Opinion ID: 4540052
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Collateral Estoppel in Criminal Cases

Text: In Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 443 (1970), the Court observed that “[a]lthough first developed in civil litigation, collateral estoppel has been an established rule of federal criminal law at least since this Court’s decision more than 50 years ago in United States v. Oppenheimer, 242 U.S. 85 [(1916)].” In Oppenheimer, the Court applied collateral estoppel without relying on any constitutional provision. 242 U.S. at 87–88. Because jeopardy had not attached 10 before dismissal of the first prosecution, the Double Jeopardy Clause did not apply. Id. at 86–87. And because the Court did not rule on due-process grounds, id. at 87– 88, the Court must have dismissed the second prosecution based on federal commonlaw collateral estoppel. See Loera v. United States, 714 F.3d 1025, 1029 (7th Cir. 2013) (noting that collateral estoppel applies outside of double jeopardy as a common-law principle—as “very much a common law subject” (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting 18 Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller & Edward H. Cooper, Federal Practice & Procedure § 4403, p. 35 (2d ed. 2002))); see also Note, supra, at 1729 (noting that “criminal collateral estoppel has deep roots in British common law that survived in federal common law”). Though the Double Jeopardy Clause incorporates collateral-estoppel principles, its doing so does not abrogate federal common-law collateral estoppel. B. Collateral Estoppel and the Fifth Amendment’s Double Jeopardy Clause In reviewing state convictions in federal court, it matters greatly whether collateral estoppel is incorporated into a federal constitutional provision. For instance, in Ashe, the Court reviewed a Missouri conviction of a man first prosecuted and acquitted in state court of robbing certain players in a poker game, but later reprosecuted and convicted of robbing a different player at the same game. 397 U.S. at 437–40. The Court struck down the state conviction under the Double Jeopardy Clause, ruling that collateral estoppel barred the state from relitigating whether the defendant had participated in the armed robbery. Id. at 445–46. Over the years, the 11 Court has continued to shape the double-jeopardy doctrine in cases involving counts for which juries convicted, acquitted, and hung.3 But these cases are not in play for Arterbury’s case—everyone agrees that jeopardy never attached during his original prosecution. C. Collateral Estoppel and the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause In cases not implicating the Double Jeopardy Clause, some courts have considered the possibility of incorporating collateral-estoppel principles into the Due Process Clause. Any such analysis begins with Oppenheimer. As noted, that case, with Justice Holmes writing, relied on common-law collateral estoppel, but the Court hinted that the Due Process Clause might reach collateral-estoppel questions. See 242 U.S. at 87. In response to the government’s position that collateral estoppel extended no further than the Double Jeopardy Clause, the Court said this: “It cannot be that the 3 See, e.g., Bravo-Fernandez v. United States, 137 S. Ct. 352, 356–57 (2016) (addressing the preclusive effect of acquitted counts when inconsistent convicted counts were later vacated on appeal on grounds unrelated to the inconsistency); Yeager v. United States, 557 U.S. 110, 122 (2009) (addressing the preclusive effect of acquitted fraud counts on hung insider-trading counts with interrelated facts); Dowling v. United States, 493 U.S. 342, 348–50 (1990) (addressing the preclusive effect of facts involved in acquittal of an earlier prosecution for a different offense, when used under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), and whether the defendant demonstrated that the jury earlier acquitting him necessarily resolved the Rule 404(b) evidence in his favor, that is, that he was not one of the men who entered the victim’s home.); United States v. Powell, 469 U.S. 57, 68 (1984) (declining to apply collateral estoppel from acquitted counts when guilty counts are rationally irreconcilable); Richardson v. United States, 468 U.S. 317, 318–19, 324–25 (1984) (addressing the preclusive effect of two drug counts on which the jury hung in combination with an acquittal on a third drug count); Harris v. Washington, 404 U.S. 55, 55–57 (1971) (per curiam) (addressing the preclusive effect of an acquittal in a deadly bombing against family members in a second prosecution for the death of another family member not included in the first prosecution). 12 safeguards of the person, so often and so rightly mentioned with solemn reverence, are less than those that protect from a liability in debt.” Id. Because the first prosecution had ended with a judgment of acquittal (based on an application of the statute of limitations later rejected in a different case), the Court barred the second prosecution. Id. The Court concluded its opinion with these words: “But the 5th Amendment was not intended to do away with what in the civil law is a fundamental principle of justice [citation omitted] in order, when a man once has been acquitted on the merits, to enable the government to prosecute him a second time.” Id. at 88. The next significant decision concerning due process and collateral estoppel was DiGiangiemo, 528 F.2d 1262. This decision, written by Judge Friendly, concerned a first state prosecution for which jeopardy had not attached (as here, the government dismissed its case after losing a suppression ruling), followed by a second prosecution and conviction. Id. at 1265, 1271. In this circumstance, the court remarked that it was “back to the question which the Court left unanswered in Hoag [v. New Jersey, 356 U.S. 464 (1958)], namely, how far due process, unaided by the double jeopardy clause, requires a state to apply collateral estoppel in favor of a criminal defendant.” Id. at 1265 (emphasis added). Turning to Oppenheimer for help, the court noted that though there “it was unnecessary to determine . . . whether application of collateral estoppel on behalf of a criminal defendant was constitutionally required, overly sensitive ears are not needed to detect due process overtones in Mr. Justice Holmes’ statement.” Id. at 1265–66. Even so, because the 13 defendant had not preserved the collateral-estoppel issue in state court, the court deemed it waived and did not decide the due-process question. Id. at 1266–67, 1270. A third opinion often cited on the due-process effect on criminal collateral estoppel is United States v. Evans, 655 F. Supp. 243 (E.D. La. 1987). In that case, a woman was first prosecuted in federal court in Connecticut and prevailed in suppressing certain evidence. Id. at 243. She later was charged with a different crime in federal court in Louisiana, in which the government sought admission of the earlier suppressed evidence. Id. at 243–44. Even though that case involved two federal prosecutions, the court analyzed the collateral-estoppel issue on due-process grounds, not simply as a matter of federal common law. Id. at 244 (reasoning that “collateral estoppel is doctrinally involved with notions of due process, as well as double jeopardy”). Relying on DiGiangiemo, the court held that the government was collaterally estopped on due-process grounds from relitigating the suppression ruling in the Louisiana court.4 Id. at 244–45.