Opinion ID: 205447
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Claim of “duplicitous” charges

Text: Defendant claims that Counts Two and Three, charging Castro with assault with a dangerous weapon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1959, are duplicitious, as are Counts Five and Six, charging him with use of a firearm in connection with those assaults, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). In both pairs of counts, the charge differs only with regard to the identity of the shooting victim. In Mejia, we held that the “testimony tends to show that Castro knew that the purpose of the Hempstead shooting was to shoot at multiple people . . . . The jury reasonably could have found that Castro intended to harm multiple individuals.” Mejia, 545 F.3d at 204. We are guided in these circumstances by the law of the case doctrine which, inter alia, 5 “requires a trial court to follow an appellate court’s previous ruling on an issue in the same case . . . . This is the so-called mandate rule . . . [which] ordinarily forecloses relitigation of all issues previously waived by the defendant or decided by the appellate court.” United States v. Quintieri, 306 F.3d 1217, 1225 (2d Cir. 2002) (footnote and citations omitted). In Mejia, we held that Counts Two and Three are not duplicitous because “the existence of a single conspiracy connecting [multiple] assaults does not preclude treating them as separate predicate offenses. . . . Although those separate shootings are clustered in time and space, that clustering does not somehow merge them into one predicate crime.” Mejia, 545 F.3d at 205-06. We restate and reaffirm that holding here. Because Counts Two and Three, the predicate crimes to Counts Five and Six are not duplicitous, we accordingly hold that Counts Five and Six, are not duplicitous either.