Court Opinion

ID: 9495705
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:08:39.87351+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:09.570514
License: Public Domain

SACK, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
The issue before the Court, as my colleagues state, is whether the Connecticut *112Supreme Court’s decision with respect to the second trial of Mr. Kruelski “was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,” under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). See ante at 105. They answer the question in the negative. I fully agree. I think that the majority opinion’s discussion of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1, 98 S.Ct. 2141, 57 L.Ed.2d 1 (1978), and United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 98 S.Ct. 2187, 57 L.Ed.2d 65 (1978), ante at 108-09, amply supports that conclusion. Burks and Scott, the “pole stars” guiding our inquiry, ante at 108-09, embody “clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” One “reasonable application” of them is to treat as the determinative question for double jeopardy purposes whether the “state had tried but failed to prove that [the defendant] was culpable for the crimes charged.” Ante at 110. The majority observes that the Connecticut Supreme Court followed that principle. We must therefore, in my view, affirm the judgment of the district court denying the writ.
My colleagues, however, purport to decide not only what a “reasonable application” of Burks and Scott is, but also what the right interpretation of the Double Jeopardy Clause is for these purposes. The point is expertly argued; the argument may be right. But as the majority opinion confirms, there are “commentators” with other views. See ante at 110 n. 8. It seems to me to be entirely unnecessary to the project at hand to decide whether my colleagues, the “commentators,” or anyone else * is right with respect to these devilishly difficult double jeopardy questions. The occasion for us to address these issues will come if and when they are squarely presented to us for decision. But for now, the majority’s conclusion as to what is right (which, happily, the majority now properly characterizes as dicta, id. at 108) is as binding on the courts of this Circuit and the states within it as is the “holding” on the issue by Messrs. Wright, Miller, and Cooper in their treatise, reported by the majority to take a contrary view. Id. at 110 n. 8.
The Connecticut Supreme Court’s decision was not “an unreasonable application of clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” I would have been content thus to answer the only question that seems to me to have been asked.

 For example, the dissenters, in deciding Kruelski’s appeal to the Connecticut Supreme Court, Connecticut v. Kruelski, 250 Conn. 1, 737 A.2d 377 (1999), noted that in Connecticut, the statute of limitations is a question of fact submitted to the jury. Id. at 13-14, 737 A.2d at 383 (McDonald, J., dissenting) (citing Connecticut v. Ali, 233 Conn. 403, 416, 660 A.2d 337, 343-44 (1995)). They argued that "the trial court's determination that that defense bars prosecution necessarily evaluates the sufficiency of the state's evidence for conviction.” Id. at 14, 737 A.2d 377. They therefore would have found that the Double Jeopardy Clause barred a second trial of Kruelski for the same offense. Kruelski, 250 Conn. at 13-14, 737 A.2d at 383. Had the dissenters’ position carried the day, I suspect that we would have found that it, too, was not an "unreasonable application” of Burks and Scott.