Court Opinion

ID: 9540552
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:17:24.713074+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:58.387358
License: Public Domain

HATHAWAY, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent in part. I concur with the majority opinion with the exception of the issue of the retrial for felony murder as to the mother. I believe appellant is correct in his assertion that the double jeopardy provisions of the state and federal constitutions barred the state from retrying him on a felony murder theory.
I find the majority’s reliance on United States v. Seley, 957 F.2d 717 (9th Cir.1992), to find Grady v. Corbin, 495 U.S. 508, 110 S.Ct. 2084, 109 L.Ed.2d 548 (1990), inapplicable and misplaced. Seley is distinguishable. There, the defendant was charged with possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, importation of marijuana and conspiracy to import marijuana. He was acquitted by a jury of the first two charges, but the jury hung on the conspiracy charge. The circuit court of appeals affirmed the district court’s order that collateral estoppel barred the use of the evidence regarding the crimes of which the defendant was acquitted in a retrial on conspiracy, requiring that the charge be dismissed, but rejected the double jeopardy argument based on Grady. Conspiracy, unlike felony murder, does not rely on a predicate offense. An “essential element” *407of felony murder is the commission of a felony. In contrast, while the facts regarding possession of marijuana for distribution and importation may have been the basis for the government’s showing of an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy in Se-ley, the offenses themselves are not “essential elements” of the crime of conspiracy.
Appellant was tried and found innocent of the crime of burglary in his first trial.
The state, in order to prove the felony murder of the mother, had to prove the underlying felony of burglary. The essential element of proof in the instant prosecution is the very offense for which appellant has already been prosecuted and found innocent. This clearly violates the holding in Grady that the state in a subsequent prosecution cannot, in that prosecution, establish an “essential element” of the offense charged, here felony murder, by proving conduct of an offense, here burglary, for which the accused has already been acquitted. In the instant case, appellant was acquitted of the felony charge of burglary. There is no predicate felony to support a felony murder charge.