Court Opinion

ID: 9474131
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:48:51.662145+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:55.196355
License: Public Domain

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge, with whom LAY, Chief Judge, and HEANEY, Circuit Judge,
join, dissenting.*
I agree fully with Judge Heaney that the admission of Flittie’s conversation with *947Harris violated the self-incrimination clause of the Fifth Amendment, as interpreted in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). Therefore, even if the Double Jeopardy Clause does not bar this prosecution, Flittie is entitled to a new trial.
As to the double-jeopardy argument, I agree with the Court that the collateral-es-toppel component of this doctrine applies only when the first trial has ended in an acquittal. See Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 459 n. 13, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 1202 n. 13, 25 L.Ed.2d 469 (1970) (Brennan, J., concurring). I therefore do not subscribe to the position taken in Judge Heaney’s original opinion dissenting from the decision reached by the panel. 751 F.2d at 975-77. I do believe, however, for substantially the same reasons given by Judge Heaney as an alternative ground in his present dissent, that the Double Jeopardy Clause bars Flit-tie’s prosecution as an accessory after the fact. I add a few words of explanation.
As the Court says, ante at 936, the Double Jeopardy Clause envisages a number of distinct situations in which prosecution or punishment may be barred. Among these are retrial for the same offense after conviction and a federal rule of collateral estoppel. These two situations are distinct one from the other. Even if Ashe v. Swen-son does not apply, a second prosecution is barred if the second trial is for the same offense of which Flittie was convicted in the first trial. This aspect of the case is discussed in part IA of the Court’s opinion, ante at 936-937, and the conclusion is reached that conspiracy to murder is not the same offense as accessory after the fact to murder, since each crime requires proof of a fact that the other does not, Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 304, 52 S.Ct. 180, 182, 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932). This line of analysis is based on the statutory elements of the two offenses rather than the evidence at trial, Illinois v. Vitale, 447 U.S. 410, 416, 100 S.Ct. 2260, 2265, 65 L.Ed.2d 228 (1980). Therefore, Flittie’s “conviction on the conspiracy charge did not prevent a second prosecution on the accessory count,” ante at 937.
This is true as far as it goes — as the two offenses are not statutorily the same, there is no automatic bar under Vitale to trying Flittie separately on both charges. However, he still may not be convicted on both if the basis of the second is essentially identical to that of the first. Very similiar facts, but a significantly different procedural posture, were presented in Vitale. The defendant there, who had pleaded guilty to failing to reduce speed to avoid an accident, challenged the state’s subsequent attempt to prosecute him for involuntary manslaughter in connection with the same accident. The Supreme Court held that because a manslaughter conviction might be based on evidence other than defendant’s speed, the second prosecution could proceed. However, the Court added, if the manslaughter prosecution actually “relies on and proves a failure to slow ... as the reckless act ..., Vitale would have a substantial claim of double jeopardy,” 447 U.S. at 421, 100 S.Ct. at 2267, a claim the four-member minority characterized as “dispositive.” Id. at 426, 100 S.Ct. at 2270. Unlike Vitale, Flittie has already been convicted twice, apparently on the same grounds. It is to deal with precisely this situation that Vitale left open the possibility that double jeopardy might exist even when two offenses are statutorily not “the same” if the convictions are based on the same evidence.
Even if Vitale had not provided for this situation, an inquiry into the evidence presented in this case should be permitted to determine Flittie’s double-jeopardy claim because the conspiracy statute was embellished by indictment and by jury charge to include conduct subsequent to the substantive crime. The usual concept of conspiracy, both at common law and under modern statutes, is that two or more persons make an agreement to commit a crime. Some statutes, e.g., S.D. Codified Laws Ann. § 22-3-8, also require that one or more of the conspirators commit some overt act to effect the object of the conspiracy. Conceptually, the gist of the offense remains focused on conduct occurring before the commission of the substantive crime. Af*948ter that crime has been committed, the agreement to commit it has obviously been carried out, and there can no longer be any act to effect the object of this agreement, the object having already been attained. Normally, therefore, if only the words of the statute are to be looked at, I would agree that the offense of conspiracy is completely separate from the offense of accessory after the fact.
