Source: https://m.openjurist.org/383/us/116
Timestamp: 2020-01-27 13:48:37
Document Index: 572079206

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 4705', '§ 4704', '§ 4704', '§ 4705', '§ 4704', '§ 4705', '§ 4705', '§ 4704', '§ 4704', '§ 4705', '§ 4704', '§ 4704', '§ 4704', '§ 4704', '§ 4705', '§ 4704', '§ 4705', '§ 174', '§ 4705', '§ 7237', '§ 4704', '§ 4705']

383 U.S. 116 - United States v. Ewell K
Clarence EWELL and Ronald K. Dennis.
The District Court apparently considered retrial and reconviction to be oppressive because appellees had already spent substantial time in prison and because in its view the law would not permit time already served to be credited against the sentences which might be imposed upon reconviction. This, too, is a premature concern. The appellees have not yet been convicted on the second indictments; and if they were to be reconvicted on § 4705 or § 4704 counts it should not be assumed that the controlling statute would prevent a credit for time already served. However that may be, as matters now stand, the remaining charges the Government seeks to sustain are under § 4704, which carries a minimum sentence in the case of Ewell of five years, as compared with a minimum of 10 years under § 4705, and two years instead of five years in the case of Dennis. In these circumstances, there is every reason to expect the sentencing judge to take the invalid incarcerations into account in fashioning new sentences if appellees are again convicted.8
Appellees also invoke the Double Jeopardy Clause to sustain the dismissal of the indictments, a ground which we think the trial court correctly rejected. The Fifth Amendment provides that no person shall 'be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.' That clause, designed to prohibit double jeopardy as well as double punishment, is not properly invoked to bar a second prosecution unless the 'same offence' is involved in both the first and the second trials. The identity of offenses is, therefore, a recurring issue in double jeopardy cases, but one which we need not face in this case. Here the Government is not attempting to prosecute a defendant for an allegedly different offense in the face of an acquittal or an unreversed conviction for another offense arising out of the same transaction. See Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187, 196, 79 S.Ct. 666, 671, 3 L.Ed.2d 729, separate opinion of Mr. Justice Brennan. Nor is there any question here of the Government's joining in one indictment more than one count allegedly charging the same crime. Compare Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 52 S.Ct. 180, 76 L.Ed. 306. Here, the Government seeks only to sustain one charge under § 4704. If the present indictments charge the same offense as the § 4705 offense for which appellees were previously convicted, they may clearly be retried on either § 4705 or § 4704 after their convictions have been vacated on their own motions. In these circumstances, where the appellees are subject to a second trial under Ball and Tateo, the fact that § 4704, rather than § 4705, is charged does not in any manner expand the number of trials that may be brought against them. If the two offenses are not, however, the same, then the Double Jeopardy Clause by its own terms does not prevent the current prosecution under § 4704.9
I am unable to join the Court's opinion, because it could be read as implying approval of a course of government conduct that I find most oppressive. Appellees were indicted initially under only one of the three statutes which this Court held in Gore v. United States, 357 U.S. 386, 78 S.Ct. 1280, 2 L.Ed.2d 1405, over my dissent, might constitutionally be applied to a single narcotics sale. Their successful attacks upon their sentences brought on these new indictments for all three statutory offenses. I can think of no plausible reasons for this tactic except to increase the pressure on appellees to plead guilty by raising the threat of cumulative sentences, or to punish them for asserting their rights to challenge their original sentences. The Government offered to abandon this tactic and limit prosecution to 26 U.S.C. § 4704 (1964 ed.) only on rehearing, after the prosecution seemed imperiled.
Government tactics of this kind raise very serious questions for me. Cf. Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184, 78 S.Ct. 221, 2 L.Ed.2d 199; Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187, 196—201, 79 S.Ct. 666, 671—674, 3 L.Ed.2d 729 (separate opinion); Van Alstyne, In Gideon's Wake: Harsher Penalties and the 'Successful' Criminal Appellant, 74 Yale L.J. 606 (1965). But I agree with the Court that because the prosecution is now limited to § 4704, appellees have suffered no prejudice. I would not, however, as the Court seems to do, imply approval of the tactics the Government employed. Indeed, the Government informed us after argument that this problem is involved in another case, pending below, where an accused initially indicted for only one offense has been reindicted for three. It does not appear that the Government has limited the prosecution in that case to § 4704.
I cannot agree that the District Court erred in dismissing the second indictment. Following vacation of the convictions under the original indictment, the Government was at liberty to reindict and retry appellees for the same offense.1 I agree with the opinion of the Court the circumstances, this would not have deprived appellees of their Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial.
But the Government did not merely reindict appellees for the identical offense. They were charged, on the basis of the same alleged sale of 400 milligrams of heroin, with violations of two additional narcotics statutes. Under the original one-count indictment charging a violation of 26 U.S.C. § 4705(a) (1964 ed.), Dennis faced a sentence of from five to 20 years; Ewell, a second offender, 10 to 40 years. Under the new three-count indictment, the District Court may cumulate the sentences on the three counts and impose terms of from 12 to 50 years upon Dennis and from 25 to 100 years upon Ewell. Cumulative sentences are permitted by this Court's holding in Gore v. United States, 357 U.S. 386, 78 S.Ct. 1280, 2 L.Ed.2d 1405. But cf. Comment, Twice in Jeopardy, 75 Yale L.J. 262, 299—317 (1965). In my opinion, however, the Government may not, following vacation of a conviction, reindict a defendant for additional offenses arising out of the same transaction but not charged in the original indictment.
