Court Opinion

ID: 9467409
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:48:00.449232+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:19.945284
License: Public Domain

McKAY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
In Lee v. United States, 432 U.S. 23, 97 S.Ct. 2141, 52 L.Ed.2d 80 (1977), the Supreme Court characterized the rule laid down in United States v. Dinitz, 424 U.S. 600, 96 S.Ct. 1075, 47 L.Ed.2d 267 (1976), as follows: “[T]here was no double jeopardy barrier to petitioner’s retrial unless the judicial or prosecutorial error that prompted petitioner’s motion was ‘intended to provoke’ the motion or was otherwise ‘motivated by bad faith or undertaken to harass or prejudice’ petitioner.” 432 U.S. at 33-34, 97 S.Ct. at 2147 (quoting United States v. Dinitz, 424 U.S. at 611, 96 S.Ct. at 1081) (emphasis added).
The Court’s failure to find a double jeopardy violation in Lee was based on the majority’s conclusion that the prosecution’s conduct did not evidence bad faith. That element has been supplied here by our own decision in the previous appeal of this case, United States v. Rios, 611 F.2d 1335 (10th Cir. 1979). There we effectively held that the prosecutor’s comments constituted gross prosecutorial misconduct:
The effect of these assertions before the jury was that defense counsel’s investigator was clearly charged with contriving the defense testimony, with no factual basis to justify such a serious charge. Similar comments have been condemned by this court recently in United States v. Siviglia, No. 76-1914 (10th Cir. 6/5/78) (unpublished). There counsel argued that a witness had lied because defense counsel had told him to do so. We emphatically stated (slip op. 33-34):
We hold and conclude that the prosecutor’s comments constituted gross prosecutorial misconduct requiring reversal of Siviglia’s conviction ....
Second, there were remarks clearly directed at the appellant in the closing rebuttal, drawing an inference that appellant had threatened the safety of the Vega brothers who were testifying against him. There was no evidence linking the appellant to any such threats to the Vegas and the innuendo was unfounded and unfair. . ..
Third, there was a strong statement of the prosecuting attorney’s conclusion that the appellant was a large dealer in heroin....
We must agree that the effect of this rebuttal argument was to impress the jury with the prosecuting attorney’s personal conclusion that the appellant was guilty. Such remarks expressing the personal opinion of the prosecuting attorney have been emphatically disapproved.. . .
... In such a case, with so much riding on the credibility of the appellant, and in view of the errors discussed, we must hold that the prosecutorial misconduct was prejudicial error which denied appellant a fair trial.
*731United States v. Rios, 611 F.2d 1335, 1342-43 (10th Cir. 1979) (footnotes and citations omitted). Such conduct is, in my opinion, tantamount to bad faith.
To suggest that the double jeopardy clause is not violated unless the defendant can show (presumably only through the prosecutor’s confession) that the subjective purpose of the prosecutor was to obtain a mistrial invites the prosecution to go as far as it wishes, knowing that the only sanction it faces is a new trial. Such a conclusion offends the spirit of Dinitz and Lee and the requirements of the double jeopardy clause. Any suggestion to the contrary in our previous cases, see United States v. Leonard, 593 F.2d 951 (10th Cir. 1979), should not be followed.