Opinion ID: 595185
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Does double jeopardy protection bar retrial because of insufficiency of the evidence?

Text: 22 Appellant also contends that retrial is barred because the evidence at the first trial was insufficient to support guilty verdicts on the counts on which he now faces retrial. A reversal on the basis of insufficiency of evidence, like an acquittal, bars a retrial, see Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. at 16-17, 98 S.Ct. at 2149-50, and a reversal of a conviction on grounds other than sufficiency does not avoid the need to determine the sufficiency of the evidence before a retrial may occur, see United States v. Bibbero, 749 F.2d 581, 586 (9th Cir.1984), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1103, 105 S.Ct. 2330, 85 L.Ed.2d 847 (1985). 23 In advancing his sufficiency challenge, Wallach makes two distinct and somewhat inconsistent arguments. Focusing on the case as a whole, he contends that the prior panel has already determined that the Government's evidence was insufficient by expressing the view that a jury, informed of Guariglia's perjury about his gambling, would probably have acquitted the defendants. Then, focusing on each of the two statutory violations that remain for retrial, he contends that the prior panel did not consider sufficiency and invites us to do so. 24 The broad challenge may be readily rejected. The prior panel, in the second of its alternate holdings, concluded that even if the prosecution was unaware of Guariglia's perjury, the convictions must be reversed because a jury with such awareness would probably have acquitted. That is not a ruling that the evidence presented was insufficient to permit a rational jury to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Instead, it is a prediction of what the jury would have done, based on the prior panel's assessment, not of the sufficiency of the evidence, but of the weight of all the evidence including assumed knowledge of Guariglia's perjury about his gambling. The prior panel expressed the view that Guariglia's perjury interfered with the jury's ability to weigh his testimony. Wallach I, 935 F.2d at 473 (emphasis added). Wallach's first sufficiency challenge is without merit. 25 In considering the second sufficiency challenge, dealing with specific offenses, we are met with the parties' dispute as to whether this claim is available for our consideration on this appeal. The Government contends that the prior panel implicitly found the evidence sufficient, Brief for Appellee at 36, and Wallach contends that the prior panel expressly declined to consider the insufficiency claim, Brief for Appellant at 27. The dispute as to whether Wallach I adjudicated Wallach's particularized sufficiency claims arises in large part because of the oblique way in which the issues were raised on the prior appeal. No section of Wallach's brief on the prior appeal was succinctly headed, The evidence was insufficient to support the jury's verdict. Instead, the brief mounted a series of challenges to the theories under which the Government sought to apply 18 U.S.C. § 2314 and 18 U.S.C. § 203 to Wallach's conduct. That approach led the prior panel to say: 26 Although our decision on the perjury issue is itself a sufficient basis for disposing of these appeals, the likelihood of a new trial suggests that we should also address some of the other arguments urged by the defendants. We limit our analysis to those issues that directly challenge the validity of the indictment or the legal viability of the government's theory underlying any of the charges. 27 Wallach I, 935 F.2d at 459. 1 Clearly, the prior panel did not expressly decline to consider sufficiency, and its rejection of the challenge to the Government's legal theories may well have constituted an implicit consideration of sufficiency. But we prefer not to subject the defendant to retrial without express consideration of the sufficiency challenges that he asserts were not disposed of on the prior appeal. 28 Section 2314 violation. Appellant's challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence to support conviction on Counts 3 and 4, charging violations of 18 U.S.C. § 2314, is that no evidence had been introduced that at least one Wedtech shareholder had been deceived by the allegedly fraudulent letters he sent to Wedtech. Brief for Appellant at 28. The issue thus raised, like most of those tendered in the brief on the first appeal, is not whether such evidence was presented, but whether it was required. We are satisfied that the prior panel implicitly concluded that such proof was not required, and we now so hold expressly. 29 The prior panel accepted Wallach's premise that section 2314 does not apply to property taken with the consent of the owner, Wallach I, 935 F.2d at 468 (citing United States v. Bennett, 665 F.2d 16, 22 (2d Cir.1981)), but nonetheless rejected Wallach's self-theft contention on the ground that the obtaining of property from a corporation by means of false representations is a fraud on the corporation and its shareholders, id., notwithstanding knowledge by the officers and directors of the falsity. The crime is complete when the defendant transports in interstate commerce property worth more than $5,000 that the defendant knew was obtained by fraud. Id. at 466 (citing Dowling v. United States, 473 U.S. 207, 214, 105 S.Ct. 3127, 3131-32, 87 L.Ed.2d 152 (1985)). Implicit in the prior opinion is the idea that the fraud upon the corporation is established by showing that the property was obtained by false representations made to the corporation and that any claim of self-theft, i.e., that all the shareholders consented to parting with the corporate property on the basis of the false representations, is a matter of defense. The Government was not required to present evidence from a shareholder that he was misled by the false representation. 30 Section 203 conspiracy violation. Wallach's sufficiency challenge to Count 5, charging a conspiracy to violate 18 U.S.C. § 203, is (i) that the government had failed to prove an agreement between himself and the Wedtech officers that he would lobby while a full-time federal official, and (ii) that the government had failed to prove both that [former Attorney General] Edwin Meese could award defense contracts and [ (iii) ] that Wallach had agreed to lobby Meese regarding any particular category of contracts. Brief for Appellant at 28. In considering these claims, we are burdened, as was the prior panel, with the oblique way they were presented on the prior appeal. In an effort to renew his sufficiency contentions with respect to Count 5, Wallach's current brief airily refers us to specific pages of his main and reply briefs on the prior appeal. Examining those pages, we find a blend of arguments that challenge whether section 203 applies to the conduct that Wallach was alleged to have agreed to, whether the jury was properly instructed, whether the indictment was sufficiently precise, and, sandwiched in among the preceding contentions, some casual references to lack of evidence. We will endeavor to assess the sufficiency contention, to the extent that we are able to extract it. 31 The claim that the evidence failed to show that Wallach agreed to lobby while a federal official is clearly unavailing. As the prior panel expressly stated, 32 [The $300,000 payment was arranged] after Wallach informed Guariglia and Moreno that he anticipated receiving an appointment to a position in the United States Department of Justice under his friend, then-Attorney General Meese. Wallach had advised Guariglia and Moreno that he wished to continue to lobby for Wedtech's interests while a full-time government officer. 