Opinion ID: 2611853
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Whether the Elements of Collateral Estoppel Have Been Satisfied

Text: (7) Different courts have articulated the requirements for collateral estoppel differently. The United States Supreme Court has made clear that the issue to be precluded must be an issue of ultimate fact that has once been determined by a valid and final judgment ( Ashe, supra, 397 U.S. at p. 443 [25 L.Ed.2d at p. 475]; see also Schiro v. Farley, supra, 510 U.S. at p. ___ [127 L.Ed.2d at pp. 58-59, 114 S.Ct. at p. 790]), and that the defendant has the burden of showing that the issue was actually decided in the first proceeding. ( Dowling v. United States (1990) 493 U.S. 342, 350 [107 L.Ed.2d 708, 718-719, 110 S.Ct. 668], quoted in Schiro v. Farley, supra, 510 U.S. at p. ___ [127 L.Ed.2d at pp. 58-59, 114 S.Ct. at p. 791].) We have generally applied collateral estoppel if (1) the issue necessarily decided at the previous trial is identical to the one which is sought to be relitigated; if (2) the previous trial resulted in a final judgment on the merits; and if (3) the party against whom collateral estoppel is asserted was a party or in privity with a party at the prior trial. ( People v. Taylor, supra, 12 Cal.3d at p. 691; see also Gikas v. Zolin, supra, 6 Cal.4th at p. 849.) The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has stated, Collateral estoppel analysis involves a three-step process: `(1) An identification of the issues in the two actions for the purpose of determining whether the issues are sufficiently similar and sufficiently material in both actions to justify invoking the doctrine; (2) an examination of the record of the prior case to decide whether the issue was litigated in the first case; and (3) an examination of the record of the prior proceeding to ascertain whether the issue was necessarily decided in the first case.' ( Pettaway v. Plummer, supra, 943 F.2d at pp. 1043-1044, quoting United States v. Hernandez (9th Cir.1978) 572 F.2d 218, 220.) (3d) We need not determine whether there are, or seek to reconcile, any substantive differences between these formulations, for defendant's argument fails under any of them. [6] Collateral estoppel does not apply for two reasons: (1) the issue sought to be precluded in the murder trial is not identical to any issue necessarily decided by the weapon enhancement verdict; and (2) whether defendant used a knife is not an ultimate issue of the murder charge.
The issue sought to be precluded at retrial is not identical to any necessarily decided by the enhancement verdict. As defendant stresses, the jury returned an express acquittal of the enhancement allegation. ( People v. Superior Court ( Marks ), supra, 1 Cal.4th at p. 78, fn. 22.) But it also returned an express conviction of the murder and robbery charges. The pertinent issue decided by each verdict was quite different. To see why this is so, we turn to state law, the proper source for determining the meaning of the jury's verdicts and whether the issues are identical. ( Delap v. Dugger (11th Cir.1989) 890 F.2d 285, 315.) Murder is the substantive offense. The allegation of knife use was merely a sentence enhancing allegation attached to the murder charge. The requirements for murder and for the enhancing allegation are significantly different. (8) The weapon enhancement under Penal Code section 12022, subdivision (b), requires personal use, i.e., the jury must find beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant personally used the knife to find the enhancement true. ( People v. Cole (1982) 31 Cal.3d 568, 579 [183 Cal. Rptr. 350, 645 P.2d 1182].) (9) Murder, however, like any substantive offense, need not be personal; an aider and abettor of the actual killer is equally guilty. ( People v. Montoya (1994) 7 Cal.4th 1027, 1038-1039 [31 Cal. Rptr.2d 128, 874 P.2d 903]; People v. Beeman (1984) 35 Cal.3d 547, 554-555 [199 Cal. Rptr. 60, 674 P.2d 1318].) (3e) This is unremarkable. Defendant fully understands this, as did the Ninth Circuit. ( Pettaway v. Plummer, supra, 943 F.2d at p. 1044.) Both argue this proves that the jury's verdict was not necessarily inconsistent. The jury, defendant argues, and the Ninth Circuit agreed, may have found he was an aider and abettor; this would allow the jury to convict of murder but would require the not true verdict on the enhancement allegation. ( Id. at p. 1046.) If one stops there, the argument has appeal: if the jury found defendant did not use a knife, it must have found he was an aider and abettor. But this merely begins the inquiry; it does not end it. Defendant wrings far more meaning from the verdict than is warranted under California law. At trial, there was much evidence defendant was involved in the murder, including the evidence that he