Opinion ID: 71722
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Exceptions to the Law-of-the-Case Doctrine

Text: 36 In an oft-quoted passage, the Fifth Circuit stated: 37 While the law of the case doctrine is not an inexorable command, a decision of a legal issue or issues ... establishes the law of the case and must be followed in all subsequent proceedings in the same case in the trial court or on a later appeal in the appellate court, unless the evidence on a subsequent trial was substantially different, controlling authority has since made a contrary decision of the law applicable to such issues, or the decision was clearly erroneous and would work a manifest injustice. 38 White v. Murtha, 377 F.2d 428, 431-32 (5th Cir.1967) (footnotes omitted); 4 Litman v. Massachusetts Mutual Life Ins. Co., 825 F.2d 1506, 1510 (11th Cir.1987) (same). 39 Here, no new evidence has been called to this Court's attention, and so the first White exception to the law-of-the-case doctrine does not apply. 40 Further, there has been no change in the law. The law--that a defendant's sentence should be based on only the amount of usable drugs possessed by the defendant--has remained the same, only the source of the law has changed. See Rolande-Gabriel, 938 F.2d at 1237; Guidelines App. C, Amendment 484 (amending Guidelines § 2D1.1, Application Note 1). Therefore, this exception does not apply. 41 Finally, the district court's decision was not a clear error. As discussed above, Escobar-Urrego seemingly concedes that weighing the liquid and noting its purity will show how much total cocaine was in the liquid. Escobar-Urrego contends, however, that weighing the cocaine and noting its purity will not show how much cocaine could be extracted from the liquid and actually rendered usable. Everyone at Escobar-Urrego's sentencing understood that Escobar-Urrego's sentence was to be based on only the amount of usable cocaine that Escobar-Urrego imported. After that point was established, Escobar-Urrego's counsel informed the district court that an independent chemist had concluded that 2,036 grams was accurate for sentencing purposes. While Escobar-Urrego's chemist may have been wrong, it is not clear to us that he was wrong, and it was not a clear error for the district court to rely on Escobar-Urrego's own chemist. 42 Accordingly, none of the exceptions to the law-of-the-case doctrine are applicable here, and Escobar-Urrego is precluded from relitigating the question of how much usable cocaine he imported. 5