Opinion ID: 6498496
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Principles of Issue Preclusion

Text: The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment provides that no “person” may “be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” U.S. Const., amend. V. The clause prevents “the State with all its resources and power” from making repeated attempts to convict someone for the same alleged offense. Yeager v. United States, 557 U.S. 110, 117–18 (2009) (quoting Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184, 187–88 (1957)). It does not prevent retrial in all cases where the jury fails to reach a verdict. Richardson v. United States, 468 U.S. 317, 325 (1984). No. 21-1505 United States v. Inman Page 8 That said, some retrials are still barred after a mistrial. That is because the Double Jeopardy Clause also embodies an interest in the “preservation of the ‘finality of judgments.’” Yeager, 557 U.S. at 118 (quoting Crist v. Bretz, 437 U.S. 28, 33 (1978)). Based on that interest, the Supreme Court has read the Double Jeopardy Clause to include a component known as “issue preclusion” or “collateral estoppel.”3 Put simply, “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 v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 443 (1970); see also Bobby v. Bies, 556 U.S. 825, 834 (2009) (“Issue preclusion bars successive litigation of ‘an issue of fact or law’ that ‘is actually litigated and determined by a valid and final judgment, and . . . is essential to the judgment.’” (quoting Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 27 (1980))). To determine whether an issue is precluded from retrial, we must “examine the record of a prior proceeding, taking into account the pleadings, evidence, charge, and other relevant matter, and conclude whether a rational jury could have grounded its verdict upon an issue other than that which the defendant seeks to foreclose from consideration.” Ashe, 397 U.S. at 444 (citation omitted). Our examination “must be set in a practical frame and viewed with an eye to all the circumstances of the proceedings.” Id. (quoting Sealfon v. United States, 332 U.S. 575, 579 (1948)). And we exclude hung counts, when the jury is unable to reach a verdict, from our analysis. Yeager, 557 U.S. at 121–22 (“To ascribe meaning to a hung count would” be “guesswork,” and not “reasoned analysis.”); see also Bravo-Fernandez v. United States, 137 S. Ct. 352, 366 (2016) (“[W]hen a jury hangs, there is no decision, hence no evidence of irrationality.” (citation omitted)). The burden is on the defendant to show that issue is precluded. Yeager, 557 U.S. at 122 n.6 (“To preclude retrial, [the defendant] must show that the jury necessarily decided an issue in his favor.”). The Supreme Court has emphasized that the test laid out in Ashe “is a demanding one.” Currier v. Virginia, 138 S. Ct. 2144, 2150 (2018). Retrial is barred only when “the prosecution must prevail on an issue the jury necessarily resolved in the defendant’s favor in the first trial” to secure a conviction. Id. (citations omitted). Put another way, “[a] second trial ‘is not precluded 3“Issue preclusion is the more descriptive term,” Bravo-Fernandez v. United States, 137 S. Ct. 352, 356 n.1 (2016) (cleaned up), so we use it here. No. 21-1505 United States v. Inman Page 9 simply because it is unlikely—or even very unlikely—that the original jury acquitted without finding the fact in question.’” Id. (citations omitted). It must have been irrational for the jury to acquit in the first trial “without finding in the defendant’s favor on a fact essential to a conviction in the second.” Id. (citation omitted). Additionally, a “determination ranks as necessary or essential only when the final outcome hinges on it.” Bobby, 556 U.S. at 835 (citing 18 Charles A. Wright, Arthur R. Miller, & Edward H. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 4421 (2d ed. 2002)). B. Requisite Elements of Inman’s Three-Count Indictment With that background in mind, we first turn to the requisite elements of the counts that Inman faced at trial. To reiterate, those charges were Count I, extortion under color of official right in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1951 (the Hobbs Act); Count II, soliciting a bribe in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(1)(B); and Count III, making a false statement to the FBI in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2). We discuss each count in turn below. Count I. 18 U.S.C. § 1951 defines “extortion” as “the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.” 18 U.S.C.