Court Opinion

ID: 9797407
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:19:39.013324+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:54:54.592898
License: Public Domain

MANNHEIMER, Judge,
concurring.
I write separately to describe more fully the legal authorities that we found on the question of double jeopardy law presented in this case. These authorities are summarized in the 2007 pocket part to Wayne R. LaFave, Jerold H. Israel, and Nancy J. King, Criminal Procedure (2nd ed.1999), § 25.1, footnote 50 at pp. 825-26.
Judge Coats's lead opinion describes the Second Circuit's decision in Unmited States v. Quinones, 906 F.2d 924 (2nd Cir.1990). The two significant aspects of Quinones are (1) that the defendant knew, when he entered his guilty plea, that the government intended to pursue other related charges, and (2) that the government objected to the defendant's change of plea. Id. at 926.
In Quinones, the defendant argued that "the government's delay in bringing the superseding indictment until after he pled guilty to the original indictment offend[ed] the policy against successive prosecutions for the same transaction." Id. at 928. The See-ond Circuit rejected this argument, concluding that a criminal defendant was barred from employing the double jeopardy clause as a "sword":
[The Supreme Court has made clear that a eriminal defendant is not "entitled to use the Double Jeopardy Clause as a sword." Ohio v. Johnson, 467 U.S. 493, 502, 104 S.Ct. 2536, 2542, 81 L.Ed.2d 425 (1984); see also Jeffers v. United States, 432 U.S. 137, 152-54, 97 S.Ct. 2207, 2217-18, 53 L.Ed.2d 168 (1977).
In Jeffers, the [Supreme] Court rejected a defendant's claim of double jeopardy based upon a guilty verdict on a lesser included offense in the first of two successive trials because the second trial resulted from the defendant's insistence that there be separate rather than consolidated trials. 4832 U.S. at 152-54, 97 S.Ct. at 2217-18. Similarly, in Johnson, the Court held that where a trial court accepts a defendant's plea to lesser included offenses over the prosecution's objection, double jeopardy does not prevent the government from prosecuting the defendant on the remaining, greater offenses. 467 U.S. at 501-02, 104 S.Ct. at 2542-48.
It is true that in both Johnson and Jeffers-unlike the present case-the prosecution initially combined its charges, in one indictment in Johnson or in two indictments handed down on the same day in Jeffers. But, Quinones was nonetheless trying to use the Double Jeopardy Clause as a sword by insisting on a right to plead guilty to the conspiracy and possession counts in the face of government objection and government notice of its intent to indict appellant on the gun count. By pleading guilty to the original indictment, appellant thereby hoped to head off prosecution on the gun count. The government was not insisting on two chances to go after *1164appellant; rather, appellant himself precipitated the two proceedings by the strategy of suddenly tendering his plea to the conspiracy and possession counts.... Under these circumstances, we do not believe that double jeopardy principles bar the superseding indictment.
Quinones, 906 F.2d at 928.
These same two factors characterize the other cases cited in LaFave. Although the courts in these other cases do not rely on precisely the same reasoning as Quinones, they all conclude that a defendant is not entitled to use the double jeopardy clause as a procedural weapon against the government when (1) the defendant knows that the government intends to pursue other related charges, and (2) the defendant pleads guilty to the lesser charges over the government's objection or without the government's knowledge. All of these courts conclude that, in these circumstances, the defendant's guilty plea can not be used as a "tactical maneuver to deny the [government] ... 'one full and fair opportunity to present [its] evidence to an impartial jury'" People v. Jurado, 4 Cal.App 4th 1217, 6 Cal.Rptr.2d 242, 252 (1992), quoting Arizona v. Washington, 434 U.S. 497, 505, 98 S.Ct. 824, 830, 54 L.Ed.2d 717 (1978).
Kameroff's case shares the same two factors that were present in Quinones and these other cases: Kameroff knew that the government intended to pursue a more serious charge, and the government objected to Kameroff's attempt to plead guilty to the less serious charges that were currently pending. I therefore conclude that the result in Kam-eroff's case should be the same as the result reached in Quinones and the other cases cited in LaFave. Even if the district court should have allowed Kameroff to plead guilty to the pending misdemeanor assault charges, Kameroff would not have the right to use his guilty pleas as a double jeopardy "sword" to cut off the State's ability to pursue the felony sexual assault charge.