court wrote that the Supreme Court’s decision in

Ashe v. Swenson had “limited application” to Wilkinson’s

case because the Ashe defendant’s veracity was not at issue,

and therefore not necessarily decided, in the first trial.

C. Federal Habeas Proceedings

After the California Supreme Court denied Wilkinson’s

petition for review, Wilkinson filed a habeas petition in

federal district court under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He claimed,

among other things, that because of his acquittal in the traffic

court proceeding the State was collaterally estopped, and

therefore barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause, from

prosecuting him for perjury. The magistrate judge agreed and

recommended granting Wilkinson’s petition. According to

the magistrate judge, the state court unreasonably applied

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WILKINSON V. GINGRICH 9

Ashe v. Swenson when it failed to recognize that the traffic

court judge necessarily decided an issue of ultimate fact in

the traffic court proceeding that was also an issue of ultimate

fact in the perjury trial—whether Wilkinson was the driver.

The district court adopted the magistrate judge’s

recommendation and entered judgment granting a writ of

habeas corpus. The State timely appealed. After filing his pro

se answering brief in this court, Wilkinson moved for the

appointment of counsel. We appointed counsel, who filed a

replacement answering brief on Wilkinson’s behalf.

II. Standard of Review

We review de novo the district court’s grant of a § 2254

habeas petition. Doody v. Ryan, 649 F.3d 986, 1001 (9th Cir.

2011) (en banc). Pursuant to the Antiterrorism and Effective

Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”), a federal court may

not grant a habeas petition unless, as is relevant here, the state

court unreasonably applied law clearly established by the

Supreme Court. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1); Williams v.

Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 413 (2000). “[U]nder the

‘unreasonable application’ clause, a federal habeas court may

grant the writ if the state court identifies the correct

governing legal principle from [the Supreme] Court’s

decisions but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts

of the prisoner’s case.” Moses v. Payne, 555 F.3d 742, 751

(9th Cir. 2009) (alterations in original) (quoting Lockyer v.

Andrade, 538 U.S. 63, 75 (2003)). An “unreasonable

application” of Supreme Court law “must be ‘objectively

unreasonable,’ not merely wrong; even ‘clear error’ will not

suffice.” White v. Woodall, 134 S. Ct. 1697, 1702 (2014)

(quoting Andrade, 538 U.S. at 75–76).

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10 WILKINSON V. GINGRICH

III. Discussion

A. Collateral Estoppel and Ashe v. Swenson

Collateral estoppel is “an integral part of the protection

against double jeopardy guaranteed by the Fifth and

Fourteenth Amendments.” Harris v. Washington, 404 U.S.

55, 56 (1971) (per curiam). Collateral estoppel “means

simply that when an issue of ultimate fact has once been

determined by a valid and final judgment, that issue cannot

again be litigated between the same parties in any future

lawsuit.” Ashe, 397 U.S. at 443; see Wilson v. Belleque,

554 F.3d 816, 830 (9th Cir. 2009) (“In a criminal case,

collateral estoppel precludes the state from bringing a charge

when a previous ‘jury resolve[d], in a manner adverse to the

government, an issue that the government would be required

to prove in order to obtain a . . . conviction at the second

trial.’” (alterations in original) (quoting United States v.

Castillo-Basa, 483 F.3d 890, 899 (9th Cir. 2007))). In

determining whether an issue of ultimate fact has been

decided in a prior proceeding, we examine, “in a practical

frame,” the record and circumstances of the first proceeding. 

Ashe, 397 U.S. at 444 (citation omitted); see id. (“[T]he rule

of collateral estoppel in criminal cases is not to be applied

with the hypertechnical and archaic approach of a 19th

century pleading book, but with realism and rationality.”).

The Supreme Court “significantly expanded” the

protection the Double Jeopardy Clause affords criminal

defendants when, in Ashe v. Swenson, it imported into the

Clause the doctrine of criminal collateral estoppel. Dowling

v. United States, 493 U.S. 342, 356 (1990) (Brennan, J.,

dissenting); see id. (“[I]n addition to being protected against

retrial for the ‘same offense,’ the defendant is protected

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WILKINSON V. GINGRICH 11

against prosecution for an offense that requires proof of a fact

found in his favor in a prior proceeding.”). In Ashe, the

defendant was accused of robbing six participants in a poker

game. There was no doubt that a robbery occurred; the only

dispute was whether the defendant was one of the robbers. 

