Court Opinion

ID: 9465245
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:40:18.659867+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:03.646473
License: Public Domain

JAMES C. HILL, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I concur in the result in this case. I am not prepared to suggest, however, that a prosecutor’s overreaching in revealing to the jury inadmissible and prejudicial facts or contentions which, under the law, ought to produce a mistrial can escape a double jeopardy bar to retrial merely because the district judge erroneously permits the prejudicial material to be presented to the jury and then erroneously declines to grant the mistrial motion which has been forced by prosecutorial misconduct. See United States v. Dinitz, 424 U.S. 600, 611, 96 S.Ct. 1075, 47 L.Ed.2d 267 (1976); United States v. Crouch, 566 F.2d 1311, 1317 (5th Cir. 1978); United States v. Kessler, 530 F.2d 1246, 1256 (5th Cir. 1976).
On the other hand, I am certainly not prepared to suggest that every error made by the trial court in the admission of evidence tendered by the government would bar a retrial even though the evidence thus admitted ought to have produced a mistrial. Such a holding would be at odds with the general rule that a mistrial granted at the defendant’s insistence will ordinarily not preclude a retrial on double jeopardy grounds unless the mistrial motion was forced upon the defendant by prosecutorial or judicial overreaching “motivated by bad faith or undertaken to harass or prejudice.” *1041Lee v. United States, 432 U.S. 23, 32, 97 S.Ct. 2141, 2147, 53 L.Ed.2d 80 (1977); United States v. Dinitz, 424 U.S. at 611-12, 96 S.Ct. 1075; United States v. Jorn, 400 U.S. 470, 485, 91 S.Ct. 547, 27 L.Ed.2d 543 (1971); United States v. Crouch, 566 F.2d at 1316— 19.
I view the error here to be of the sort not involving overreaching. The retrial of this defendant does not amount to double jeopardy.