Court Opinion

ID: 9653939
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:59:21.853075+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:03.971353
License: Public Domain

LEWIS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting). I agree to the reversal but think the order should direct that defendant be discharged; and for this reason: The indictment in this case charges that upon the trial of. this defendant for subornation “it beeame and was then and there a material question in the hearing of said criminal trial whether the said John A. Kuskulis was in the county court house of Huerfano County, in the City of Walsenburg, in the State of Colorado, on the 18th day of June, A. D. 1927,” and that on said trial (for subornation) Kuskulis falsely testified that he was not at said county court' house on said day. So that it appears in the charge in the present ease that in the subor*243nation trial of Kuskulis there was a material issue, whether he was present at the place on the day stated. That issue was therefore finally adjudicated, in said subornation trial. The parties there were the same as they are here. For all that ever can be known, the jury’s estimate of the facts on that issue alone caused it to find a verdict of not guilty in the subornation trial; and now the prosecution in this perjury charge asks a relitigation and another verdict on that same issue. No one would contend that this sort of procedure would be permissible in a civil ease. A material issue that has onee been litigated and decided is never open for relitigation. Hottelet Co. v. Garden City Milling Co. (C. C. A.) 285 F. 693, 696, and eases there eited. The point was discussed by Judge Brown (later Mr. Justice Brown) in United States v. Butler (D. C.) 38 F. 498, wherein he said:
“It certainly strikes one as an anomaly that, after an acquittal for a criminal offense, a party may be put upon trial for perjury, in swearing that he was not guilty of that offense. * * * While I do not find the doctrine of res adjudicata discussed in criminal eases, I see no reason why the general rule regarding estoppels should not apply, especially where the quantum of proof required in the two prosecutions is the same. If this party could be convicted of perjury in swearing to a state of facts which a jury in another case against him has found to be true, it would result that every criminal ease in which the defendant taires the stand and is acquitted could be practically retried upon an indictment for perjury.”
It is true that authority is not in accord on the proposition, as may be seen by the citations in Allen v. United States (C. C. A.) 194 F. 664. 1 Freeman on Judgments (4th Ed.) § 256, is in part this:
“It will be seen from examining the authorities already cited that to render any judgment or other final adjudication proceeding from a court of competent jurisdiction available as a bar in a second action between the same parties or their privies, two things only are essential, viz: 1. That the issue in the second action, upon which the judgment is brought to bear, was a material issue in the first action, necessarily determined by the judgment therein; 2. That the former judgment was upon the merits.”
And section 318:
“The principles applicable to judgments in criminal eases are, in general, identical, so far as the question of estoppel is involved, with the principles recognized in civil eases.”
We have here, then, a charge of perjury, in that, defendant testified falsely, when he was being tried for subornation, that he was not in the county court house on a named day! That is the issue in this case. But this indictment also charges that the same question of fact, which is the issue here, was a material issue in the subornation trial.