In a different setting this Court has vividly criticized the Government's attempt to penalize a successful appellant by retrying him on an aggravated basis. Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184, 78 S.Ct. 221, 2 L.Ed.2d 199. Although the decision in green was premised upon the Double Jeopardy Clause,2 its teaching has another dimension. Green also demonstrates this Court's concern to protect the right of appeal in criminal cases.3 It teaches that the Government, in its role as prosecutor, may not attach to the exercise of the right to appeal the penalty that if the appellant succeeds, he may be retried on another and more serious charge. Mr. Justice Black, speaking for the Court in green, said: 'The law should not, and in our judgment does not, place the defendant in such an incredible dilemma.' 355 U.S., at 193, 78 S.Ct., at 227.4
In the present case it appears that the purpose as well as the effect of the Government's action was to discourage the exercise of the right, conferred by statute, to seek review of criminal convictions. According to the District Court, the only reason advanced by the Government for the multiplication of charges against appellees was that the prosecutor wanted to discourage others convicted of narcotics offenses from attacking their convictions. As the District Judge put it, there was 'the expressed concern of the prospective liberation of a number of similarly convicted narcotic felons.'5 242 F.Supp. 451, at 456. The prosecutor's concern is understandable, but the right to direct and collateral review is granted by law. The prosecutor may not consistently with the Due Process Clause boobytrap this right, either to punish or to frighten.
It is no answer to the foregoing that after—and only after the District Court had dismissed the entire three-count indictment, the Government in support of its petition for rehearing advised the court that 'upon a plea or finding of guilty' all counts except that under 26 U.S.C. § 4704(a) (1964 ed.) would be dismissed. This belated offer, conditioned upon a conviction, did not absolve the Government. The Government continued to insist upon going to trial on an unsupportable indictment. Even in its Notice of Appeal to this Court, the Government asserted its right to try the appellees upon the entire 'present indictment.' Not until the Solicitor General filed the jurisdiction statement was it suggested that the Government would agree to action taken to dismiss two of the counts—and that suggestion was negatively phrased: the Government 'would not question dismissal' of the counts alleging violation of § 4705(a) and 21 U.S.C. § 174 (1964 ed.). I cannot agree that this backhanded concession warrants our reversing the District Court's dismissal of the three-count indictment. The indictment is the Government's responsibility. it must stand the test of lawfulness as the Government presents it. The Government cannot rest upon a faulty indictment, and defend it by indicating its willingness to acquiesce in surgery which it is apparently unready to initiate.
'It shall be unlawful for any person to sell, barter, exchange, or give away narcotic drugs except in pursuance of a written order of the person to whom such article is sold, bartered, exchanged, or given, on a form to be issued in blank for that purpose by the Secretary or his delegate.' 26 U.S.C. § 4705(a).
'Whoever commits an offense * * * described in section 4705(a) * * * shall be imprisoned not less than 5 or more than 20 years and, in addition, may be fined not more than $20,000. For a second or subsequent offense, the offender shall be imprisoned not less than 10 or more than 40 years and, in addition, may be fined not more than $20,000.' 26 U.S.C. § 7237(b) (1964 ed.).
'It shall be unlawful for any person to purchase, sell, dispense, or distribute narcotic drugs except in the original stamped package or from the original stamped package; and the absence of appropriate taxpaid stamps from narcotic drugs shall be prima facie evidence of a violation of this subsection by the person in whose possession the same may be found.' 26 U.S.C. § 4704(a).
United States v. Tateo, 377 U.S. 463, 84 S.Ct. 1587, 12 L.Ed.2d 448; United States v. Ball, 163 U.S. 662, 16 S.Ct. 1192, 41 L.Ed. 300; Note, Double Jeopardy: The Reprosecution Problem, 77 Harv.L.Rev. 1272, 1283—1285 (1964).
In Green, the Court held that the Double Jeopardy Clause required reversal of a federal conviction for firstdegree murder where, in a former trial on that charge, the defendant was convicted of the lesser offense of murder in the second degree. Cf. Mr. Justice Brennan's separate opinion in Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187, 196—201, 79 S.Ct. 666, 671—674, 3 L.Ed.2d 729, discusprinciples to successive prosecutions based on the same transaction but for allegedly different offenses.
On the authority of Lauer v. United States, 320 F.2d 187 (C.A. 7th Cir.), appellees had obtained vacation of their convictions on the ground that since the indictment did not name the alleged purchaser of narcotics it failed properly to state an offense under 26 U.S.C. § 4705(a). The Government has furnished the Court with information concerning five other individuals whose convictions were set aside under Lauer and who were then subjected to reprosecution under multiplecount indictments. Subsequently, Lauer was overruled by Collins v. Markley, 346 F.2d 230 (C.A.7th Cir.).