Court Opinion

ID: 9457317
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:18:28.45432+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:18.074747
License: Public Domain

WINTER, Circuit Judge
(concurring specially):
I agree that the conviction should not be sustained but for reasons different from those stated by my copanelists. My views of the case follow:
Sealfon v. United States, 332 U.S. 578, 68 S.Ct. 237, 92 L.Ed. 180 (1948), held, on the facts of that case, that the defendant’s acquittal of conspiracy to defraud the United States was res judicata of a subsequent prosecution for the substantive offense, although it recognized that ordinarily one may be prosecuted for both crimes. Sealfon prescribed a factual test to determine in any particular case which rule to apply. 332 U.S. at 579, 68 S.Ct. 237. And Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 25 L.Ed.2d 469 (1970), held that the double jeopardy claim embodies the rule of collateral es-toppel that “when an issue of ultimate fact has once been determined by a valid and final judgment, that issue cannot again be litigated between the same parties in any future lawsuit.” 397 U.S. at 443, 90 S.Ct. at 1194. Because the majority concludes that, on the facts here, “the jury ‘necessarily’ had to pass upon the truthfulness of her [defendant’s] ac*1387count,” the majority concludes that the government is forever foreclosed from prosecuting her for perjury.
To such a broad proposition, I cannot assent. In almost every criminal prosecution resulting in acquittal where the defendant has testified, it may be said that the jury passed on the defendant’s credibility and found him truthful. Yet we should not encourage prevarication by saying that necessarily such a defendant is immune from prosecution for perjury.
Ashe tells us that the doctrine of collateral estoppel as an aspect of double jeopardy is to be applied “with realism and rationality.” 397 U.S. at 444, 90 S. Ct. 1189. Rather than to apply Sectlfon and Ashe by rote, i. e., whether defendant’s credibility was litigated at the first trial, I would prefer the rule that an earlier determination of credibility will not foreclose prosecution for perjury under the double jeopardy clause and the included collateral estoppel doctrine if, at the trial for the latter, the government produces new and additional evidence that defendant lied under oath at his first trial sufficient to permit the trier of fact to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that perjury had been committed. At least by dictum, this has been the rule in this circuit for almost sixty years. Allen v. United States, 194 F. 664, 667 (4 Cir. 1912). See also, Note, Perjury by Defendants: The Uses of Double Jeopardy and Collateral Estoppel, 74 Harv.L.Rev. 752, 763 (1961), which expresses approbation of this rule as a proper balance between the deterrent effect of prosecution for perjury and the policy considerations embodied in the double jeopardy clause.
In this ease, we obtained transcripts of both trials after argument. My comparison of them discloses that, at the trial for perjury, the evidence was a mere rehash of the evidence adduced at the first trial. The principal item of difference urged by the government in this appeal, i. e., proof that it was mechanically impossible for the change machine, from which defendant testified that she obtained the marked quarters as change for a dollar bill that was rightfully hers, to have dispensed the marked quarters even if another person inserted them in the machine for coins of smaller denomination, was in fact in evidence at the first trial. It is true that, at the perjury trial, the government sought to bolster this aspect of its case by offering a corroborating witness. But his testimony was not new or different; it was merely cumulative. Because of the identity of the evidence at both trials — but only for this reason — I conclude that the second trial was barred by the double jeopardy clause.