Opinion ID: 2038757
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Applicable Double Jeopardy Principles

Text: ¶ 15. Henning's position rests upon the supposition that, when bail jumping is predicated upon the commission of a new offense, as it was here, bail jumping and the new offense are the same for double jeopardy purposes. Henning extrapolates this premise to preclude retrial on bail jumping charges if that retrial is predicated upon a lesser-included offense of a charge of which Henning has already been acquitted. In order to evaluate his theory, we set forth several double jeopardy principles.
¶ 16. Under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution, as well as a similar provision in the Wisconsin Constitution, [8] no person shall be placed twice in jeopardy of punishment for the same offense. State v. Trawitzki, 2001 WI 77, ¶ 20, 244 Wis. 2d 523, 628 N.W.2d 801 (citing Sauceda, 168 Wis. 2d at 492). It is well established that the Double Jeopardy Clause applies in three situations. It protects against a second prosecution for the same offense after acquittal. It protects against a second prosecution for the same offense after conviction. And it protects against multiple punishments for the same offense. North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 717 (1969); see also State v. Kurzawa, 180 Wis. 2d 502, 515, 509 N.W.2d 712 (1994). ¶ 17. In all three situations, the protection of the Double Jeopardy Clause involves the definition of same offense. State v. Davison, 2003 WI 89, ¶¶ 19-20, 263 Wis. 2d 145, 666 N.W.2d 1. How courts define the same offense often carries profound consequences for criminal defendants seeking the protection of the Double Jeopardy Clause. Whether one offense is the same as another is not limited to whether the two offenses arise under the identical statutory provision. Rather, the touchstone of sameness is the elements-only test, which the United States Supreme Court articulated in Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 304 (1932). Under the Blockburger test, one offense is not the same offense as another when each provision requires proof of a fact which the other does not. Id. (citing Gavieres v. United States, 220 U.S. 338, 342 (1911)). ¶ 18. In the context of a second prosecution, this court has adopted the Blockburger test to demarcate the boundary between lawful successive prosecutions from constitutional violations. State v. Kurzawa, 180 Wis. 2d at 524. Unlike multiple punishments, where the Blockburger test can be seen as establishing a rebuttable presumption that may give way to legislative intent, Davison, 263 Wis. 2d 145, ¶ 25, successive prosecutions, with the attendant danger of government abuse, caution against looking past the Blockburger test's proscriptions because of legislative intent. See id. Indeed, the Supreme Court, first in Grady v. Corbin, 495 U.S. 508 (1990), and then in United States v. Dixon, 509 U.S. 688 (1993), the case that overruled Grady, has been willing to move beyond a strict elements only interpretation of Blockburger in cases involving a second prosecution. See Davison, 263 Wis. 2d 145, ¶ 25 (The court appears less tolerant of prosecuting the same offense in a second prosecution.).
¶ 19. The Double Jeopardy Clause does not necessarily act as a bar to a second trial for the same charge after conviction. For instance, there is generally no bar to a second trial when a conviction is overturned on appeal. Ball v. United States, 163 U.S. 662 (1896). As the Supreme Court explained in a more recent case: [I]f the first trial has ended in a conviction, the double jeopardy guarantee  imposes no limitations whatever upon the power to retry a defendant who has succeeded in getting his first conviction set aside . . . . [T]o require a criminal defendant to stand trial again after he has successfully invoked a statutory right of appeal to upset his first conviction is not an act of governmental oppression of the sort against which the Double Jeopardy Clause was intended to protect.  United States v. DiFrancesco, 449 U.S. 117, 131 (1980) (first and third emphasis added) (citations omitted). ¶ 20. The notion that a convicted defendant is not placed in jeopardy a second time when he is retried after his conviction is reversed, has been justified on grounds of waiver and on the legal fiction that the second trial is a continuation of the first. See State v. Schmear, 28 Wis. 2d 126, 135-36, 135 N.W.2d 842 (1965). [9] ¶ 21. In 1964 Justice Harlan offered perhaps the most intellectually honest justification for the continuing jeopardy principle: While different theories have been advanced to support the permissibility of retrial, of greater importance than the conceptual abstractions employed to explain the Ball principle are the implications of that principle for the sound administration of justice. Corresponding to the right of an accused to be given a fair trial is the societal interest in punishing one whose guilt is clear after he has obtained such a trial. It would be a high price indeed for society to pay were every accused granted immunity from punishment because of any defect sufficient to constitute reversible error in the proceedings leading to conviction. From the standpoint of a defendant, it is at least doubtful that appellate courts would be as zealous as they now are in protecting against the effects of improprieties at the trial or pretrial stage if they knew that reversal of a conviction would put the accused irrevocably beyond the reach of further prosecution. In reality, therefore, the practice of retrial serves defendants' rights as well as society's interest. The underlying purpose of permitting retrial is as much furthered by application of the rule to this case as it has been in cases previously decided. United States v. Tateo, 377 U.S. 463, 466 (1964); see also Justices of Boston Municipal Court v. Lydon, 466 U.S. 294, 308 (1984) ([I]mplicit in the Ball rule permitting retrial after reversal of a conviction is the concept of `continuing jeopardy.' That principle `has application where criminal proceedings against an accused have not run their full course.'); Price v. Georgia, 398 U.S. 323, 329, (1970) (The concept of continuing jeopardy implicit in the Ball case would allow petitioner's retrial for voluntary manslaughter after his first conviction for that offense had been reversed.). ¶ 22. There are exceptions to the principle of continuing jeopardy. For example, double jeopardy principles prevent a defendant from being retried when a court overturns his conviction due to insufficient evidence. Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1, 11 (1978). Where the evidence is found insufficient to convict the defendant at trial, the defendant cannot again be prosecuted. [I]t should make no difference that the reviewing court, rather than the trial court, determined the evidence to be insufficient. Id.
¶ 23. The Double Jeopardy Clause incorporates the principles of collateral estoppel, also known as issue preclusion. Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 445-46 (1970). Accordingly, an issue of ultimate fact that is determined by a valid and full judgment cannot again be litigated between the same parties in a subsequent lawsuit. State v. Vassos, 218 Wis. 2d 330, 343, 579 N.W.2d 35 (1998) (citing Ashe, 397 U.S. at 443). ¶ 24. Although collateral estoppel is embodied in the Double Jeopardy Clause, in criminal cases it actually operates beyond double jeopardy's bar against a second prosecution for the same offense after acquittal or conviction. As the Seventh Circuit put it, collateral estoppel is applicable in criminal cases only when double jeopardy is not.  United States v. Bailin, 977 F.2d 270, 275 (7th Cir. 1992). This paradox is understood when one recognizes that a criminal defendant will never need the protections of collateral estoppel when the state is barred entirely from prosecuting the defendant. Id.