United States v. Bryson Jose Roberto A. Miguel

425 F.3d 1237, 2005 U.S. App. LEXIS 22441, 2005 WL 2656723
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedOctober 19, 2005
Docket04-10202
StatusPublished
Cited by50 cases

This text of 425 F.3d 1237 (United States v. Bryson Jose Roberto A. Miguel) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Bryson Jose Roberto A. Miguel, 425 F.3d 1237, 2005 U.S. App. LEXIS 22441, 2005 WL 2656723 (9th Cir. 2005).

Opinion

D.W. NELSON, Circuit Judge.

Appellants Bryson Jose and Roberto A. Miguel appeal the district court’s denial of their joint motion to dismiss their indictments on double jeopardy grounds. As is relevant here, appellants were convicted of felony murder and three predicate felonies. The counts were charged under one indictment and prosecuted together in one trial. On direct appeal, this court reversed appellants’ felony murder convictions, reversed Miguel’s conviction for use of a firearm during a crime of violence, affirmed all other convictions and remanded to the district court for further proceedings. On remand, Miguel moved for dismissal of the indictment on double jeopardy grounds, claiming that his final convictions on the lesser included predicate felonies barred retrial of the greater felony murder charge. Jose joined in the motion. We affirm the district court’s denial of appellants’ motion to dismiss the indictments.

This case raises a purely legal question about the reach and proper application of the Double Jeopardy Clause: Does the reversal of a conviction on a greater offense, coupled with a final conviction on a lesser included offense, preclude retrial of the greater offense when the offenses were charged in the same indictment and tried together in the same original trial? We hold that it does not.

I. Factual and Procedural Background

For purposes of this interlocutory appeal, a detailed rendering of the facts of the case is neither necessary nor particularly helpful. For a more in-depth description of the facts, we refer the interested reader to this court’s previous opinion *1240 in United States v. Miguel, 338 F.3d 995, 997-98 (9th Cir.2003).

Jose and Miguel were part of a drunken group of teenage revelers that ended its evening debauch by killing an army officer in the course of an attempted robbery' and burglary of a cabin at the Waianae Army Recreation Center (“WARC”)- Miguel, 338 F.3d at 997. WARC is within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States. As is relevant here, appellants were convicted of felony murder, two counts of attempted robbery, and one count of attempted burglary, in violation of, inter alia, 18 U.S.C. §§ 13, 1111, 2111. Miguel, 338 F.3d at 999-1000.

They successfully appealed their felony murder convictions on the ground that the district court “committed structural error when it precluded the defendants from arguing their theory of the case and instructed the jury that no evidence supported the defendants’ theory.”' Id. at 997. This court, therefore, reversed appellants’ felony murder convictions, vacated their sentences, and remanded for further proceedings. Id. at 1007. Appellants did not appeal their predicate felony convictions, which were nevertheless affirmed by this court on direct appeal. See id. at 997 n. 3.

On remand, Miguel moved to bar retrial of his felony murder charge on double jeopardy grounds, and Jose joined in the motion. The district court denied the motion and this interlocutory appeal timely followed. This court reviews the denial of a motion to dismiss an indictment on double jeopardy grounds de novo. See United States v. Lun, 944 F.2d 642, 644(9th Cir.1991).

II. Discussion

A. The Ball Rule

The Fifth Amendment provides that no person shall “be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of. life or limb.” U.S. Const, amend. V. Jeopardy is said to “attach” when a defendant is “put to trial.” Serfass v. United States, 420, U.S. 377, 388, 95 S.Ct. 1055, 43 L.Ed.2d 265 (1975) (observing that the concept of “attachment of jeopardy” defines a point in criminal proceedings at which the purposes and policies of the Double Jeopardy Clause are implicated and designating this point as when the defendant is “put to trial”) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). “In the case of a jury trial, jeopardy attaches when a jury is empaneled and sworn. In a nonjury trial, jeopardy attaches when the court begins to hear evidence.” Id. (internal citations omitted). The clause’s protections, then, “kick in ... only after the defendant has been placed in jeopardy— [i.e.] when jeopardy has attached.” United States v. Patterson, 406 F.3d 1095, 1096 (9th Cir.2005) (Kozinski, J., dissenting from denial of reh’g en banc).

However, “the conclusion that jeopardy has attached begins, rather than ends, the inquiry....” Illinois v. Somerville, 410 U.S. 458, 467, 93 S.Ct. 1066, 35 L.Ed.2d 425 (1973). The attachment of jeopardy is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for applying the protections of the Double Jeopardy Clause. There must also be a jeopardy terminating event, most commonly an acquittal or a final judgment of conviction. See Sattazahn v. Pennsylvania, 537 U.S. 101, 106, 123 S.Ct. 732, 154 L.Ed.2d 588 (2003) (“Under this Clause, once a defendant is placed in jeopardy for an offense [i.e., jeopardy ‘attaches’], and jeopardy terminates with respect to that offense, the defendant may neither be tried nor punished a second time for the samé offense.”) (citing North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 717, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969)); see also United States v. Byrne, 203 F.3d 671, 673 (9th Cir.2000) (“Jeopardy terminates when the jury reaches a *1241 verdict, or when the trial judge enters a final judgment of acquittal”) (citing Fong Foo v. United States, 369 U.S. 141, 143, 82 S.Ct. 671, 7 L.Ed.2d 629 (1962)).

Even though jeopardy has attached to, and seemingly terminated on, an offense for which a defendant has been tried and convicted, the defendant may still be retried for the same offense, consistently with the Double Jeopardy Clause, when retrial is pursuant to a reversal on appeal. Ball v. United States, 163 U.S. 662, 671-72, 16 S.Ct. 1192, 41 L.Ed. 300 (1896) (articulating what has come to be known as the “Ball rule”). In such a case, jeopardy is said to “continue” on the offense upon retrial. See Justices of Boston Mun. Court v. Lydon, 466 U.S. 294, 308, 104 S.Ct. 1805, 80 L.Ed.2d 311 (1984) (recognizing the concept of “continuing jeopardy” implicit in the Ball rule). 1

Pursuant to the Ball

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Bluebook (online)
425 F.3d 1237, 2005 U.S. App. LEXIS 22441, 2005 WL 2656723, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-bryson-jose-roberto-a-miguel-ca9-2005.