Court Opinion

ID: 9478181
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:42:26.514444+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:17.278092
License: Public Domain

NIEMEYER, District Judge:
Melvin W. Martin was tried and convicted of the misdemeanor of vandalism in the General District Court for the City of Bue-na Vista, Virginia for breaking a glass door to the cashier’s booth of a gas station on the night of July 23, 1984. Shortly thereafter he was tried and convicted of the felony of attempted breaking and entering with the intent to commit larceny in the Circuit Court for the City of Buena Vista for the entering of that booth. The same incident gave rise to the separate charges in the two courts. After exhausting state remedies, Martin filed a petition in the District Court below for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 contending that he was twice put in jeopardy for the same offense. Concluding that the offenses were not the same for double jeopardy *959purposes, the District Court denied his petition. We affirm.
I
Well after midnight on the rainy evening of July 23, 1984, a witness, while riding in his automobile, observed a person pushing and pulling on the sliding glass window of a cashier’s booth at a gas station in the City of Buena Vista, Virginia, which was closed for the night. The witness turned around and came back to the station, but he did not then see the person. Nevertheless, he drove to the police station and reported the incident.
When Officer Angus investigated the report, he observed someone dressed in blue jeans and a green parka kneeling in front of a glass door to the gas station booth, the bottom half of which was shattered, with his hand inside the door. The person had a stick and was making a “raking motion” toward the cigarette machine in the booth. When Officer Angus attempted to make an arrest, the person fled, jumped into a nearby creek, and disappeared into the bushes. Returning to the gas station, Officer Angus found fishing gear nearby, including a tackle box with a prescription bottle inside. Officer Angus knew the person whose name was on the prescription as a friend of defendant Martin’s grandmother, and ordered a stakeout of her house. He also staked out the gas station.
One half hour later, defendant Martin came from the creek toward the station, sat where the tackle box had been, and was then arrested. At the time of arrest, Martin was wet and was wearing blue jeans and a green parka.
Martin was tried in the General District Court, convicted of the misdemeanor of vandalism for damaging the glass in the door, and sentenced to 60 days. The statute under which he was convicted, Va.Code Ann. § 18.2-137, provides in pertinent part:
“If any person, unlawfully, but not feloniously, ... destroy, deface or injure any property, real or personal, not his own, ... he shall be guilty of a Class I misdemeanor.”
A few months later Martin was tried in the Circuit Court for the felony of attempted breaking and entering with the intent to commit larceny. The underlying felony of breaking and entering is codified at Va. Code Ann. §§ 18.2-90 and 18.2-91, the pertinent parts of which provide:
“§ 18.2-90
If any person ... in the nighttime enters without breaking or at any time breaks and enters ... any office, shop, storehouse ... with intent to commit murder, rape or robbery, he shall be deemed guilty of statutory burglary, which offense shall be a Class 3 felony.
§ 18.2-91
If any person does any of the acts mentioned in 18.2-90 with the intent to commit larceny, or any felony other than murder, rape or robbery, he shall be deemed guilty of statutory burglary.”
At his trial Martin, testifying against the advice of his attorney, claimed that on the evening of his arrest he had drunk almost all of a fifth of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, a twelve-pack of beer and a bottle of Mad Dog wine. He testified that he passed by the station where he stopped to urinate in the alley. When he wanted to light a cigarette, he had no matches and thought he could find some at the gas station. He claimed that because he was drunk he fell accidentally against the door and shattered the glass. He denied stealing anything. He was convicted in the Circuit Court and sentenced to two years.
II
The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment prohibits a second prosecution for the same offense after acquittal; a second prosecution for the same offense after conviction; and multiple punishments for the same offense. North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 717, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 2076, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969). Whether two offenses are the same for purposes of double jeopardy has been visited frequently by the Supreme Court since its seminal decision in Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 52 S.Ct. 180, 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932), *960in which it stated that “where the same act or transaction constitutes a violation of two distinct statutory provisions, the test to be applied to determine whether there are two offenses or only one, is whether each provision requires proof of a fact which the other does not.” 284 U.S. at 304, 52 S.Ct. at 182. In Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161, 97 S.Ct. 1221, 53 L.Ed.2d 187 (1977), the Court recognized that the Blockburger test focuses on the proof necessary to prove the statutory elements of each offense, rather than on the actual evidence presented at trial. Thus, a lesser included and a greater offense were held to be the same for double jeopardy purposes.
