Opinion ID: 1199641
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Whether we are bound by the United States Supreme Court's comments on sufficiency of the evidence

Text: ¶ 12 In Fulminante II, the United States Supreme Court held that Defendant's confession was coerced and reviewed the record to determine whether its admission was harmless error. 499 U.S. at 297-302, 111 S.Ct. at 1258-61. The Court found the admission prejudicial, in part because both the trial court and the State recognized that a successful prosecution depended on the jury believing the two confessions. Absent the confessions, it is unlikely that Fulminante would have been prosecuted at all, because the physical evidence from the scene and the other circumstantial evidence would have been insufficient to convict. Id. at 297, 111 S.Ct. at 1258. Presumably, had the Court's statements been the law of the case, the trial judge would have had to dismiss the indictment. Defendant fails to assert this argument on appeal but instead argues that the statements should have been read to the jurors or included in the jury instructions. ¶ 13 Assuming, arguendo, that the Supreme Court's statements were more than merely descriptive of the views of the trial judge and the prosecutor and could thus be considered the law of the case, the present case falls within exceptions to the rule. The law of the case will not be applied if the issue was not actually decided in the first decision or the decision is ambiguous. Dancing Sunshines Lounge v. Industrial Comm'n, 149 Ariz. 480, 483, 720 P.2d 81, 84 (1986). The United States Supreme Court was not required to and did not actually determine whether the evidence was sufficient to support a conviction. The issue before the Court was whether admission of the coerced confession was prejudicial. Obviously, erroneously admitted evidence may be prejudicial even if the other evidence is sufficient to support a verdict. For similar reasons, the principle of collateral estoppel does not apply. See State v. Berry, 133 Ariz. 264, 268, 650 P.2d 1246, 1250 (App.1982); see also Annotation, Modern status of doctrine of res judicata in criminal cases, 9 A.L.R.3d 203, 214 (1966). ¶ 14 Moreover, the law of the case doctrine will not be applied when there has been a substantial change in the evidence. Dancing Sunshines, 149 Ariz. at 483, 720 P.2d at 84. At Defendant's second trial the state presented a number of witnesses who had not testified at the first. For example, the officer who discovered Jeneane's body testified to the location and condition of the body, the hilly layout of the land that might have obscured the body for a few days, and precautions taken to not disturb the murder scene. Lee Houle testified that he and his wife took Defendant to the Phoenix bus depot two weeks after Jeneane's death. He further testified that Defendant arranged to correspond with Mrs. Houle by sending letters through her friends in Louisiana, who would put them in a new envelope and forward them to Arizona, presumably so that Defendant's name and address as the sender would be concealed. Without revealing his location, Defendant telephoned Mr. Houle a week after he left town to see what had developed in the case. Defendant laughed about the police looking for him, saying they could look for him anywhere from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Houle's testimony was used to advance the state's theory that Defendant displayed a consciousness of guilt by leaving town not long after Jeneane's death and making efforts to conceal his whereabouts. ¶ 15 The testimony of these and other new witnesses strengthened prior arguments and supported new ones. We thus conclude we are not bound by the Court's comments on sufficiency of the evidence.