Opinion ID: 576697
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Severance and double jeopardy

Text: 19 Prior to trial, Mr. Chapman filed a motion for severance. 9 Mr. Wright admitted in state court that he had been present during the Twelve Mile bank robbery, but claimed to have been too intoxicated to form the specific intent to rob the bank. In his motion to sever, Mr. Chapman argued that Mr. Wright's anticipated intoxication defense in the upcoming federal trial would be antagonistic to his own defense of nonparticipation. The magistrate concluded that the two anticipated defenses were not mutually antagonistic and thus recommended denial of Mr. Chapman's motion to sever. Mr. Chapman's objection to this recommendation also was denied by the district court on March 1, 1989. 10 A week later, the court denied Mr. Chapman's motion to have his case tried before the judge rather than a jury. 20 A joint jury trial began on June 19, 1989, and the court denied Mr. Chapman's renewed motion to sever. Mr. Wright testified in his own defense. He presented an alibi defense in regard to the Denver bank robbery, claiming to have been at his parents' home in Indianapolis at the time. He also testified that the Denver bank bait money found in his quarters was money that he had borrowed from Mr. Chapman. Mr. Wright claimed that Mr. Chapman and Pezet had admitted committing the Denver robbery. (Pezet, however, had been on duty in Columbus, Ohio, on the day of that incident. Mr. Wright also repeated his intoxication defense regarding the Twelve Mile robbery; in addition, he claimed that his participation had been induced by Mr. Chapman's threats.) 21 Mr. Chapman, who was conducting his own defense, sought to cross-examine Mr. Wright to bring out evidence that, during state plea negotiations, he had admitted participation in the Denver robbery. However, because Mr. Wright's plea had been withdrawn, the district court earlier had ruled that he could not be examined about the plea negotiations. 11 In response to the government's opposition to severance, Mr. Chapman observed, obviously as I moved for severance pretrial [and] throughout the course of the trial before we got to this point, the court was alerted that this would be a problem somewhere in the course of the trial. Tr. of June 27, 1989 at 806. The court concluded that Mr. Chapman's inability to cross-examine Mr. Wright on his prior inconsistent statement threatened to run[ ] afoul of the confrontation clause. Id. at 810. The court therefore severed Mr. Chapman out of the trial and ordered Mr. Wright's trial to continue. Mr. Chapman raised no objection at the time to the court's decision to allow Mr. Wright's trial, rather than his own, to continue. Mr. Wright's trial concluded with his conviction on all three counts. 22 On July 10, 1989, the day his second trial was scheduled to begin, Mr. Chapman filed a motion to dismiss in which he claimed that the second trial would violate his double jeopardy rights. The district court noted that at the time the severance occurred it was my understanding that you agreed once we got to that point if the trial was going to go forward it had to be Wright's rather than yours with Wright having testified and having dumped it pretty heavily on you during his testimony. Tr. of July 10, 1989 at 251. Mr. Chapman responded as follows: 23 [I]f I understood that bowing out of the trial at that point would have caused me to go through a separate jury trial without that first jury and without the possibility of impeaching Mr. Wright on what he said in that trial, I probably would have elected to stay in that trial even though Mr. Wright's testimony weighed heavily against me. 24 Id. After the government pointed out that Mr. Chapman himself had sought severance in the first trial and the court observed that the various severance motions had not been based on the Rule 410 issue that eventually forced the severance, the court denied the motion to dismiss. 12 At the end of Mr. Chapman's separate jury trial, he was convicted on all three counts. 25 Mr. Chapman now makes two related arguments in this appeal: (1) that the district court erred in refusing his pretrial severance motions and (2) that his mid-trial severance and consequent retrial violated his double jeopardy rights. We address each of these related issues in turn. 26
27 Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 14, courts are authorized to grant a severance of defendants if a joint trial would be prejudicial. However, a joint trial of co-conspirators is presumptively appropriate, and we review a district court's refusal of a severance motion under an abuse of discretion standard. United States v. Bond, 847 F.2d 1233, 1240 (7th Cir.1988). Severance is mandatory only if the anticipated defenses of two co-defendants are  'mutually antagonistic' --that is, only if the acceptance of one party's defense will preclude the acquittal of the other. United States v. Ziperstein, 601 F.2d 281, 285 (7th Cir.1979), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 1031, 100 S.Ct. 701, 62 L.Ed.2d 667 (1980). 13 In a memorandum in support of his motion to sever, Mr. Chapman contended only that Mr. Wright was likely to admit participation in the Twelve Mile bank robbery and to rely on the intoxication defense that he had offered in state court. However, a jury could have believed that Mr. Wright lacked the specific intent to engage in bank robbery without necessarily concluding that Mr. Chapman was guilty of the same robbery. 14 Therefore, the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Mr. Chapman's pretrial severance motions. 28
29 We also conclude that the district court did not violate Mr. Chapman's double jeopardy rights by severing his case in the middle of the joint trial and ordering his retrial. The district court finally granted Mr. Chapman's oft-repeated request for severance only after it concluded that Federal Rule of Evidence 410 prevented him from impeaching Mr. Wright with the latter's admission, during negotiations over his withdrawn state plea, that he had participated in the Denver bank robbery. Because Mr. Wright's trial testimony implicated Mr. Chapman in that robbery, the district court found that severance was required to protect Mr. Chapman's confrontation clause rights. Mr. Chapman made no objection to severance at this time; indeed, the severance was granted upon renewal of his earlier motions. The district court both carefully considered the tension between the rights of the co-defendants and, by delaying his decision for a day, gave Mr. Chapman adequate opportunity to decide if he still desired a severance and mistrial. 30 As this court made clear in United States v. Buljubasic, 808 F.2d 1260 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 815, 108 S.Ct. 67, 98 L.Ed.2d 31 (1987), a defendant's double jeopardy rights are not violated when a trial court grants a defendant's own mistrial motion. 31 The court finally gave him the relief he sought so avidly, and the double jeopardy clause does not prevent retrial. Only when the conduct giving rise to the successful motion for a mistrial was intended to provoke the defendant into moving for a mistrial does the manifest necessity standard come into play. 32 Id. at 1265 (quoting Oregon v. Kennedy, 456 U.S. 667, 679, 102 S.Ct. 2083, 2091, 72 L.Ed.2d 416 (1982)). Although Mr. Chapman later implied that he would not have sought a mistrial if he had understood that he faced retrial, see supra p. 1359 (citing Tr. of July 10, 1989), our review of the events leading to the severance convinces us that the district court was entitled to treat this as a consensual mistrial. Buljubasic, 808 F.2d at 1265. We also find no error in the district court's decision to sever Mr. Chapman's case rather than that of Mr. Wright. First, as we have noted, it was Mr. Chapman who sought such relief at the time it was granted. Furthermore, Mr. Wright already had presented his case when Mr. Chapman's confrontation clause problem arose. Finally, as the district court noted: 33 Had the court declared a mistrial with respect to Mr. Wright rather than Mr. Chapman, there is no suggestion Mr. Wright willingly would have remained on the stand for cross-examination. Had Rule 410 not precluded Mr. Chapman's intended cross-examination of Mr. Wright, the fifth amendment privilege against self-incrimination likely would have done so. Mr. Chapman does not suggest that he would have been content with the striking of Mr. Wright's testimony and an admonition to the jury to disregard it. 34 Mem. op. of July 11, 1989 at 12.