Court Opinion

ID: 9426009
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:27.461716+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:58.557263
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
with whom Mr. Justice Bren-kan joins,
dissenting.
Respondent Wilson was indicted for converting to his own use funds of Local 367, IBEW, which he served as business manager and financial secretary. The theory of the prosecution was that respondent had caused union funds to be expended for his daughter’s wedding reception. It was undisputed that a check drawn on the union and signed by two union officers, Brinker and Schaefer, had been forwarded to the hotel where the wedding reception had been held, and that the hotel had applied the payment in satisfaction of debts incurred on account of the reception.
The funds were paid in November 1966. An indictment was returned in October 1971, three days prior to the running of the statute of limitations. By that time, *354neither of the two signatories to the union check was available to testify in the case. Brinker had died in 1968; Schaefer was terminally ill. Respondent filed a pretrial motion to dismiss the indictment on the ground that preindictment delay violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. See United States v. Marion, 404 U. S. 307. Specifically, respondent argued that the unavailability of the two signatories, caused by preindictment delay, prejudiced his defense. After two pretrial hearings, the District Court denied the motion.
At the trial, it was established that the local’s attorney, one Burke, had made a $1,000 deposit at the hotel where the wedding reception was held, to cover expenses. A bill for the balance had been mailed by the hotel to respondent’s home address. Five months later the check signed by Brinker and Schaefer had arrived. The testimony established that the usual procedure for issuance of a check was the completion of a voucher signed by local president Schaefer and the recording secretary, thus signifying approval of the expenditure, preparation of a check by a secretary, and signature by the local president and treasurer. It was established that respondent had first given Brinker and Schaefer their office positions, though they had been elected to the offices they held in the union.
Respondent testified that he had never directed anyone to issue the check in question and that he had reimbursed Burke personally for the $1,000 deposit. He did acknowledge, however, that Burke had told him in November 1966, shortly after the payment reached the hotel, that the bill had been paid.
At the close of evidence respondent renewed his motion to dismiss on account of preindictment delay. The judge withheld decision until receiving the verdict.
The jury found respondent guilty. The District Court *355then ruled on respondent’s motion. It found that the Government had unreasonably delayed the indictment 16 months after completion of an FBI investigation in 1970. The court found that the delay caused the union president Schaefer to be unavailable as a trial witness. (Brinker had died in 1968, while the Government’s investigation was in progress.) Since, in the court’s view, the presence of Schaefer, the signer of the check and voucher, would have added “testimony of utmost importance to the trial,” the court ruled that respondent had been substantially prejudiced by the delay that deprived the trial of Schaefer’s testimony. Accordingly, the court dismissed the indictment.
The Government sought to appeal, arguing that the dismissal had been erroneous. The Court of Appeals held that appeal by the Government violated the Double Jeopardy Clause.
In United States v. Sisson, 399 U. S. 267, facts developed in the trial of Sisson led a jury to convict him. But after the jury verdict the District Court rendered a postverdict opinion called “an arrest of judgment” which this Court called “a post-verdict directed acquittal,” id., at 290, which was described as “a legal determination on the basis of facts adduced at the trial relating to the general issue of the case,” id., at 290 n. 19, a reading reaffirmed in United States v. Jorn, 400 U. S. 470, 478 n. 7.
In the present case the District Court reviewed the evidence given at the trial and concluded that the respondent had been prejudiced because of testimony the missing witness (terminally ill) probably would have added. What was asked on appeal was that the appellate judges review independently the evidence at the trial bearing on guilt and reach a different conclusion. In United States v. Ball, 163 U. S. 662, 671, the Court said in a dictum that has had a continuing impact on the law: *356“The verdict of acquittal was final, and could not be reviewed, on error or otherwise, without putting him twice in jeopardy, and thereby violating the Constitution.” (Emphasis supplied.)
In Kepner v. United States, 195 U. S. 100, the defendant was acquitted of an embezzling charge following a non jury trial in a court of the Philippines. The Government took an appeal to the Supreme Court of the Philippines, which independently reviewed the record and found Kepner guilty. This Court reversed, holding that the Double Jeopardy Clause barred the entry of conviction by the appellate court.* The Court considered appellate review by the Philippine Supreme Court to be equivalent to the second trial in Ball. The Court accordingly held:
“It is, then, the settled law of this court that former jeopardy includes one who has been acquitted by a verdict duly rendered .... The protection is not . . . against the peril of second punishment, but against being again tried for the same offense.” 195 U. S., at 130.
Fong Foo v. United States, 369 U. S. 141, involved a trial not completed but promising to be “long and complicated,” where the trial judge directed a verdict for the defendants on the ground of prosecutorial improprieties and lack of credibility of Government witnesses. The Court of Appeals had held that the trial judge had no power to direct an acquittal on the record before it. This Court reversed, though the Court of Appeals “thought, not without reason, that the acquittal was based upon an *357egregiously erroneous foundation,” id., at 143. The dictum of Ball, quoted above, was deemed controlling. Ibid.
In the present case, as in Fong Foo, the ruling of the trial court is based in part on the evidence adduced at the trial and in part on other related issues. Thus the issue of a speedy trial in the present case is not reviewable, for it is part and parcel of the process of weighing the Government's evidentiary case against respondent. Therefore we should affirm the judgment below.

 Technically, the Court was construing, not the Double Jeopardy Clause, but a statute passed by Congress for administration of the Philippines that contained identical language. But the Court treated the question as a constitutional one, finding the above-quoted dictum from Ball controlling.