33 Wallach I, 935 F.2d at 452. The testimony of Guariglia and Moreno abundantly supported these facts. 34 What Wallach is really contending is not that the evidence did not permit a finding that he agreed to lobby while a federal official but that the jury should have been instructed that it could convict on Count 5 only if it found that lobbying while a federal official was an essential ingredient of his agreement with the Wedtech officials. Otherwise, he contends, the jury might convict him for the lawful activity of lobbying while remaining a private citizen. With the conviction on Count 5 under the charge as given now reversed, and with this interlocutory appeal confined to double jeopardy and related sufficiency of evidence issues alleged to bar retrial, we decline to offer advice to the District Court as to how it should submit Count 5 to the jury upon retrial. 35 Wallach's second sufficiency challenge, as set forth on the prior appeal, is that the evidence failed to permit a finding that Meese had a role in defense procurement. Brief for Appellant Wallach at 43, Wallach I (hereafter Wallach I brief). As a pure sufficiency challenge, this contention is unavailing. The evidence permitted the jury to find that, while serving as Counselor to the President, Meese had instructed his deputy to oversee Wedtech matters and had actively played a role in influencing the Secretary of Defense to award contracts to Wedtech. It was a reasonable inference that Meese would continue to assist Wedtech from his vantage point as Attorney General, a role that afforded him regular access to his fellow cabinet member, the Secretary of Defense. 36 But Wallach's challenge regarding Meese was not purely a sufficiency challenge. His contention was that [t]he alleged conspiracy to secure defense contracts through the lobbying of Edwin Meese did not state [sic ] a conspiracy to violate Section 203. Wallach I brief at 43. This argument sounds as if it is a contention that Count 5 fails to state an offense. The initial difficulty with the argument is that Count 5 is not restricted, as Wallach wants to read it, to a conspiracy to lobby Meese. 2 Count 5 charges a conspiracy in which Wallach would receive compensation for services WALLACH was to render personally at a time when he was to be an officer and employee of the United States in the executive branch, in relation to ... contracts ... before a department ..., namely, Wedtech's efforts to obtain federal Department of Defense manufacturing contracts. That count plainly states an offense. For example, it would permit conviction upon proof that Wallach had accepted compensation in return for his services, while a federal officer, in directly lobbying the Defense Department for Wedtech. The real issue that was raised concerning Meese is whether evidence that Wallach would lobby Meese to lobby the Defense Department suffices to establish a section 203 violation. Since the prior panel did not decide that issue, 3 we feel obliged to do so. 37 Section 203(a), as it read at the time of Wallach's offense, punishes receipt of compensation, while a federal officer, for any services rendered or to be rendered either by himself or another ... in relation to any ... contract ... in which the United States is a party ... before any department.... 18 U.S.C. § 203(a) (emphasis added). 4 We ruled in United States v. Myers, 692 F.2d 823, 853-58 (2d Cir.1982), cert. denied, 461 U.S. 961, 103 S.Ct. 2437, 2438, 77 L.Ed.2d 1322 (1983), that the proscribed services must be rendered before the federal forum in question, declining the Government's invitation to read the statute more broadly to cover the mere rendering of advice as to matters pending before federal agencies. But neither Myers nor any other decision of which we are aware requires that the compensated services of a federal official must involve his direct rendering of service before the department where the matter is pending. We are confident that Congress wished to punish a federal official who accepts compensation not only for services rendered directly before the department where a contract decision is pending but also for services rendered indirectly through another federal official. The statute explicitly applies to services to be rendered either by himself or another. While the latter term most precisely covers the situation where an officer sends an emissary to inform the agency of the officer's own interest in the matter, it lends considerable support to our construction that the statute as a whole also applies to a two-step arrangement in which an officer, for compensation, personally influences another officer to influence the department before which a contract is pending. Since it was reasonably foreseeable that Meese, as Attorney General, would endeavor to influence the Department of Defense on behalf of Wedtech, Wallach's acceptance of compensation to act, after Wallach became a federal official, to influence Meese to do so, is punishable under section 203(a). 38 Wallach's third challenge to Count 5 requires little discussion. As alleged on the prior appeal, his point is that the government plainly failed to identify the category of government contracts with sufficient particularity. Wallach I brief at 45. This is not a sufficiency challenge, but, like the previous claim, it is a legal objection not adjudicated on the prior appeal. In any event, it is unavailing. 39 Section 203(a) requires that the compensated services be rendered in relation to a particular matter. See United States v. Williams, 705 F.2d 603, 622 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 1007, 104 S.Ct. 524-25, 78 L.Ed.2d 708 (1983). We made clear in Williams, however, that section 203(a) does not require pleading or proof of a single contract identified by contract number or similar individualized detail. It is sufficient if the compensation has been received for services to be rendered with respect to a particular category of contracts. Id. The indictment focused on manufacturing contracts from the Department of Defense to Wedtech. Though the scope of the contracts was not quite as narrow as the contracts for the purchase of titanium involved in Williams, id., it easily satisfied the particularity requirement of section 203(a). 40 We thus conclude that all of Wallach's sufficiency challenges and the related legal challenges to Count 5 are without merit.