Opinion ID: 346989
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Due Process: Reindictment

Text: 34 The record does not indicate why the decision was made to indict Hardwick on the two added counts after he had exercised various procedural rights with at least partial success. The State points out that the prosecutor who obtained the first indictment against Hardwick died before the second indictment was brought. The absence of a personal dispute with a defendant, however, does not prevent application of the Pearce rule, as the facts of Pearce and its progeny show. See note 3 supra. Cf. United States v. Floyd, supra. Thus, the mere fact that a new prosecutor has taken over the case does not explain why charges not originally brought were added on retrial. 35 The leading case on prosecutorial vindictiveness is Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U.S. 21, 94 S.Ct. 2098, 40 L.Ed.2d 628 (1974). In Blackledge, the defendant was convicted of a misdemeanor by a North Carolina state court. After the defendant claimed his right to trial de novo in a higher court, the prosecutor obtained a superseding indictment charging the defendant with a felony rather than a misdemeanor. Both the original misdemeanor (assault with a deadly weapon) and the subsequent felony (assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill) charges were based on the same fight between the defendant and the single fellow prisoner allegedly assaulted. 36 In holding that the Pearce principle applies to prosecutorial as well as judicial vindictiveness, the Supreme Court said: 37 A person convicted of an offense is entitled to pursue his statutory right to a trial de novo, without apprehension that the State will retaliate by substituting a more serious charge for the original one, thus subjecting him to a significantly increased potential of incarceration. Due process of law requires that such a potential for vindictiveness must not enter into North Carolina's two-tiered appellate process. We hold, therefore, that it was not constitutionally permissible for the State to respond to Perry's invocation of his statutory right to appeal by bringing a more serious charge against him prior to the trial de novo. 38 417 U.S. at 28-29, 94 S.Ct. at 2103. 39 The State of Georgia contends that no increased sentence has been visited upon appellant, because he will be eligible for parole at the same time regardless of the number of crimes for which he stands convicted. This blinks reality. We cannot assume that a parole board would consider a prisoner with four felony convictions in the same light as a prisoner with two felony convictions, 5 and in any event Hardwick's potential period of incarceration, Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U.S. 21, 28, 94 S.Ct. 2098, 40 L.Ed.2d 628 (1974), has been doubled. 40 We recognize that there is a broad ambit to prosecutorial discretion, most of which is not subject to judicial control. United States v. Cox, 342 F.2d 167 (5th Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, 381 U.S. 935, 85 S.Ct. 1767, 14 L.Ed.2d 700 (1965). But if Blackledge teaches any lesson, it is that a prosecutor's discretion to reindict a defendant is constrained by the due process clause. Had the original prosecutor initially charged Hardwick on all four counts, no improper motive or effect of the reindictment could be inferred. But once a prosecutor exercises his discretion to bring certain charges against a defendant, neither he nor his successor may, without explanation, increase the number of or severity of those charges in circumstances which suggest that the increase is retaliation for the defendant's assertion of statutory or constitutional rights. 41 An increase in the severity or number of charges if done without vindictiveness may be easily explained. For example, evidence of the additional crimes may not have been obtained until after the first indictment or information is filed, 6 or the additional crime may not be complete at the time charges are first brought. 7 And a prosecutor may, without explanation, refile charges against a defendant whose bargained-for guilty plea to a lesser charge has been withdrawn or overturned on appeal, provided that an increase in the charges is within the limits set by the original indictment. 8 Other explanations which would negate vindictiveness could include mistake or oversight in the initial action, a different approach to prosecutorial duty by the successor prosecutor, or public demand for prosecution on the additional crimes allegedly committed. The list is intended to be illustrative rather than exhaustive. While Hardwick has made a prima facie case by showing that the number of crimes charged against him as a result of this episode was doubled after he had succeeded in setting aside the original convictions, the prosecutor may rebut this prima facie proof by establishing his reasons for adding the two new charges were other than to punish a pesky defendant for exercising his legal rights. 42 This case presents the issue of prosecutorial vindictiveness in a setting different from Blackledge. It brings into sharp conflict (1) the right of the defendant to be free of apprehension that the state might subject him to an increased potential punishment if he exercises his right to make a direct or collateral attack on his conviction with (2) the prosecutor's broad discretion to control the decision to prosecute. 