Opinion ID: 3151679
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Fairminded Disagreement

Text: AEDPA requires more than a mere mistake by the state court. We can grant habeas relief in a case governed by AEDPA only if the state court unreasonably applied law clearly established by the Supreme Court. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). “A state court’s determination that a claim WILKINSON V. GINGRICH 15 lacks merit precludes federal habeas relief so long as ‘fairminded jurists could disagree’ on the correctness of the state court’s decision.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 101 (2011) (quoting Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652, 664 (2004)). The State argues that the state court’s decision, even if based on a misapplication of Ashe, was not unreasonable because fairminded jurists disagree about whether collateral estoppel applies to perjury prosecutions at all, or at least whether it applies to perjury prosecutions presenting newly discovered evidence of a defendant’s dishonesty. For support, the State cites several decisions of state courts that read Ashe narrowly. One is a decision by an intermediate Illinois appellate court whose facts are roughly similar to the facts of this case. See People v. Briddle, 405 N.E.2d 1357, 1361–62 (Ill. App. Ct. 1980) (reinstating a perjury prosecution against a defendant for statements he made in traffic court about the kind of car he was driving when he was pulled over for speeding, even though he was acquitted of the speeding charge). Two others are decisions of the Supreme Courts of Wisconsin and Louisiana. See State v. Canon, 622 N.W.2d 270, 277 (Wisc. 2001) (announcing a “narrow newly discovered evidence exception to issue preclusion” in perjury cases); State v. Bolden, 639 So. 2d 721, 725 (La. 1994) (recognizing that Ashe generally bars a perjury prosecution when a defendant’s credibility on an issue was necessarily decided in a prior proceeding but making an exception for the “unique circumstance[]” of the discovery of new evidence of the defendant’s dishonesty). However, a state court decision is not reasonable under AEDPA simply because another judge—or even several other judges— arrived at the same incorrect conclusion. See Williams, 529 U.S. at 409–10. 16 WILKINSON V. GINGRICH The Supreme Court has not applied Ashe to foreclose a subsequent perjury prosecution, but the Court has made clear that collateral estoppel and the Double Jeopardy Clause apply regardless of the nature of the offense or the availability of new evidence. First, the Court has applied the rule of Ashe to many kinds of prosecutions, and has never limited its reach to certain categories of criminal offenses, as the State now suggests is appropriate. See, e.g., Harris, 404 U.S. at 56 (holding that a second murder prosecution was precluded by defendant’s acquittal in first murder trial); Turner v. Arkansas, 407 U.S. 366, 370 (1972) (per curiam) (holding that a subsequent prosecution for robbery was precluded by the defendant’s prior acquittal for murder; the “case is thus squarely controlled by Ashe v. Swenson”). In a decision predating Ashe, the Court signaled that collateral estoppel could bar prosecutions for perjury. See United States v. Williams, 341 U.S. 58, 63 (1951) (“Though former jeopardy by trial for the substantive crimes is not available as a defense against this perjury indictment, it could be that acquittal on the substantive charges would operate ‘to conclude those matters in issue which the verdict determined though the offenses be different.’” (quoting Sealfon v. United States, 332 U.S. 575, 578 (1948))). Although members of our court have disagreed about whether the elements of collateral estoppel have been satisfied in a particular perjury case, we have long recognized that the rule of Ashe generally applies to perjury prosecutions. See United States v. Castillo-Basa, 494 F.3d 1217, 1221 (9th Cir. 2007) (Callahan, J., dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc) (acknowledging that “where a defendant secures an acquittal by lying about an element of a crime, the Double Jeopardy Clause bars the government from seeking to retry the defendant for the first offense or prosecuting the defendant for perjury”); Hernandez, 572 F.2d at 220. WILKINSON V. GINGRICH 17 Second, the Supreme Court has held that collateral estoppel applies “irrespective of whether the jury considered all relevant evidence, and irrespective of the good faith of the State in bringing successive prosecutions.” Harris, 404 U.S. at 56–57; see also Castillo-Basa, 483 F.3d at 903 (“The Fifth Amendment, as interpreted in Ashe v. Swenson, bars relitigation of an issue already decided, no matter how much additional evidence the government may wish to introduce at a second proceeding.”). Indeed, in Ashe the Court made clear that collateral estoppel applies even if the government can marshal better evidence the second time around. See Ashe, 397 U.S. at 446 (“Once a jury had determined upon conflicting testimony that there was at least a reasonable doubt that the petitioner was one of the robbers, the State could not present the same or different identification evidence in a second prosecution for the robbery of Knight in the hope that a different jury might find that evidence more convincing.”). Collateral estoppel “is a part of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee against double jeopardy.” Id. at 442. That guarantee is not suspended simply because prosecutors uncover new evidence showing that defendants who were acquitted after taking the stand were lying when they testified that they did not commit the charged offenses. Permitting a perjury exception to the protection the Double Jeopardy Clause affords a defendant would undermine the “overriding concern” of the Clause, which is to prevent the government “with its vastly superior resources,” from “wear[ing] down the defendant, so that ‘even though innocent he may be found guilty.’” Dowling, 493 U.S. at 355 (Brennan, J., dissenting) (alteration in original) (quoting Scott, 437 U.S. at 91, 98). The handful of state court decisions that mistakenly attempt to carve out a special exception to the Constitution’s 18 WILKINSON V. GINGRICH protection against double jeopardy for perjury prosecutions do not represent “fairminded disagreement” on an open question of constitutional law. Rather, they represent a fundamental misunderstanding of the Double Jeopardy Clause and the Supreme Court decisions that explain its purpose and operation.