Court Opinion

ID: 9469292
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:36:32.277706+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:18.893071
License: Public Domain

HATCHETT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. The majority opinion states that “[ajbsent a proffer of evidence demonstrating a nonfrivolous double jeopardy claim there is no obligation to hold an evidentiary hearing pursuant to Stricklin." In United States v. Stricklin, 591 F.2d *8451112, 1117 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 963, 100 S.Ct. 449, 62 L.Ed.2d 375 (1979), the Fifth Circuit adopted the reasoning of United States v. Inmon, 568 F.2d 326 (3d Cir. 1977), in establishing procedural rules for a pretrial double jeopardy hearing with regard to evidentiary requirements such as the burdens of going forward and persuasion. In requiring the defendant to meet its burden of going forward by tendering a prima facie nonfrivolous double jeopardy claim, the Stricklin court assumed that the defendant would make this showing at the pretrial double jeopardy hearing. The court did not require that such a showing be made as a prerequisite to holding a hearing. Nor does Stricklin require, as the majority opinion posits, that the defendant state what “might [be] accomplished by holding such a hearing.” On the contrary, the Inmon court stated that “there must be a pretrial proceeding in which an appropriate record may be made to test a double jeopardy claim .... ” Inmon, 568 F.2d at 329 (emphasis added).
The district court in the instant case erred in neglecting to conduct a pretrial evidentiary proceeding in which a record could have been made to test the double jeopardy claim. Since a question exists of factual manipulation by the government in defining the conspiracy charged, the failure to conduct the hearing is critical. Similarly, the Stricklin court evinced a concern for this problem, as it stated:
The government is clearly in a better position to show that the crime charged in the present indictment is not the same as the one charged in the previous indictment than the defendant is to show that the crimes are the same .... Since the government controls the particularity of an indictment, it should bear the responsibility for any ambiguities resulting in its vagueness that are left unresolved by a bill of particulars.
Stricklin, 591 F.2d at 1118-19.
I also disagree with the conclusion that, since appellants were not placed in jeopardy under the Pennsylvania indictment, that indictment is irrelevant in determining whether appellants are currently charged with the same conspiracy of which they were acquitted in the prior Ohio prosecution. The finding that the Pennsylvania conspiracy was subsumed by the conspiracy charged in the earlier Ohio indictment compels the conclusion that the Ohio conspiracy continued through the time alleged in the Pennsylvania indictment.
I therefore would reverse and remand with instructions to conduct the requisite evidentiary hearing, which also would clarify these questions.