397 U.S. at 445. After the defendant was tried and acquitted

for robbing one of the players, the state prosecuted him for

robbing a different player. The state’s evidence of the

robber’s identity was stronger in the second case, and the

defendant was convicted. Id. at 439–40. The Supreme Court

reversed the conviction, holding that if a defendant can show

that an issue of fact essential for the proof of an offense for

which the defendant is later prosecuted was necessarily

decided in a prior proceeding, that determination will be

binding upon the later prosecution. Id. at 445. An essential,

or ultimate, issue of fact in Ashe was the identity of the

robber. Because the state “had failed to prove beyond a

reasonable doubt” that the defendant was one of the robbers,

the state was barred by the doctrine of collateral estoppel

from trying the defendant for the robbery of the other poker

players, “since identity would be an ultimate issue in each

such trial.” Santamaria v. Horsley, 133 F.3d 1242, 1245 (9th

Cir. 1998) (en banc) (citing Ashe, 397 U.S. at 445).

In this case, the State argues that collateral estoppel and

the Double Jeopardy Clause did not bar the perjury

prosecution because the traffic court judge did not necessarily

decide the issue in the perjury trial—whether Wilkinson

testified truthfully in traffic court. The state Court of Appeal

was of the same view, concluding that Wilkinson’s veracity

was the ultimate issue in the perjury trial, but that it could not

know if the traffic court judge believed that Wilkinson was

being honest when he denied being the driver. We hold that

the Court of Appeal unreasonably applied Ashe v. Swenson in

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12 WILKINSON V. GINGRICH

concluding that collateral estoppel and the Double Jeopardy

Clause did not apply.

The Court of Appeal failed to recognize that the driver’s

identity was necessarily at issue in both the traffic and perjury

prosecutions. In one sense, the State is correct in contending

that the two proceedings posed different questions. Narrowly

construed, the question in the traffic court proceeding was

whether Wilkinson was the driver of the speeding car, and the

question in the perjury proceeding was whether Wilkinson

gave false testimony in traffic court when he denied being

that driver. But the State is incorrect in contending that this

difference means that collateral estoppel and the Double

Jeopardy Clause do not apply. A second prosecution is

impermissible when “to have convicted the defendant in the

second trial, the second jury had to have reached a directly

contrary conclusion [to the factfinder in the first trial].”

Dowling, 493 U.S. at 348 (majority opinion).

Resolution of the issue in the first case (whether

Wilkinson was the driver) and the issue in the second case

(whether Wilkinson was telling the truth when he denied

being the driver) both turned on the factfinders’ conclusions

regarding the identity of the driver. The driver’s identity was

plainly the ultimate issue in the traffic court proceeding. 

There was no dispute that the driver, whoever he was, was

speeding. The only question was whether Wilkinson was the

driver. The traffic court docket and the parties’ accounts of

what transpired in traffic court confirm that this was the only

contested issue in traffic court. The driver’s identity was also

an ultimate issue in the perjury prosecution. The jury was

instructed that it needed to find that Wilkinson knowingly

made a false statement in order to convict him of perjury. 

The judge explained that the alleged false statement was that

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WILKINSON V. GINGRICH 13

Wilkinson “was not the driver of the vehicle on January 20th,

2007.” If Wilkinson was not the driver, then his statement

that he was not the driver was not false, and he did not

commit perjury.

The traffic court judge in the first case “actually decided”

the ultimate issue in the second case. See Dowling, 493 U.S.

at 350. As Wilkinson contends, and as the district court

agreed, the traffic court judge acquitted Wilkinson because he

was not the driver of the car. In acquitting Wilkinson in the

first case, the traffic court judge thus actually and necessarily

decided that Wilkinson was not the driver, and that he had

been telling the truth in so stating. Collateral estoppel and the

Double Jeopardy clause apply.

