Court Opinion

ID: 9447201
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:28:46.04076+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:56.491294
License: Public Domain

LUMBARD, Chief Judge
(dissenting in part).
I agree with those parts of Judge FRIENDLY’S opinion which hold that the rule of Dunn v. United States, 1932, 284 U.S. 390, 52 S.Ct. 189, 76 L.Ed. 356, is not applicable to cases heard by the court without a jury, and that the verdicts upon the forgery and uttering counts in this case are inconsistent with each other. However, I cannot accept the view that the proper procedure under these circumstances is to remand the case for a new trial on both the forgery and uttering counts. I think that retrial on the forgery count, upon which defendant was acquitted, is forbidden by the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment and that retrial upon the uttering count is foreclosed for the very reasons which Judge FRIENDLY gives for not permitting inconsistent verdicts of a trial judge to stand. I would therefore order the indictment dismissed.
Maybury was acquitted by the trial court upon the forgery count. Apparently, the trial judge believed that the Government failed to submit sufficient evidence to sustain its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Maybury knew that he lacked authority from the rightful payee when he endorsed the payee’s name on the check. Without such knowledge that he was unauthorized to act, Maybury could not have had the necessary intent to commit forgery.
Having once been acquitted of forgery, I think that the double jeopardy clause prohibits the Government from bringing Maybury to trial again. The Supreme Court has pointed out on numerous occasions that “under the Fifth Amendment * * * a verdict of acquittal is final, ending a defendant’s jeopardy” and that “the Government [may] not secure a new trial * * * even though an acquittal may appear to be erroneous.” Green v. United States, 1957, 355 U.S. 184, 188, 78 S.Ct. 221, 223, 2 L.Ed.2d 199. I find nothing in the facts of the present case which warrant carving out an exception to this historic safeguard against governmental oppression. Surely trial before a judge is not so much less an ordeal that it does not constitute jeopardy whereas trial before a jury does. When the defendant waives trial before a jury he does not waive his rights under the Fifth Amendment.
Judge FRIENDLY seeks to narrow the impact of the double jeopardy protection by the assertion that Maybury, in appealing from his conviction for uttering, has also brought before us for review his acquittal on the forgery count. Proceeding from this premise, he finds apparently that Maybury has “waived” his constitutional protection — that the defendant must “take the privilege of attacking the judgment for inconsistency cum onere.” I cannot accept this premise. I think that it flies in the face of reality and that it is contradictory to the views expressed by the Supreme Court in Green v. United States, supra.
Maybury appealed solely from his conviction for uttering. There is no suggestion anywhere in the record that he wishr ed to bring his acquittal before us for review. Common sense tells us that he would have had no such desire, since he had already been fully vindicated on .that count. Thus, if Judge FRIENDLY means by his opinion that Maybury voluntarily brought any more than his con*907viction before us for review, I believe that he is mistaken.
If, on the other hand, Judge FRIENDLY means that regardless of whether Maybury wishes to bring his acquittal before us, he must do so in order to obtain review and reversal of his uttering conviction, then I think that the Green case is controlling. In Green the Supreme Court held that a defendant tacitly acquitted by a jury of a greater offense but convicted of a lesser included offense, might not be retried for the greater offense after an appeal and reversal of his conviction for the lesser one. The Court found that any other result would place a defendant in the “incredible dilemma” of choosing between an appeal from his conviction with the accompanying risk of conviction for a greater offense upon retrial and no appeal at all. It seems to me that this is precisely the same choice that Judge FRIENDLY’S opinion forces upon May-bury. Either he must risk retrial for forging a check, for which offense he has already been acquitted, or he may not bring an appeal at all. I do not think it helps to say that Green may be distinguished because here it is the acquittal itself which is the ground of appeal. The ground of appeal is not the acquittal but rather the implicit finding of the trial court in acquitting on the forgery count that a necessary element of the crime of uttering — knowledge that the instrument was forged — was not proven. I do not think this ground of appeal is any different for present purposes than the assertion on appeal in Green that there was insufficient evidence to sustain the conviction for second degree murder. I therefore conclude that the double jeopardy clause forecloses retrial upon the forgery count.
This brings me to the question whether Maybury may be retried on the uttering count, upon which he was convicted. I agree that the double jeopardy clause imposes no bar. United States v. Ball, 1896, 163 U.S. 662, 16 S.Ct. 1192, 41 L.Ed. 300. However, I think that the very fact that Maybury was acquitted of forgery because the trial court found that there was not sufficient evidence that he knew that he lacked authority to sign the check would prevent a finding in a second trial for uttering that Maybury knew that the instrument was forged.. I reach this conclusion for two closely related reasons.
First, it is my understanding that the entire rationale of Judge FRIENDLY’S opinion is that a trial judge, unlike a jury, may not render inconsistent verdicts on two counts in an indictment. I agree with this position. But I think that it must follow that whether the inconsistent verdicts are handed down at one trial or at two can make no difference, so long as it is clear that they are inconsistent. The inconsistency between the verdicts in this case will not vanish simply by ordering a retrial on the charge of uttering. In order to find Maybury guilty of uttering at a new trial the judge will be required to determine that the defendant knew the instrument to be forged, and this determination will be inconsistent with Judge Abruzzo’s finding at the first trial that Maybury did not know that he lacked authority to sign the check. The unseemliness of permitting judges to reach inconsistent verdicts will not be lessened by the fact that two trials take place rather than one, or that two different judges reach such verdicts rather than a single judge.
Second, I think that the doctrine of collateral estoppel forecloses a new trial for uttering. That doctrine provides that a fact expressly or necessarily decided in a suit between two litigants may not be redetermined in a new action between the same parties. Thus, determination of the fact of Maybury’s knowledge of his lack of authority favorably to him in the first trial precludes a new determination of the same fact in a second suit. A determination of this same fact favorably to the Government is necessary to a conviction for uttering, for without it knowledge that the instrument was forged is lacking.
I would therefore dismiss the indictment in its entirety.