§ 1951(b)(2) (emphasis added). Section 1951(b)(2) thus includes two crimes—paradigmatic “extortion” and an offense more akin to bribery. See Terry, 707 F.3d at 612 (quoting United States v. Allen, 10 F.3d 405, 411 (7th Cir. 1993) (describing extortion and bribery crimes as “different sides of the same coin”)). The phrase “under color of official right” has been held to support the prosecution and conviction of public officials. See McCormick v. United States, 500 U.S. 257, 266 n.5 (1991). As relevant here, the Supreme Court in McCormick addressed the level of proof needed to move a campaign contribution received by an elected official from permissible to illegal. See id. It defined such extortion as “payments . . . made in return for an explicit promise or undertaking by the official to perform or not to perform an official act.” Id. at 273. In these circumstances, the elected official “asserts that his official conduct will be controlled by the terms of the promise or undertaking.” Id. Without this quid-pro-quo arrangement, it would be merely the permissible solicitation and receipt of campaign contributions, an act inherent in our electoral processes. Id. at 272, 274. No. 21-1505 United States v. Inman Page 10 Count II. Relatedly, 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(1)(B) prohibits a government official from “corruptly solicit[ing] or demand[ing] for the benefit of any person, or accept[ing] or agree[ing] to accept, anything of value from any person, intending to be influenced or rewarded in connection with any business, transaction, or series of transactions of such organization, government, or agency involving any time of value of $5,000 or more[.]” In Terry, we addressed what constitutes a bribe of a public official. 707 F.3d at 612. We noted that a bribe, like extortion, requires a quid-pro-quo arrangement—the receipt of something of value in exchange for official conduct controlled by the terms of the promise. See id. Existence of such an “arrangement” is analyzed similarly for both extortion and bribery cases. See, e.g., id. (collecting cases). “[I]t is sufficient if the public official understood that he or she was expected to exercise some influence on the payor’s behalf as opportunities arose.” Id. (quoting United States v. Abbey, 560 F.3d 513, 518 (6th Cir. 2009)). “So long as a public official agrees that payments will influence an official act, that suffices. What is needed is an agreement, full stop, which can be formal or informal, written or oral.” Id. at 613. To determine whether an agreement crossed the line into illegality, “motives and consequences, not formalities” govern. Id. (citation omitted). And “matters of intent are for the jury to consider.” McCormick, 500 U.S. at 270; see also United States v. Ring, 706 F.3d 460, 468 (D.C. Cir. 2013) (stating that intent “distinguishes criminal corruption from commonplace political and business activities”). Terry made clear that “[a]n agreement . . . is the dividing line between permissible and impermissible payments.” Terry, 707 F.3d at 614. Count III. 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2), making a false statement to the FBI, does not possess an arrangement element. Section 1001(a)(2) prohibits “knowingly and willfully . . . mak[ing] any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” to a government agent. This statement does not need to influence the government agent, and materiality can be met even when the agent knows the statement is false. United States v. LeMaster, 54 F.3d 1224, 1230–31 (6th Cir. 1995). The person making the statement must also know that the statement was false on its face. United States v. Hixon, 987 F.2d 1261, 1266–67 (6th Cir. 1993). No. 21-1505 United States v. Inman Page 11 C. Nonapplication of Issue Preclusion Here Inman argues that because the jury acquitted him on his false-statement charge, the United States is precluded by principles of issue preclusion from retrying him on the other two counts. The United States proffers three reasons for why a rational jury could have acquitted Inman on making a false statement to the FBI but without resolving any predicate necessary to the extortion and solicitation-of-a-bribe charges. First, it argues, a rational juror could have believed that Inman did in fact send a text message to Canada or Kirsch, soliciting a campaign contribution in exchange for his vote, but also have reasonable doubt as to whether Inman remembered such an exchange when talking to the FBI on account of Inman’s testimony about his opioid and alcohol abuse. Inman testified that he could not recall sending any