Court Opinion

ID: 9490298
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:39:27.931854+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:01.238067
License: Public Domain

O’SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The rule of collateral estoppel applies only if an issue was “necessarily decided” in the first case. United States v. McLaurin, 57 F.3d 823, 826 (9th Cir.1995). In the first case, the jury hung on whether Romeo knowingly brought marijuana into the United States. That means, I believe, that the jury could not decide whether Romeo knowingly brought marijuana into the United States. How, then, did the jury “necessarily decide” that Romeo did not knowingly bring marijuana into the United States? Well, quite frankly, I do not think it did.
The jury acquitted Romeo in the first trial on Count 2, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), and hung on Count 1, importation of marijuana in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 952 and 960. To be guilty of possession with intent to distribute, a defendant must (1) knowingly possess marijuana and (2) possess it with the intent to distribute it. To be guilty of importation, a defendant must knowingly bring marijuana into the United States.
The majority concludes that when the jury acquitted Romeo of possession with intent to distribute, it necessarily decided that Romeo did not know that he possessed marijuana in his trunk. Knowledge, the majority explains, was the only issue at trial, for any reasonable juror would have inferred an intent to distribute.- Thus, the rule of collateral estoppel would preclude the government from introducing evidence at the second trial that Romeo knew drugs were in his trunk.
*145I certainly agree with the majority that we must apply the rule of collateral estoppel “with realism and rationality.” Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 444, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 1194, 25 L.Ed.2d 469 (1970). But it seems to me that if the jury necessarily decided that Romeo did not know that drugs were in his trunk, the jury necessarily would have acquitted him of knowingly importing drugs into the United States. The jury, however, did not acquit him. Rather, the jury could not decide whether Romeo knowingly brought drugs into the United States. It seems oddly surrealistic and irrational to hold that the jury necessarily decided that which it confessed it could not decide.
This case is hardly “indistinguishable” from United States v. Seley, 957 F.2d 717 (9th Cir.1992). In Seley, the jury acquitted the defendant of both importation and possession with intent to distribute, but hung on a conspiracy count. We held that when the jury acquitted Seley of importation and possession with intent to distribute, the jury necessarily decided that he did not know that marijuana was in his possession. Such knowledge, however, was not an essential element of the conspiracy count that the jury could not decide. Even though the jury necessarily and unanimously decided that Seley did not know that he possessed marijuana, the jury still could have convicted him of conspiracy. Id. at 722.
Here, quite unlike Seley, we must hold that the jury irrationally could not decide whether Romeo knowingly brought marijuana into the United States because it “necessarily decided” that Romeo did not knowingly possess marijuana. Does not Seley, like Ashe, require that we approach this ease with “realism and rationality”?
I am not persuaded that “[t]he volume of marijuana ... was such that any reasonable juror under the instructions would infer intent to deliver.” Id. at 721. As a matter of law, “it is impossible to know exactly why a jury found a defendant not guilty on a certain charge.” United States v. Watts, — U.S. -, -, 117 S.Ct. 633, 637, 136 L.Ed.2d 554 (1997). As a matter of fact, the district judge-who heard all the evidence and himself instructed the jury-concluded that the issue of distribution may not have been proved under the instruction he gave.
Since I am persuaded that collateral estoppel doesn’t apply under these circumstances, I respectfully dissent.