Court Opinion

ID: 9452350
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:38:04.429362+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:10.824043
License: Public Domain

J. SPENCER BELL, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The appellant Davis and co-defendants were charged in a five-count indictment with operating an illicit still. All of the offenses were alleged to have taken place on the same day, and all defendants were charged in .each count. The first count charged the defendants with having custody and control of the apparatus, the second with having worked at the still, the third with having made or caused to be made mash fit for distillation, the fourth with unlawful possession, and the fifth with having removed, deposited or concealed whiskey. At the first trial, the jury found Davis not guilty as to counts one, three, four and five, but failed to agree on a verdict as to count two — working at an unregistered still. A mistrial was declared as to this count, and Davis was subsequently retried, convicted and sentenced on this same count. The entire evidence of the Government against Davis at both trials1 consisted of the testimony of five agents who observed the still in operation on the afternoon of September 1, 1964, over a period of about a half hour before raiding it. Their observations were made through a telescope located in the woods about 50 yards away. They testified that they saw Davis, whom they recognized from previous acquaintance, pour malt or meal into the fermenter barrels and pour whiskey from a foot tub into a liquor barrel located under a shed at the still site 2 He was not captured at the still, as were his co-defendants. Davis offered only alibi evidence. The burden of his defense was that he was not at the still and that the agents were mistaken in their identification of him.
I think Davis was correct in his contention that the principle of collateral es-toppel operated to bar the introduction of the Government’s evidence at the second trial. Collateral estoppel operates, following a final judgment, to establish conclusively a matter of fact or law for the purposes of a later law suit on a different cause of action between the parties to the original action in which the matter was determined. It is fully applicable in criminal cases. Sealfon v. United States, 332 U.S. 575, 578, 68 S.Ct. 237, 92 L.Ed. 180 (1948); United States v. Oppenheimer, 242 U.S. 85, 87, 37 S.Ct. 68, 61 L.Ed. 161 (1916). I do not think the jury’s inability to agree on the second count in the first trial has any relevance whatsoever to the application of the doctrine at the second trial, because in its verdict on the other counts it found the real fact at issue — Davis’s presence at the still — in favor of Davis. It is true, of course, that if the jury, in the first trial, instead of disagreeing, had convicted Davis on the second count while acquitting him on the others, the court could have accepted these inconsistent verdicts though they could not be rationalized. Dunn v. United States, 284 U.S. 390, 52 S.Ct. 189, 76 L.Ed. 356 (1932). This, however, does not justify the Government, as it now contends, in putting the defendant to a second trial on the identical evidence even for a crime different from those set forth in the four counts for which he was acquitted. This is true if that crime arises out of the *782same conduct and it is apparent from an examination of the entire record in the first trial that the jury, in its acquittal of Davis on the other four counts, found for him on the facts which the Government must prove in the second trial in order to convict. Sealfon v. United States, supra. See Yawn v. United States, 244 F.2d 235 (5 Cir. 1957); United States v. Simon, 225 F.2d 260 (3 Cir. 1955); United States v. De Angelo, 138 F.2d 466 (3 Cir. 1954).
Notwithstanding the majority’s meticulous analysis of the separate elements of the several crimes involved in making illicit whiskey, the one real issue before the jury was clearly and simply a question of identification. While it is true that the testimony of the five government agents regarding what they observed at the still varied in minor particulars from the first to the second trial, the Government’s entire case against Davis in both trials consisted of the agents’ observations through a telescope on a single occasion. The majority opinion asserts that the jury reasonably may have been convinced of the agents’ identification of Davis since the four counts of which he was acquitted required a finding of something more than mere presence. The majority opinion fails to point out that presence alone was enough to convict the defendant on two of the four counts of which he was acquitted, and the district court carefully instructed the jury to that effect.3 Although there is a remote possibility, of course, that the jury may have believed that Davis was present but not guilty of any of the four counts of which they acquitted him, it is highly improbable in view of the instruction as to the statutory presumptions created by presence. It is almost always possible in a criminal case to hypothesize alternative bases for a jury verdict, and to do so in the meticulous manner of the majority opinion rather than to look at the evidence as a whole is to vitiate, to a great degree, the doctrine of collateral estoppel as applied to criminal cases.
