Opinion ID: 2042851
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Burks and Trial Error

Text: Suarez complains that the Appellate Division's decision blurs the distinction between reversals for legal insufficiency and trial error, asking [I]f Mr. Suarez can be retried because his legal-insufficiency dismissal was merely trial error, then why not Mr. Burks? In Burks, the Supreme Court clarif[ied] the distinction between the double jeopardy effects of appellate reversal for insufficient evidence and appellate reversal for trial error,  concluding that the Double Jeopardy Clause rules out a second trial for an offense for which the reviewing court has found insufficient evidence ( Anderson, 327 F3d at 1155). As a result, the answer to Suarez's question is that he is to be retried for intentional manslaughter, not depraved indifference murder, the only count we reversed for evidentiary insufficiency. By contrast, in Burks the prosecutor sought to try the defendant for violating a provision of the United States Code after his conviction for violating this very same provision had been reversed on the ground of legal insufficiency. As we stated in Biggs, citing Burks, dismissal of a count due to insufficient evidence is tantamount to an acquittal for purposes of double jeopardy and protects a defendant against additional prosecution for such count  ( Biggs, 1 NY3d at 229 [emphasis added]; see also Anderson, 327 F3d at 1155 [noting that Supreme Court in Greene v Massey (437 US 19, 25 n 7 [1978]) declined to reach the question of whether the Burks exception barred a subsequent prosecution for a lesser included offense]). Upon Suarez's appeal of his conviction, we concluded that there was insufficient evidence of depraved indifference murder as a matter of law; we also stated that there was, in fact, sufficient evidence to support an intent to kill (although the jury acquitted Suarez of intentional murder and he therefore may not be retried for this crime) or to cause serious physical injury ( Suarez, 6 NY3d at 216). In sum, while Burks precludes Suarez's retrial for depraved indifference murder, it does not stand in the way of his retrial for intentional manslaughter.