Opinion ID: 595185
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Does double jeopardy protection bar retrial because of prosecution misconduct?

Text: 9 Both sides recognize that a defendant who secures a reversal of his conviction because of a defect in the proceedings leading to conviction normally obtains from the Double Jeopardy Clause no insulation against retrial. See Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1, 14-16, 98 S.Ct. 2141, 2148-50, 57 L.Ed.2d 1 (1978). The principal exception is a reversal for insufficiency of the evidence. Id. at 16-17, 98 S.Ct. at 2149-50. Both sides also recognize that a further exception arises in some circumstances involving misconduct by a prosecutor, but they differ sharply on the scope of that further exception. Their differences arise from disagreement as to the teaching of Oregon v. Kennedy, 456 U.S. 667, 102 S.Ct. 2083, 72 L.Ed.2d 416 (1982). 10 Kennedy concerned a state court criminal trial that ended when a defendant's motion for a mistrial was granted. The defendant sought the mistrial after the prosecutor had asked a witness a prejudicially improper question. The trial court then denied a motion to preclude retrial on double jeopardy grounds, after finding that the prosecutor had not intended to precipitate the mistrial. The state appellate court reversed, concluding that retrial was barred, regardless of the prosecutor's intent, simply because the prosecutor's misconduct constituted overreaching. See id. at 670, 102 S.Ct. at 2086. 11 Reviewing this ruling, the Supreme Court acknowledged that its prior decisions had created some ambiguity as to the standard to be applied in assessing a prosecutor's misconduct for purposes of determining whether, under the Double Jeopardy Clause, a mistrial precipitated by such misconduct precluded a retrial. See id. at 677-79, 102 S.Ct. at 2090-92. Resolving the ambiguity, the Court rejected the idea that misconduct alone barred a retrial and ruled instead that the circumstances in which the Clause would bar a retrial are limited to those cases in which the conduct giving rise to the successful motion for a mistrial was intended to provoke the defendant into moving for a mistrial. Id. at 679, 102 S.Ct. at 2091-92; accord United States v. Dinitz, 424 U.S. 600, 611, 96 S.Ct. 1075, 1081-82, 47 L.Ed.2d 267 (1976). 12 The Government reads Kennedy as limited to its context of a criminal trial that ends with the granting of a defendant's motion for a mistrial. In the Government's view, Kennedy affords Wallach no benefit because he did not even move for a mistrial, much less obtain one; indeed, the trial ended, not with a mistrial, but with a conviction. On the other hand, Wallach reads Kennedy without the limitation of the mistrial context and extracts from it a rule of more general application: The Supreme Court's rationale is that the Double Jeopardy Clause bars a second prosecution when the prosecutor engages in serious misconduct with the intention of preventing an acquittal. Brief for Appellant at 15. 13 We have some doubt that the Supreme Court expected its carefully worded statement of the rule in Kennedy to be extended beyond the context of a trial that ends with the granting of a defendant's motion for a mistrial. See Kennedy, 456 U.S. at 676, 102 S.Ct. at 2088-89 (stating, in dictum, that the Double Jeopardy Clause does not bar retrial of defendant whose conviction is reversed on appeal on the same grounds as those sought in an unsuccessful mistrial motion). The decision proceeds from the premise that the Double Jeopardy Clause affords a criminal defendant a 'valued right to have his trial completed by a particular tribunal.'  Id. at 671-72, 102 S.Ct. at 2086-87 (quoting Wade v. Hunter, 336 U.S. 684, 689, 69 S.Ct. 834, 837, 93 L.Ed. 974 (1949)). Obviously a defendant, like Wallach, whose trial ends with a conviction has suffered no impairment of that valued right. 14 Yet there is force to Wallach's argument for some sort of extension. Since Kennedy bars a retrial on jeopardy grounds where the prosecutor engages in misconduct for the purpose of goading the defendant into making a successful mistrial motion that denies the defendant the opportunity to win an acquittal, the Supreme Court might think that the Double Jeopardy Clause protects a defendant from retrial in some other circumstances where prosecutorial misconduct is undertaken with the intention of denying the defendant an opportunity to win an acquittal. 