Court Opinion

ID: 9469521
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:42:52.508928+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:26.018689
License: Public Domain

McWILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I would deny the relief sought by the United States. To grant the relief sought *667by the United States would in my view constitute unprecedented action on our part and would violate the Double Jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment.
At the end of the government’s case the district court granted the defendants’ Rule 29 motion and entered a judgment of acquittal as to counts 1 through 15 in the indictment. The district court’s Memorandum Opinion, dated May 14,1982, sets forth with sufficient particularity for me the basis for the district court’s granting of the defendants’ Rule 29 motion. In this regard, see in particular pages 3, 4, and 5 of the Memorandum Opinion. After entry of that judgment of acquittal, the defendants, in my view, were no longer in jeopardy on counts 1 through 15, even though two counts of the original seventeen-count indictment remained for submission to the jury, and the jury for that reason was not discharged.
The majority of this Court, by its action of this date, has, in effect, ordered that the district court’s judgment of acquittal be vacated and has directed the district court to submit counts 1 through 15 to the jury. By so doing, the majority has reinstated a proceeding that was previously terminated by action of the district court under Rule 29. Reinstatement of criminal charges previously terminated by order of a trial court, which termination order is permitted by rule, for the purpose of compelling the trial court to submit the counts in question to the jury violates double jeopardy rights. When the district court entered a judgment of acquittal under Rule 29 on counts 1 through 15, the defendants at that point were no longer in jeopardy as to those counts. By virtue of the present action of the majority of this Court, the defendants are now again in jeopardy on those counts.
My attention has not been drawn to any reported case where an appellate court has ordered a trial court, in the middle of a trial, to reinstate counts where the trial court had entered a judgment of acquittal under Rule 29 at the end of the government’s case. In voting to deny the relief here sought by the United States, I rely on my understanding of such cases as Fong Foo v. United States, 369 U.S. 141, 82 S.Ct. 671, 7 L.Ed.2d 629 (1962); United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., 430 U.S. 564, 97 S.Ct. 1349, 51 L.Ed.2d 642 (1977); and United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 98 S.Ct. 2187, 57 L.Ed.2d 65 (1978). In Scott, at page 91, 98 S.Ct. at 2193, appears the following pertinent language:
A judgment of acquittal, whether based on a jury verdict of not guilty or on a ruling by the court that the evidence is insufficient to convict, may not be appealed and terminates the prosecution when a second trial would be necessitated by a reversal.
To me, the reinstatement in the instant case of the fifteen counts when the district court has previously entered a judgment of acquittal based on a determination, permitted by Rule 29, that the government’s evidence is insufficient to convict is a form of “second trial” which violates the Double Jeopardy clause.
The fact that the majority in the instant case have, in a sense, simply stayed the district court’s judgment of acquittal does not change my thinking. The effect of such staying action is to require the district court to submit counts 1 through 15 to the jury. Such, in my view, is not contemplated by Rule 29, and is repugnant to the Double Jeopardy clause.