The State argues that we do not know on what basis the

traffic court acquitted Wilkinson, offering three different

reasons the traffic court judge might have had for acquitting

Wilkinson: (1) he believed Wilkinson was telling the truth;

(2) he did not believe the officer was telling the truth; and (3)

he concluded that the State had not met its burden of proof. 

This argument fails to recognize that each of these reasons

goes to whether Wilkinson was the driver. The traffic court

judge (1) may have believed Wilkinson was telling the truth

that he was not the driver, (2) he may have believed that the

officer was not telling the truth that Wilkinson was the driver,

or (3) he may have believed that the State had not sufficiently

proven that Wilkinson was the driver. However the traffic

court judge reached his conclusion that Wilkinson should be

acquitted, the “single rationally conceivable” basis on which

he could have done so was that Wilkinson was not the driver. 

Ashe, 397 U.S. at 445.

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It does not matter that the traffic court judge might have

concluded that Wilkinson was not the driver only because the

State failed to carry its burden of proof. In both the traffic

court proceeding and the perjury proceeding, the State’s

burden of proof was beyond a reasonable doubt. A

factfinder’s determination that the government failed to carry

its burden on an issue in the first proceeding has preclusive

effect in a subsequent proceeding raising that same issue,

provided that both proceedings are governed by the same

standard of proof. See Charles v. Hickman, 228 F.3d 981,

985–86 (9th Cir. 2000); cf. Evans v. Michigan, 133 S. Ct.

1069, 1075 (2013) (noting that an acquittal includes “a ruling

by the court that the evidence is insufficient to convict” and

a “factual finding [that] necessarily establish[es] the criminal

defendant’s lack of criminal culpability” (alterations in

original) (quoting United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 91, 98

(1978)). Ashe itself held that the first jury’s determination

that “there was at least a reasonable doubt” as to an ultimate

issue precluded relitigation of that issue in a subsequent

prosecution. Ashe, 397 U.S. at 446. If we were to conclude

otherwise, “it would not only fundamentally change our

system of jurisprudence, but it would render every acquittal

by a jury meaningless for purposes of double jeopardy: a jury

can always be said to have concluded only that the

prosecution failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable

doubt.” Castillo-Basa, 483 F.3d at 902.

B. Fairminded Disagreement

AEDPA requires more than a mere mistake by the state

court. We can grant habeas relief in a case governed by

AEDPA only if the state court unreasonably applied law

clearly established by the Supreme Court. 28 U.S.C.

§ 2254(d)(1). “A state court’s determination that a claim

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WILKINSON V. GINGRICH 15

lacks merit precludes federal habeas relief so long as

‘fairminded jurists could disagree’ on the correctness of the

state court’s decision.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86,

101 (2011) (quoting Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652,

664 (2004)).

The State argues that the state court’s decision, even if

based on a misapplication of Ashe, was not unreasonable

because fairminded jurists disagree about whether collateral

estoppel applies to perjury prosecutions at all, or at least

whether it applies to perjury prosecutions presenting newly

discovered evidence of a defendant’s dishonesty. For

support, the State cites several decisions of state courts that

read Ashe narrowly. One is a decision by an intermediate

Illinois appellate court whose facts are roughly similar to the

facts of this case. See People v. Briddle, 405 N.E.2d 1357,

1361–62 (Ill. App. Ct. 1980) (reinstating a perjury

prosecution against a defendant for statements he made in

traffic court about the kind of car he was driving when he was

pulled over for speeding, even though he was acquitted of the

speeding charge). Two others are decisions of the Supreme

Courts of Wisconsin and Louisiana. See State v. Canon,

622 N.W.2d 270, 277 (Wisc. 2001) (announcing a “narrow

newly discovered evidence exception to issue preclusion” in

perjury cases); State v. Bolden, 639 So. 2d 721, 725 (La.

1994) (recognizing that Ashe generally bars a perjury

prosecution when a defendant’s credibility on an issue was

necessarily decided in a prior proceeding but making an

exception for the “unique circumstance[]” of the discovery of

new evidence of the defendant’s dishonesty). However, a

state court decision is not reasonable under AEDPA simply

because another judge—or even several other judges—

arrived at the same incorrect conclusion. See Williams, 529

U.S. at 409–10.

