Court Opinion

ID: 9497810
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:00:27.738655+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:25.745017
License: Public Domain

TRAXLER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment:
I fully concur in the result reached by the majority in this case, and I concur in the majority’s analysis except with regard to the multiplicity issue addressed in Section III. I write separately to explain how I would approach that issue.
In United States v. Dunford, 148 F.3d 385 (4th Cir.1998), we held that the simultaneous possession of multiple firearms generally amounts to a single § 922(g) offense. See id. at 390. However, if there is evidence of what amounts to separate, independent acts of possession — for example, evidence that the guns were obtained in separate transactions — multiple § 922(g) counts may be pursued even if the guns were seized at the same time in the same location.
The general rule is that when a convicted felon acquires two or more firearms in one transaction and stores and possesses them together, he commits only one offense under § 1202(a)(1) [a predecessor of § 922(g) ]. If no more appears than that the defendant was in possession of the several firearms at the same place and moment before their seizure, it is impermissible for a fact-finder to speculate that they may have been acquired in separate transactions or separately stored or treated. If it can be shown, however, that the seized weapons were acquired at different times and places, multiple prosecutions and consecutive sentences are permissible notwithstanding seizure at the same time and place.
United States v. Mullins, 698 F.2d 686, 687 (4th Cir.1983) (citations omitted); see also Dunford, 148 F.3d at 390.
In my view, the facts of this case are insufficient to bring this case within the separate-possession exception recognized in Dunford and Mullins. While the bullet in Goodine’s pocket was discovered at the jail, that was only because the police missed the bullet when they searched Goo-dine at the rooming house. Had a proper search been done, the gun and the bullet would have been seized at the same time, in the same place. Under these circumstances, Goodine’s possession of the bullet was no more temporally or spatially distinct from his possession of the gun at the *211rooming house than were the “possessions” at issue in Dunford, where the defendant’s possession of various groups of guns and ammunition found, among other places, in two separate bedrooms belonging to his children was determined to constitute a single offense. I believe that Goodine’s possession of the gun and the bullet thus must be viewed as constituting a single offense under Dunford. Accordingly, the indictment charging the single offense in two counts was multiplicitous.
That the indictment was multiplicitous, however, does not in this case carry with it any Double Jeopardy implications. The Double Jeopardy Clause “protects defendants against second prosecutions for the same offense after either an acquittal or a conviction and against multiple punishments for the same offense.” United States v. Bowe, 309 F.3d 234, 238 (4th Cir.2002).
Because Goodine has not been convicted of anything, the prohibition against a second prosecution after a conviction is obviously inapplicable. The prohibition against multiple punishments for a single offense, of course, would be implicated if separate sentences were imposed on each count of a multiplicitous indictment. In such cases, the Double Jeopardy problem would be cured by vacating all convictions save one and imposing a single sentence. See, e.g., United States v. Leftenant, 341 F.3d 338, 347-48 (4th Cir.2003), cert. denied, 540 U.S. 1166, 124 S.Ct. 1183, 157 L.Ed.2d 1215 (2004); Dunford, 148 F.3d at 390. But because no sentence, much less multiple sentences, has been imposed on Goodine, the Double Jeopardy concerns of Dunford are not implicated in this case.
Thus, the only Double Jeopardy interest arguably at issue in this case is the protection against successive prosecutions after acquittal. For the protections of the Double Jeopardy Clause to be triggered, however, there must first be “some event, such as an acquittal, which terminates the original jeopardy.” Richardson v. United States, 468 U.S. 317, 325, 104 S.Ct. 3081, 82 L.Ed.2d 242 (1984). It is beyond dispute that the declaration of a mistrial because of the jury’s inability to reach a verdict on the Gun Count did not terminate the original jeopardy. See id. at 326, 104 S.Ct. 3081. And in my view, the “acquittal” on the Bullet Count likewise did not terminate the original jeopardy.
Although there can be but one § 922(g) offense in this case, that single offense could be established by proof that Goodine knowingly possessed either the gun or the bullet. If the government, as it should have done, had alleged in a single count that Goodine unlawfully possessed the gun and the bullet, a conviction could have been sustained on either ground. See United States v. Harvard, 103 F.3d 412, 420 (5th Cir.1997) (“Where a statute specifies several alternative ways in which an offense can be committed, the indictment may allege the several ways in the conjunctive, and - a conviction thereon will stand if proof of one or more of the means of commission is sufficient.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). The jury’s rejection of the bullet allegation would not have precluded a re-trial on the allegation that Goodine knowingly possessed the gun. See United States v. Rivera, 77 F.3d 1348, 1351-52 (11th Cir.1996) (per curiam) (where defendant was charged in a single-count indictment with possessing a firearm on two separate dates, jury’s determination that defendant did not possess the firearm on one of the dates alleged did not preclude retrial after jury was unable to reach a verdict as to defendant’s possession of the firearm on the second date alleged: “When the jury deadlocked as to the August 12, 1994, date, and the district court declared a mistrial, jeopardy did not *212fully terminate. Therefore, the Double Jeopardy Clause does not bar a second prosecution as to the alleged August 12, 1994, possession.”).
The government’s error in charging the offense in separate counts should not change this analysis. The jury’s determination that Goodine did not knowingly possess the bullet did not amount to a complete acquittal of the offense, but instead was simply a determination that Goodine did not commit the offense in one of the two possible means. Since there has been no complete acquittal on the § 922(g) charge, jeopardy has not fully terminated. The government, therefore, is not precluded from re-trying Goodine on the Gun Count, because the indictment error has not prejudiced Goodine in any way. Goo-dine was. not and cannot be subjected to multiple sentences, and there is no more of a multiple-prosecution problem in this case than in any case involving re-trial after a hung jury. To prevent the government from re-trying Goodine on the Gun Count because of the government’s non-prejudicial indictment error would be to give Goo-dine relief from a non-existent Double Jeopardy violation.
Although my analysis of this issue differs from that of the majority, the result is the same. Accordingly, I concur in the result reached by the majority in Section III of the opinion, and I fully concur in the remainder of the opinion.