Since collateral estoppel applies only where the second case is based on a different cause of action in a civil suit or on a different criminal offense in a criminal action, the question of what facts in issue in the second trial were actually determined in the first is often a difficult one. In making its determination, the majority has applied the test generally applied in civil cases and for which the majority cites only civil authority (Restatement, Judgments § 68, comment K (1942), and James, Civil Procedure § 11.20 (1965)): “that the party seeking to foreclose reconsideration of an issue must show that it logically must have constituted the basis of the verdict.” In my view, the very different natures of civil and criminal litigation preclude the use of the same test in determining what facts have been previously determined for purposes of collateral estoppel. In a civil action the court must be extremely cautious in making this determination because an error in favor of the party seeking application of collateral estoppel could conceivably amount to a violation of the other party’s right not to be deprived of his property without due process. This factor is greatly diminished when the party against whom the doctrine is applied is not a private litigant, but the prosecution in a criminal case. In a criminal case the liberty of the defendant is at stake, not merely his rights and liabilities in a civil matter, and the predominating policy for applying collateral estoppel is the policy of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment— to prevent harassment of the defendant and his being subjected to a second trial.
It seems to me, therefore, that in a criminal case the correct test to be applied in determining what issues have been previously found for the defendant is the test used by the Second Circuit in United States v. Kramer, 289 F.2d 909 (2 Cir. 1961). In that case the defend*783ant was first tried on charges of the substantive offense of burglary and acquitted. He was then charged with conspiracy to commit the same burglaries. Although the court pointed out that the elements of the crimes of conspiracy and burglary are different and therefore require different proof, it held, using the words of the Supreme Court in Sealfon v. United States, supra, that “the core of the prosecutor’s case was in each case the same.”
It seems to me beyond quibble that the “core” of the Government’s case in both trials of Davis was the question of whether Davis was present at the still and that the jury in acquitting Davis on four of the five counts in the first trial decided that issue in the defendant’s favor. That trial was a full and fair hearing and a definitive adjudication of the matter. It is reason enough to apply collateral estoppel that courts must make an end to litigation but
“More important, to permit the Government to force a defendant who has won an acquittal to relitigate the identical question on a further charge arising out of the same course of conduct, selected by the Government from the extensive catalogue of crimes furnished it in the Criminal Code, would permit the very abuses that led English judges to develop the rule against double jeopardy long before it was enshrined in the Fifth Amendment, 8 Holdsworth, History of English Law, 614, — and still longer before the proliferation of statutory offenses deprived it of so much of its effect. See Mr. Justice Brennan’s separate opinion in Abbate v. United States, 1959, 359 U.S. 187, 196, 201, 79 S.Ct. 666, 3 L.Ed.2d 729. The very nub of collateral estoppel is to extend res judicata beyond those cases where the prior judgment is a complete bar. The Government is free, within the limits set by the Fifth Amendment, see United States v. Sa-bella, 2 Cir., 1959, 272 F.2d 206, 211, to charge an acquitted defendant with other crimes claimed to arise from the same or related conduct; but it may not prove the new charge by asserting facts necessarily determined against it on the first trial, no matter how unreasonable the Government may consider that determination to be.” Judge Friendly writing for the court in United States v. Kramer, 289 F.2d 909, 916 (2 Cir. 1961). [Footnote omitted.]
I would reverse the conviction.

. The brief for the Government concedes: “At the second trial the Government placed the identical witnesses used in the first trial on the stand and their testimony was substantially the same as that given by the same witnesses in the first trial.” Appellee’s Brief, p. 3.

. At the first trial, Davis was seen “bending over” or “looking into” the whiskey barrel; at the second trial this became pouring whiskey into it.

. The court charged the jury that under the statutory presumptions of 26 U.S.O. § 5601(b) (1) and (3) (1964), they could find the defendant guilty of counts one and three if they found that he was present at the still.