Opinion ID: 6499796
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Double Jeopardy, Law of the Case

Text: The Fifth Amendment’s Double Jeopardy Clause states that no person may be “twice put in jeopardy” “for the same offence.” 4 Wills argues that the federal prosecution violated double jeopardy because he was subjected to punitive pretrial bond conditions in state court before being tried and convicted in federal court. He further argues that the “dual-sovereignty” doctrine, which states that double jeopardy does not prohibit successive punishments for a single act that violates the respective laws of two sovereigns (e.g., state law and federal law), 5 does not apply here. We hold that law of the case bars these arguments. 3 Wills was acquitted of one count of attempted coercion and enticement of a minor. 4 U.S. Const. amend. V, cl. 2. 5 See Denezpi v. United States, 142 S. Ct. 1838 (2022); Gamble v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 1960, 1964 (2019); United States v. Moore, 958 F.2d 646, 650 (5th Cir. 1992). 3 Case: 20-40648 Document: 00516392374 Page: 4 Date Filed: 07/13/2022 No. 20-40648 “The law of the case doctrine posits that ordinarily ‘an issue of fact or law decided on appeal may not be reexamined either by the district court on remand or by the appellate court on subsequent appeal.’” 6 The doctrine covers issues decided expressly and by necessary implication. 7 We recognize three exceptions to law of the case: “(1) The evidence at a subsequent trial is substantially different; (2) there has been an intervening change of law by a controlling authority; and (3) the earlier decision is clearly erroneous and would work a manifest injustice.” 8 Prior to trial, Wills moved to dismiss the federal indictment on double jeopardy grounds. The district court denied the motion, and Wills took an interlocutory appeal. Another panel of this court held in 2018 that the dualsovereignty doctrine applied and, consequently, no double jeopardy violation occurred. 9 Therefore, we will not revisit this issue unless one of the exceptions to the law-of-the-case doctrine applies. Wills invokes only the second exception: intervening change of law by a controlling authority. He contends Gamble v. United States, 10 a Supreme Court decision that issued after Wills I, “makes clear that where a State has already punished an individual for a particular crime (here a violation of Texas Penal Code § 21.11), the Federal Government may not thereafter punish him for those same State ‘offenses.’” 6 United States v. Lee, 358 F.3d 315, 320 (5th Cir. 2004) (quoting United States v. Matthews, 312 F.3d 652, 657 (5th Cir. 2002)). 7 Id. (citing Crowe v. Smith, 261 F.3d 558, 562 (5th Cir. 2001)). 8 Id. at 320 n.3 (quoting Matthews, 312 F.3d at 657). 9 Wills I, 742 F. App’x at 888 (citing United States v. Angleton, 314 F.3d 767, 771 (5th Cir. 2002)). Wills I assumed without deciding that the state bond conditions constituted “punishment” for double jeopardy purposes. Id. We do so again here. 10 139 S. Ct. at 1977. 4 Case: 20-40648 Document: 00516392374 Page: 5 Date Filed: 07/13/2022 No. 20-40648 Gamble is an intervening decision by a controlling authority, but it did not change the law. The Court re-affirmed the dual-sovereignty doctrine, citing, inter alia, 170 years of precedent. 11 Wills builds his argument on a passage in Gamble that acknowledged “the presence of a bar in a case in which the second trial is for a violation of the very statute whose violation by the same conduct has already been tried in the courts of another government.” 12 But Gamble did not create this exception to the dualsovereignty doctrine. It comes from a 1959 case that interpreted a decision from 1820. 13 Additionally, the Gamble Court was not called upon to apply this exception to the facts before it; it merely explained why the exception did not undermine the dual-sovereignty doctrine. 14 Thus, Gamble broke no new ground. For these reasons, the law-of-the-case doctrine forecloses Wills’s double jeopardy argument.