messages on June 3, 2018. Inman Tr., R. 102, PageID 1013–18. He also testified that he was taking upwards of 20 opioid pills a day in June 2018. Id. at 979. Inman’s counsel argued that Inman’s text message to Canada, in particular, was not “an important piece of information that he retained for those two months.” Defense Closing Arg., R. 140, PageID 2061–62. We agree that a rational jury could believe that Inman merely could not recall, or forgot about, this text message to Canada in June 2018 or the earlier text to Kirsch, and for this reason voted to acquit Inman on the charge of lying to the FBI about these communications. It does not logically follow, as Inman argues, that this acquittal means that a jury could not have rationally believed that Inman did intend to sell his vote on the prevailing wage law to the MRCCM. A rational jury could believe that Inman had simply forgotten, because of his deteriorated mental state, about extorting and soliciting bribes from the MRCCM but still committed those offenses. We emphasize that we are not determining whether this was the case—if Inman was either (1) intoxicated at the time of sending the texts or (2) of sound mind while sending the text and forgot about it later because of the lapse of time or substance abuse. Inman could have been “rambling on” in the text message to Canada because of the influence of drugs, and he may have asked her to keep the conversation private because of fear of retribution, as Inman argues. The jury could also have plausibly believed every piece of Inman’s testimony when deciding to acquit him, as Inman also argues. These possibilities, though, are not something the jury necessarily decided when acquitting Inman on making a false statement to the FBI. See Bobby, No. 21-1505 United States v. Inman Page 12 556 U.S. at 835. In other words, telling the truth to the FBI is not an element the United States needs to prove on the public-corruption charges. A rational jury could decide that Inman both attempted to solicit a bribe and extorted the MRCCM, regardless of the acquittal on the false statement charge—the dispositive issue before us. See Currier, 138 S. Ct. at 2150. Furthermore, the United States provides a second explanation the jury could have rationally had for Inman’s acquittal on Count III. It argues that the jury could have found that the government failed to prove the other elements of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2) beyond a reasonable doubt, even if it found the statement to the FBI false. In support of this proposition, it states that because the interview between the FBI and Inman was not recorded, the jury could have reasonably doubted whether, in fact, Inman made a relevant statement, that the statement was material, or that Inman acted knowingly and willfully. All of these elements are necessary for a § 1001(a)(2) conviction, and a rational juror could have acquitted Inman after reasonably doubting any one of them. And none of those elements is essential to the extortion and solicitation-of-a-bribe charges; they are not the ultimate facts of those crimes. See Bobby, 556 U.S. at 835. Contra Ashe, 397 U.S. at 445 (holding that the government was precluded from trying Ashe for robbing a poker player after he had been acquitted of robbing another poker player in the same poker game and the jury’s acquittal relied on a shared ultimate fact—that Ashe did not participate in the poker game robbery). In sum, it is not our duty to determine whether the foregoing explanations 4 offered by the United States are likely the rationale behind the jury’s acquittal. Our responsibility is only to determine that it would be rational for the jury to have reasonable doubt that Inman made a false statement to the FBI but find, at the same time, that Inman did intend to communicate a quidpro-quo arrangement to the MRCCM through its representatives. See Currier, 138 S. Ct. at 2150. Lying to the FBI is not a fact essential to a conviction of the extortion and briberysolicitation charges, so issue preclusion does not apply. 4Given the sufficiency of the explanations discussed above, we need not address a third, arguably weaker explanation given by the United States that questioned the jury’s acquittal—that the jury misunderstood the “materiality” element. But see Abney v. United States, 431 U.S. 651, 665 (1977) (“We cannot assume that the jury disregarded [ ] clear and unambiguous instructions and returned a guilty verdict without first finding that the Government had proved [the charges] beyond a reasonable doubt.”). No. 21-1505 United States v. Inman Page 13