The Blockburger test is not the only one, however, for determining whether a second prosecution is barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause. For example, the principles of collateral estoppel are embodied in the Double Jeopardy Clause to prohibit successive prosecutions where the second prosecution requires the relitigation of factual issues already resolved favorably to the defendant by the first. Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 25 L.Ed.2d 469 (1970). Moreover, this Court has noted that even the Blockburger test will not be applied formalistically, but will focus on the evidence in a spirit of vindicating the constitutional guarantee against retrial. Jordan v. Commonwealth of Va., 653 F.2d 870 (4th Cir.1980).
In Jordan the defendant obtained the drug Eskatrol by presenting a forged prescription to a pharmacist. After having been tried for the misdemeanor of presenting a forged prescription, he was tried for the felony of possession of a “controlled substance.” This Court held that the state could not conduct successive trials because “the evidence necessarily used by the government in prosecuting the earlier misdemeanor charge would totally have sufficed to sustain the later felony conviction.” 653 F.2d at 874.
The need for flexibility in determining whether the same offense was the subject of successive trials is revealed yet more clearly in conspiracy cases. Since the same conspiracy may be established by different aggregations of proof, a focus on the overall conspiracy itself, or the “totality of the circumstances,” becomes necessary. In this manner, an accused will not be subjected to separate prosecutions for the same conspiracy based on the selection of separate sets of overt acts for each indictment. U.S. v. Ragins, 840 F.2d 1184 (4th Cir. 1988).
Any thorough double jeopardy analysis must, therefore, consider not only the nature of the offenses charged and the proofs necessary to convict on the charges, but also the factual circumstances of the transaction giving rise to the successive criminal prosecutions.
In scrutinizing the evidence presented in successive trials for double jeopardy purposes, only the material evidence that was probative of conviction which was presented at the first trial should be measured against the evidence presented at the successive trial. That the State volunteers a greater proof at the first trial does not shield a subsequent trial which otherwise is not on the same offense. This discipline of analysis is indicated not only by Blockburger, but by the later Supreme Court opinions in Brown v. Ohio, supra, and Illinois v. Vitale, 447 U.S. 410, 100 S.Ct. 2260, 65 L.Ed.2d 228 (1980), and is specifically recognized by this Court’s decision in Jordan. As the Supreme Court observed in Vitale, “the mere possibility that the State will seek to rely on all of the ingredients necessarily included in the traffic offense to establish an element of [the first prosecution] would not be sufficient to bar the latter prosecution.” Illinois v. Vitale, 447 U.S. 410, 419, 100 S.Ct. 2260, 2267, 65 L.Ed.2d 228 (1980).
Ill
Turning now to the trials of Martin, we note that there is no record of Martin’s trial in the Buena Vista General District Court, and therefore we assume that the State’s proof in the first trial followed the charge and that no other offense was proved or tried. See Jordan, supra at 872, n. 3. Since Martin was convicted only of vandalism, the proof necessarily presented *961there must have shown that Martin shattered the glass in the lower one-half of the door to the cashier’s booth at the gas station, and only that evidence is material to the double jeopardy analysis.
That proof, however, was not a necessary element in the charge of attempted breaking and entering with the intent to commit larceny which was tried in the second trial. An attempt crime requires specific intent to commit a crime and some overt act which tends toward but falls short of the consummation of the crime. The underlying statutory offense in this case — that of breaking and entering at night with the intent to commit larceny— requires no breaking, only an entering. Whether Martin, or someone else, shattered the glass is immaterial.
Martin could have been tried for the crime charged in the second case under several different aggregations of proof. For one, he admitted at trial the specific intent element of the crime of attempt when he stated that he wanted to steal a match, and that, coupled with his overt conduct in approaching the booth may have been enough. For other aggregations, he may have been seen pushing and pulling the sliding glass window to the cashier’s booth, and at another time he may have been seen with his hand in the opening created by the shattered glass. Each version would have been probative of the offense of attempted breaking and entering. It would not have been necessary to prove that it was Martin who broke the glass. The matters of proof essential to prove the offense tried at the second trial do not include the proof necessary to establish the vandalism charged at the first trial. And the necessary proof of vandalism does not include the elements of the charge of attempted breaking and entering with the intent to commit larceny.
The Supreme Court in Illinois v. Vitale, supra, observed about its holding in the earlier ruling in Brown v. Ohio, supra:
Had the State been able to prove auto theft, without also proving that the defendant took, operated, or kept the auto without consent of the owner — if proof of the auto theft had not necessarily involved proof of joyriding — the successive prosecutions would not have been for the “same offense” within the meaning of the Double Jeopardy Clause. 447 U.S. at 417, 100 S.Ct. at 2265. (Emphasis supplied.)
We conclude, therefore, that Martin was not tried successively for the same offense as that term is used in the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
AFFIRMED.