15 But an extension of Kennedy beyond the mistrial context cannot be as broad as the rule for which Wallach contends. Every action of a prosecutor in the course of a trial is taken with the intention of preventing an acquittal. See Kennedy, 456 U.S. at 674, 102 S.Ct. at 2088-89 (Every act on the part of a rational prosecutor during a trial is designed to 'prejudice' the defendant by placing before the judge or jury evidence leading to a finding of his guilt.). If the rationale of Kennedy were as broad as claimed by Wallach, the Double Jeopardy Clause would bar retrial of every defendant whose conviction is reversed because of intentional misconduct on the part of a prosecutor. For example, knowing use of perjured testimony that could have affected the judgment of the jury would result not only in reversal of a conviction, see United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. at 103, 96 S.Ct. at 2397-98; Napue v. Illinois, 360 U.S. 264, 272, 79 S.Ct. 1173, 1178-79, 3 L.Ed.2d 1217 (1959), but also in a bar to retrial on jeopardy grounds. The Supreme Court could not possibly have mandated that result in Kennedy. Such a result would obliterate the precise distinction drawn in Kennedy between misconduct that merely results in a mistrial and misconduct undertaken for the specific purpose of provoking a mistrial. Only the latter circumstance creates a bar to retrial. 16 If any extension of Kennedy beyond the mistrial context is warranted, it would be a bar to retrial only where the misconduct of the prosecutor is undertaken, not simply to prevent an acquittal, but to prevent an acquittal that the prosecutor believed at the time was likely to occur in the absence of his misconduct. If jeopardy bars a retrial where a prosecutor commits an act of misconduct with the intention of provoking a mistrial motion by the defendant, there is a plausible argument that the same result should obtain where he does so with the intent to avoid an acquittal he then believes is likely. The prosecutor who acts with the intention of goading the defendant into making a mistrial motion presumably does so because he believes that completion of the trial will likely result in an acquittal. That aspect of the Kennedy rationale suggests precluding retrial where a prosecutor apprehends an acquittal and, instead of provoking a mistrial, avoids the acquittal by an act of deliberate misconduct. Indeed, if Kennedy is not extended to this limited degree, a prosecutor apprehending an acquittal encounters the jeopardy bar to retrial when he engages in misconduct of sufficient visibility to precipitate a mistrial motion, but not when he fends off the anticipated acquittal by misconduct of which the defendant is unaware until after the verdict. There is no justification for that distinction. 17 Applying this limited extension of Kennedy to Wallach's case, however, avails him nothing. In the first place, it is entirely unrealistic to think that the prosecution at Wallach's trial apprehended an acquittal. The evidence against Wallach and his co-defendants was quite strong. The prosecution had every reason to anticipate a conviction. Though not explicitly shouldering a burden to persuade us that the prosecution apprehended an acquittal, Wallach relies on the prior panel's conclusion that had the jury been aware of Guariglia's perjury it probably would have acquitted the defendants. Wallach I, 935 F.2d at 458. We are entirely confident that this conclusion, reached by the prior panel after careful consideration of the entire record in the course of appellate review, indeed only after further consideration following an initial decision, see United States v. Wallach, No. 89-1544 (2d Cir. Aug. 13, 1991) (Order amending opinion), was not in the mind of the prosecutors at any time during Wallach's trial, and would not have been in their minds, even if they had thought that Guariglia's denial of gambling was false. 18 Moreover, this is not a case involving deliberate misconduct that might, if an acquittal were apprehended, invoke a double jeopardy bar to retrial. The prosecutors certainly did not malevolently elicit Guariglia's initial contention that he had ceased gambling. That assertion added nothing to the proof against Wallach or his co-defendants. Wallach does not contend otherwise. Instead, his point is that once the cross-examination put in issue the credibility of Guariglia's assertion, the prosecutors must have known that Guariglia was lying, yet they permitted his assertion to stand and sought to rehabilitate their witness by eliciting from him false explanations for his activities at the Tropicana casino. 19 On the prior appeal, the panel concluded, at most, that the prosecutors should have known of Guariglia's perjury. Wallach I, 935 F.2d at 457. There was no determination that the prosecutors had actual knowledge. Even the suggestion of possible conscious avoidance of knowledge was advanced most tentatively: We fear that ... the prosecutors may have consciously avoided recognizing ... that Guariglia was not telling the truth. Id. (emphasis added). Moreover, in denying the defendants' motion for a new trial, made after disclosure of Guariglia's gambling in Puerto Rico, Judge Owen expressly found that there was no evidence that the prosecution had any knowledge of the perjury. See also id. at 473 (Altimari, J., concurring). Wallach strenuously invites us to make a contrary finding based on our own review of the record. Having reviewed the record, we conclude that Judge Owen's finding should not be disturbed. 20 Thus, the factual predicate for extending Kennedy to bar Wallach's retrial--deliberate prosecutorial misconduct undertaken to avoid an acquittal that the prosecutors believed was likely in the absence of their misconduct--is totally lacking. 21