Here, however, both the indictment charging Flittie with conspiracy and the opinion of the Supreme Court of South Dakota affirming his accessory conviction, State v. Flittie, 318 N.W.2d 346 (1982), give the statute meaning going beyond the traditional concept of conspiracy. The indictment charges that Flittie and Downs conspired to kill Ruth Flittie “[djuring the week immediately preceding the 10th day of October, 1975, and thereafter until on or about the 10th day of May, 1976.” Mrs. Flittie was killed on October 10, 1975, so a good deal of the time period covered by this alleged conspiracy occurred after the crime of murder had been completed. In addition, as the Supreme Court of South Dakota has stated, “the jury in the first trial convicted defendant on the conspiracy charge based on his post-murder conduct.” Id. at 349.
It is this same post-murder conduct that is the basis of the conviction on the accessory charge. This means that in the special circumstances of this case, the Supreme Court of South Dakota has interpreted the state’s conspiracy statute as embodying the same offense as the accessory statute, or, at the very least, that the accessory charge is a lesser included offense of the conspiracy charge. All of the evidence introduced against Flittie on the accessory charge had already been considered by the jury in the first trial, and it was this very evidence that persuaded the first jury to convict Flittie of conspiracy. Thus, although normally what one does after the completed crime is no part of a conspiracy charge, here the offense of conspiracy, as actually charged in the indictment, included post-murder conduct as one of its elements, thereby making the conspiracy offense fully inclusive of the later accessory charge. See also State v. Flittie, supra, 318 N.W.2d at 350-51 (Fosheim, J., dissenting).
A standard aspect of Supreme Court double-jeopardy doctrine holds that a defendant once convicted cannot be thereafter prosecuted for a lesser-ineluded offense. See Garrett v. United States, — U.S. -, 105 S.Ct. 2407, 2416-17, 85 L.Ed.2d 764 (1985). To this rule there seems to be an exception, namely that the second prosecution is permitted if the legislature that defined the offenses in question clearly manifested an intention that both offenses be separately punishable. Missouri v. Hunter, 459 U.S. 359, 368, 103 S.Ct. 673, 679, 74 L.Ed.2d 535 (1983). As Judge Hea-ney says, it is simply inconceivable that the South Dakota legislature intended that Flit-tie’s post-murder conduct be punished as both “conspiracy” and “accessory after the fact,” and the opinion of the Supreme Court of South Dakota does not so hold. The point becomes clear, I think, if one considers what would have happened if, in the original indictment, Flittie had been charged as an accessory after the fact, as well as with murder and conspiracy. Suppose the first trial had gone exactly as it actually did; the jury acquitted Flittie of murder but convicted him of conspiracy on the basis of post-murder conduct. The same jury would necessarily have had to convict Flittie as an accessory after the fact, because the same post-murder conduct underlies this charge. Would the trial court then have been authorized to impose separate punishments on Flittie for both conspiracy and being an accessory? The answer, I think, is clearly “no.” It must follow that a separate punishment cannot be imposed after a second trial. The reasons for double-jeopardy protection become, if anything, greater when multiple trials are involved.
This case involves the very kind of governmental oppression that the Double Jeopardy Clause was intended to prohibit. The State’s decision to prosecute Flittie a second time is obviously based upon its disappointment at the first jury’s verdict of ac*949quittal on the murder charge. Not satisfied with the punishment obtained on the conspiracy charge, the State has now prosecuted Flittie for exactly the same conduct, changing only the legal label technically describing the offense. For these reasons, I would hold the second prosecution barred, and I therefore respectfully dissent.

 Judge BRIGHT joins the portion of this opinion concluding that the Double Jeopardy Clause requires that Flittie’s conviction be set aside.