helped pawn the victim's jewelry. The only eyewitness to the killing was Nubla, an admitted accessory. His testimony minimized his own role. The jury may well have doubted that he was quite so innocent in the killing as he claimed. It might have suspected that he was involved in inflicting at least some of the injuries. It might, for example, have suspected that one person, either defendant or Nubla, strangled the victim, while the other stabbed him. This would lead to a reasonable doubt as to defendant's personal use of a knife, but would suffice for the verdict of guilty of murder. We now look more closely at California law. (10a) It is settled that as long as each juror is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant is guilty of murder as that offense is defined by statute, it need not decide unanimously by which theory he is guilty. ( People v. Pride (1992) 3 Cal.4th 195, 249-250 [10 Cal. Rptr.2d 636, 833 P.2d 643]; People v. Milan (1973) 9 Cal.3d 185, 194-195 [107 Cal. Rptr. 68, 507 P.2d 956].) More specifically, the jury need not decide unanimously whether defendant was guilty as the aider and abettor or as the direct perpetrator. ( People v. Beardslee (1991) 53 Cal.3d 68, 92 [279 Cal. Rptr. 276, 806 P.2d 1311]; People v. Forbes (1985) 175 Cal. App.3d 807, 816-817 [221 Cal. Rptr. 275].) This rule of state law passes federal constitutional muster. ( Schad v. Arizona (1991) 501 U.S. 624 [115 L.Ed.2d 555, 111 S.Ct. 2491].) (3f) Defendant is not particularly troubled by this. He argues that the jury did reach a unanimous verdict; it unanimously found the knife-use allegation not true. This is correct, but is of far less significance than defendant contends. It shows only that there was a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors that defendant specifically used a knife. It does not show the reverse, that the jury specifically found defendant was an aider and abettor. Indeed, under the facts of this case, such a finding is most unlikely. The jury may merely have believed, and most likely did believe, that defendant was guilty of murder as either a personal knife user or an aider and abettor but it may have been uncertain exactly which role defendant played. That, too, would fully explain, and necessitate, the split verdict. [7] (10b) Not only is there no unanimity requirement as to the theory of guilt, the individual jurors themselves need not choose among the theories, so long as each is convinced of guilt. (3g), (10c) Sometimes, as probably occurred here, the jury simply cannot decide beyond a reasonable doubt exactly who did what. There may be a reasonable doubt that the defendant was the direct perpetrator, and a similar doubt that he was the aider and abettor, but no such doubt that he was one or the other. This is illustrated by People v. Garrison (1989) 47 Cal.3d 746 [254 Cal. Rptr. 257, 765 P.2d 419]. There the jury found the defendant guilty of murder and other offenses, but failed to reach a verdict as to personal use allegations. ( Id. at p. 766.) The defendant argued this proved the jury found he aided and abetted a prosecution witness, one Roelle. We disagreed, noting that although Roelle testified that defendant was the triggerman, there was other evidence from which the trier of fact could reasonably have inferred that defendant and Roelle were jointly involved in the commission of the offenses. ( Id. at p. 781.) We thus concluded that it may be inferred that the jury determined that both Roelle and defendant were jointly involved in the criminal activity but could not decide beyond a reasonable doubt which one had pulled the trigger. ( Id. at p. 782.) [8] Similarly, the jury here may not have been able to decide beyond a reasonable doubt whether defendant or Nubla actually wielded the knife, but was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that, either way, defendant was guilty of Guadron's murder. To go further and conclude that the jury specifically found defendant did not use the knife would not apply the collateral estoppel rule with realism and rationality. ( Ashe, supra, 397 U.S. at p. 444 [25 L.Ed.2d at p. 475].) This shows that the issue necessarily decided by the knife-use verdict and the issue sought to be precluded in the murder prosecution are not identical, but quite different. Although defendant claims he merely seeks to preclude the theory that he used the knife, he necessarily is claiming more; he seeks to preclude the theory, and evidence to support the theory, that he either used the knife or aided and abetted the one who did. This, however, is not the issue decided regarding the enhancement allegation. Whether defendant specifically used a knife is one question; we may assume the prosecution did not prove that beyond a reasonable doubt, which explains the not true enhancement