Opinion ID: 1664829
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Remedy and Review

Text: [6] Neb. Rev. Stat. § 29-1817 (Reissue 2008) provides: The accused may . . . offer a plea in bar to the indictment that he has before had judgment of acquittal, or been convicted, or been pardoned for the same offense . . . . In State v. Milenkovich, [13] we held that the denial of a plea in bar which asserted an acquittal as the bar to subsequent prosecution for the same offense was a final, appealable order. In reaching that conclusion, we relied upon the holding of the U.S. Supreme Court in Abney v. United States [14] that rights conferred on a criminal accused by the Double Jeopardy Clause would be significantly undermined if appellate review of double jeopardy claims were postponed until after conviction and sentence. The Abney Court reasoned that the protections of the Double Jeopardy Clause would necessarily be lost if an accused were required to stand trial a second time before seeking appellate review of a claim that the second trial constituted double jeopardy. In the context of a final order as defined by Neb. Rev. Stat. § 25-1902 (Reissue 1989), we concluded in State v. Milenkovich [15] that based upon Abney, there is no question that a determination of a nonfrivolous double jeopardy claim affects the substan tial right not to be tried twice for the same offense. We then concluded that a ruling on a plea in bar is made in a special proceeding, because § 29-1817 authorizes a defendant to bring a special application to a court to enforce the defendant's constitutional right to avoid double jeopardy. [16] In State v. Lynch, [17] we applied the Milenkovich rationale to a prisoner's claim that his criminal prosecution for escape was barred by a prior administrative disciplinary proceeding in which the evidence was found insufficient to establish his involvement in the escape. Rejecting the State's argument that we lacked jurisdiction to review the denial of the plea in bar prior to conclusion of the criminal case, we reasoned that because the plea in bar raised a double jeopardy claim, it was final and appealable. Two more recent decisions of this court further frame the jurisdictional issue in this case. In State v. Rubio, [18] a defendant charged with drug-related offenses in state court filed a plea in bar. He asserted that the State was precluded from prosecuting him because federal charges arising out of the same activity had been voluntarily dismissed after he successfully sought suppression of certain evidence in federal court. The district court denied the plea in bar, and the Nebraska Court of Appeals affirmed. On further review, we framed the issue as whether a plea in bar is the proper procedural device with which to raise a challenge based on the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. [19] We concluded that we lacked jurisdiction because the defendant had not filed a true plea in bar, [20] as defined by § 29-1817, in that he had not alleged that he was previously acquitted, convicted, or pardoned; therefore, the order denying the purported plea in bar could not be considered final and appealable under Milenkovich. More recently, in State v. Jackson, [21] we considered the merits of the defendant's claim that a retrial following the declaration of a mistrial would constitute double jeopardy. Neither the parties nor this court raised a jurisdictional issue, and we concluded that retrial would violate the defendant's constitutional right not to be placed twice in jeopardy, because the record did not demonstrate the manifest necessity of the mistrial. Rubio did not present a colorable double jeopardy claim, because jeopardy had never attached. As we noted in the opinion, the defendant in Rubio did not assert that he had previously been acquitted, convicted, or pardoned. And, in fact, he had been subjected only to a suppression hearing in federal court, not to a full trial on the criminal charges. Jackson, on the other hand, presented a true double jeopardy claim, because jeopardy had attached to the defendant prior to the declaration of the mistrial. However, the double jeopardy claim which we found to be meritorious in Jackson did not result from an acquittal, conviction, or pardon within the meaning of § 29-1817. Thus, there is tension between Rubio and Jackson as to whether a true plea in bar may include only double jeopardy claims arising from an acquittal, conviction, or pardon, or whether a plea in bar may also be used to raise a nonfrivolous double jeopardy claim arising from the declaration of a mistrial. A literal reading of the language of § 29-1817 would lead to the first conclusion, and there is some case law which would support this interpretation. [22] But were we to adopt this literal interpretation, there would be no remedy whereby a claim of double jeopardy resulting from a mistrial could be resolved before the retrial actually occurs, thereby effectively depriving the defendant of his constitutional right even if the double jeopardy claim is eventually found to have merit. The need for such a remedy forms the underlying rationale of Abney v. United States, [23] in which the U.S. Supreme Court noted that the essential guarantee of the Double Jeopardy Clause would be lost if the accused were forced to run the gauntlet a second time before an appeal could be taken; even if the accused is acquitted, or, if convicted, has his conviction ultimately reversed on double jeopardy grounds, he has still been forced to endure a trial that the Double Jeopardy Clause was designed to prohibit. [7,8] In Milenkovich, we noted that state courts had reached differing conclusions as to whether Abney established a federal constitutional requirement of immediate review of double jeopardy claims. We did not reach the constitutional issue because we concluded that § 29-1817 authorizes a defendant to bring a special application to a court to enforce the defendant's constitutional right to avoid double jeopardy [24] and that the denial of such an application constituted a final, appealable order. A mistrial entered without manifest necessity is the equivalent of an acquittal for purposes of double jeopardy analysis in that each terminates jeopardy without a finding of guilt. Were we to narrowly interpret § 29-1817 as authorizing a special application to enforce some but not all colorable double jeopardy claims based upon a previous prosecution, a constitutional question could arise. State procedural and evidentiary rules construed and applied in an illogical manner have been held to violate a criminal defendant's federal constitutional rights. [25] It is the duty of a court to give a statute an interpretation that meets constitutional requirements if it can reasonably be done. [26] [9] We therefore hold that a plea in bar pursuant to § 29-1817 may be filed to assert any nonfrivolous double jeopardy claim arising from a prior prosecution, including a claim that jeopardy was terminated by entry of a mistrial without manifest necessity. To the extent that language in Rubio is inconsistent with this holding, it is disapproved. We construe Williams' plea in bar as asserting a nonfrivolous double jeopardy claim based upon the mistrial declared after jeopardy had attached, and we conclude that the order overruling the plea in bar was a final, appealable order which we have jurisdiction to review.