43 In Blackledge the prosecutor had already exercised his discretion to bring a misdemeanor charge against Perry based upon the alleged assault on a fellow prisoner. After his conviction on the misdemeanor charge, Perry noticed an appeal to the Superior Court. It was granted to him by North Carolina law as a matter of right. After this notice of appeal was filed, the prosecutor obtained an indictment from a grand jury charging Perry with the felony of assault with the intent to kill for the same conduct for which Perry had been tried and convicted in the lower court. Thus, Blackledge involves the substitution of a more serious charge and not the making of a decision to initiate prosecution for alleged criminal activity. 44 In the case at bar, Hardwick was originally indicted for robbing the C & S Bank and for committing an aggravated assault on three policemen during the shootout that accompanied the robbery. Those two prosecutorial decisions remain unaltered in the present context and form the basis for two of the four convictions and sentences that are the subject of this appeal. Before the retrial of Hardwick's case, a different prosecutor obtained a superseding indictment which charged Hardwick with two additional, separate criminal actions a robbery of a bank customer, and an assault on a probation officer who was seized and used as a shield in the gun battle with the police. Though these latter two events occurred in the same overall time interval as the acts covered by the first two indictments, they were different and distinct activities and thus were the subjects of discretionary prosecutorial decisions which up to then had not been made. These charges were not harsher variations of the same original decision to prosecute as in Blackledge. Under this court's decision in Cox, the court is not to interfere with the free exercise of the discretionary powers of attorneys of the United States in their control of criminal prosecutions. 342 F.2d at 171. A fortiori, the discretion of a State prosecuting officer in making the decision to prosecute crime may not be controlled by a court unless it be established that his motives are in fact vindictive. 45 The apprehension of vindictiveness which controlled the decision in Blackledge had no effect on prosecutorial discretion because there the decision to prosecute Perry for this very assault on his fellow prisoner had already been made. On the other hand, if we were to adopt apprehension of vindictiveness as opposed to vindictiveness in fact to be the standard by which we judge whether new prosecutions for different criminal activities may be initiated, we would render the prosecutor's discretion meaningless in every case in which a defendant is initially indicted for less than all the violations his alleged spree of activity would permit. In such a situation, it is enough that a prosecutor, who decides to add charges to a prior indictment, prove that he did not in fact act vindictively. The test is to be applied to the prosecutor's actions rather than the defendant's reactions. 46 United States v. Mallah, 503 F.2d 971 (2d Cir. 1974) was decided prior to Blackledge but under Second Circuit authority which was to the same effect. That court stated 47 It is one thing to increase a charge from manslaughter to murder, and quite another to charge a defendant, subsequent to a successful appeal, with a second murder. 48 503 F.2d at 988. Thus the court found no constitutional problem with the prosecutor's decision, after defendant successfully had convictions for cocaine possession set aside, to reindict for possession of heroin, because it was a different offense. 49 This defendant has been convicted twice for the charges contained in the first two counts of the indictment and the evidence against him is overwhelming. The ends of justice will not be served by requiring a third trial before his conviction on these two counts can become final. There could be no improper motive in refiling these charges. They properly should stand. This is what the Fourth Circuit did in United States v. Johnson, 537 F.2d 1170 (4th Cir. 1976), even though it reached a conclusion contrary to that we come to today on the added charges. 9 50 Following the course we took in Colon v. Hendry, 408 F.2d 864, (5th Cir. 1969), we hold here that the facts made out a prima facie case for the petitioner but that the cause should be remanded to the district court to afford the prosecutor the opportunity to come forward with countervailing evidence. We leave it entirely to the district court's discretion as to whether a hearing will be necessary to show why the two new charges were added to the indictment against Hardwick after he had exercised his rights to remove the prosecution and to enter a special plea of insanity. 51 The judgment of the district court insofar as it refused to grant habeas corpus relief to Hardwick on his conviction for the charges initially brought against him is affirmed. However, the judgment of the court denying habeas corpus relief on the two added charges is vacated and the cause is remanded to the district court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. 52 AFFIRMED IN PART AND, IN PART, VACATED AND REMANDED.