verdict. Whether defendant committed murder by either using a knife or aiding and abetting the one who did is quite a different question; the prosecution did prove that to the jury's satisfaction. It is theoretically possible the jury concluded defendant was specifically the aider and abettor, despite the paucity of supporting evidence. But that is not the test. Setting the inquiry `in a practical frame' and viewing it `with an eye to all the circumstances of the proceedings' ( Ashe, supra, 397 U.S. at p. 444 [25 L.Ed.2d at p. 476]), we conclude the jury did not `necessarily decide[]' ( Pettaway v. Plummer, supra, 943 F.2d at p. 1044; People v. Taylor, supra, 12 Cal.3d at p. 691) that defendant was the aider and abettor, only that it had doubts as to his exact role. Defendant has the burden of showing that the issue he seeks to foreclose was actually decided by the jury. ( Schiro v. Farley, supra, 510 U.S. at p. ___ [127 L.Ed.2d at pp. 58-59, 114 S.Ct. at p. 791].) This he cannot do. [9]
Another fallacy in defendant's argument is exposed by examining the requirement that the issue to be foreclosed be of ultimate fact. ( Ashe, supra, 397 U.S. at p. 443 [25 L.Ed.2d at p. 475].) Identity of the defendant in Ashe as one of the robbers was clearly an ultimate fact; it had to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt for him to be found guilty of that robbery no matter what the rest of the evidence showed. Knife use is just as clearly an ultimate fact as to the use enhancement. But it is not an ultimate fact of murder. In Dowling v. United States, supra, 493 U.S. 342, during the trial for one crime, the prosecution presented evidence of another crime for which the defendant had previously been tried and acquitted. The defendant argued this violated the collateral estoppel rule of Ashe. The high court disagreed because, unlike the situation in Ashe v. Swenson , the prior acquittal did not determine an ultimate issue in the present case. ( Dowling v. United States, supra, 493 U.S. at p. 348 [107 L.Ed.2d at p. 717].) The court assume[d] for the sake of argument that Dowling's acquittal established that there was a reasonable doubt as to whether Dowling was the [man who entered the house where the other crime was committed]. ( Ibid. ) But the court noted that the prosecution did not have to prove that fact beyond a reasonable doubt for the evidence to be admissible at the second trial; thus, the collateral-estoppel component of the Double Jeopardy Clause is inapposite. ( Id. at p. 349 [107 L.Ed.2d at p. 718].) Dowling involved separate prosecutions, not a retrial. Two recent decisions that, like this case, did involve a retrial analyzed the relevance of Dowling to this situation. They independently reached the same conclusion, a conclusion fatal to defendant's position. The first decision, U.S. v. Seley (9th Cir.1992) 957 F.2d 717, 723, noted that  Dowling did not alter Ashe so much as it introduced a new perspective on the meaning of the `ultimate fact' decided in the first trial. (11) Instead of meaning that certain acts did not happen, an acquittal means that they were not proved beyond a reasonable doubt. If an act that could have been proved to a lesser degree than that required for conviction is for some reason probative in a subsequent trial, it need not be excluded because of the prior acquittal. (Italics added.) The second decision, U.S. v. Bailin, supra, 977 F.2d at page 280, stated,  Dowling thus establishes that issue preclusion in criminal cases only applies when the relevant issue is `ultimate' in the subsequent prosecution, i.e., when the issue must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. (3h) These cases confirm that the jury's not true finding on the enhancement allegation does not mean defendant did not use the knife, only that there was a reasonable doubt that he did. In Ashe, the verdict, viewed realistically, showed the jury had a reasonable doubt as to the defendant's identity as the robber. That doubt necessarily precluded conviction of the robbery charge. But the same doubt as to knife use did not preclude a murder conviction here, although it did mandate a not true enhancement finding. Evidence that defendant personally used a knife was highly relevant to show that he was guilty of murder as that offense is defined by statute. That evidence, together with the evidence that if he did not use a knife, he was guilty as the aider and abettor, combined to permit the murder conviction. But the specific fact of personal use does not have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to find defendant guilty of murder. Hence, personal use is not an ultimate fact of murder. We thus hold that collateral estoppel does not apply. We disapprove of the contrary conclusion of People v. White, supra, 185 Cal. App.3d 822. [10]