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The Supreme Court has not applied Ashe to foreclose a

subsequent perjury prosecution, but the Court has made clear

that collateral estoppel and the Double JeopardyClause apply

regardless of the nature of the offense or the availability of

new evidence. First, the Court has applied the rule of Ashe to

many kinds of prosecutions, and has never limited its reach

to certain categories of criminal offenses, as the State now

suggests is appropriate. See, e.g., Harris, 404 U.S. at 56

(holding that a second murder prosecution was precluded by

defendant’s acquittal in first murder trial); Turner v.

Arkansas, 407 U.S. 366, 370 (1972) (per curiam) (holding

that a subsequent prosecution for robbery was precluded by

the defendant’s prior acquittal for murder; the “case is thus

squarely controlled by Ashe v. Swenson”). In a decision

predating Ashe, the Court signaled that collateral estoppel

could bar prosecutions for perjury. See United States v.

Williams, 341 U.S. 58, 63 (1951) (“Though former jeopardy

by trial for the substantive crimes is not available as a defense

against this perjury indictment, it could be that acquittal on

the substantive charges would operate ‘to conclude those

matters in issue which the verdict determined though the

offenses be different.’” (quoting Sealfon v. United States,

332 U.S. 575, 578 (1948))). Although members of our court

have disagreed about whether the elements of collateral

estoppel have been satisfied in a particular perjury case, we

have long recognized that the rule of Ashe generally applies

to perjury prosecutions. See United States v. Castillo-Basa,

494 F.3d 1217, 1221 (9th Cir. 2007) (Callahan, J., dissenting

from the denial of rehearing en banc) (acknowledging that

“where a defendant secures an acquittal by lying about an

element of a crime, the Double Jeopardy Clause bars the

government from seeking to retry the defendant for the first

offense or prosecuting the defendant for perjury”);

Hernandez, 572 F.2d at 220.

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WILKINSON V. GINGRICH 17

Second, the Supreme Court has held that collateral

estoppel applies “irrespective of whether the jury considered

all relevant evidence, and irrespective of the good faith of the

State in bringing successive prosecutions.” Harris, 404 U.S.

at 56–57; see also Castillo-Basa, 483 F.3d at 903 (“The Fifth

Amendment, as interpreted in Ashe v. Swenson, bars

relitigation of an issue already decided, no matter how much

additional evidence the government may wish to introduce at

a second proceeding.”). Indeed, in Ashe the Court made clear

that collateral estoppel applies even if the government can

marshal better evidence the second time around. See Ashe,

397 U.S. at 446 (“Once a jury had determined upon

conflicting testimony that there was at least a reasonable

doubt that the petitioner was one of the robbers, the State

could not present the same or different identification evidence

in a second prosecution for the robbery of Knight in the hope

that a different jury might find that evidence more

convincing.”).

Collateral estoppel “is a part of the Fifth Amendment’s

guarantee against double jeopardy.” Id. at 442. That

guarantee is not suspended simply because prosecutors

uncover new evidence showing that defendants who were

acquitted after taking the stand were lying when they testified

that they did not commit the charged offenses. Permitting a

perjury exception to the protection the Double Jeopardy

Clause affords a defendant would undermine the “overriding

concern” of the Clause, which is to prevent the government

“with its vastly superior resources,” from “wear[ing] down

the defendant, so that ‘even though innocent he may be found

guilty.’” Dowling, 493 U.S. at 355 (Brennan, J., dissenting)

(alteration in original) (quoting Scott, 437 U.S. at 91, 98). 

The handful of state court decisions that mistakenly attempt

to carve out a special exception to the Constitution’s

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protection against double jeopardy for perjury prosecutions

do not represent “fairminded disagreement” on an open

question of constitutional law. Rather, they represent a

fundamental misunderstanding of the Double Jeopardy

Clause and the Supreme Court decisions that explain its

purpose and operation.

Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, we hold that the state court

unreasonablyapplied the rule of collateral estoppel, as clearly

established in Ashe v. Swenson, when it upheld Wilkinson’s

perjury conviction. We therefore affirm the judgment of the

district court granting Wilkinson’s petition for a writ of

habeas corpus.

AFFIRMED.

 Case: 13-56952, 11/03/2015, ID: 9742404, DktEntry: 52, Page 18 of 18