United States v. Horace Greely Thompson

814 F.2d 1472, 1987 U.S. App. LEXIS 3844
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
DecidedMarch 25, 1987
Docket85-2422, 85-2867
StatusPublished
Cited by33 cases

This text of 814 F.2d 1472 (United States v. Horace Greely Thompson) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Tenth 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. Horace Greely Thompson, 814 F.2d 1472, 1987 U.S. App. LEXIS 3844 (10th Cir. 1987).

Opinion

McKAY, Circuit Judge.

On July 3, 1985, pursuant to a plea agreement, defendant, Horace G. Thompson, pled guilty to a one-count information of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. The court accepted the guilty plea but deferred sentencing. Two months later, before sentencing, the Government moved to set aside the plea agreement on the ground that defendant had violated the agreement. The district court granted the Government’s motion and dismissed the information. Defendant appealed from the dismissal. A grand jury subsequently indicted him on eight counts of mail fraud and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States. Defendant then moved to dismiss the indictment on double jeopardy grounds, alleging that the indictment charged him with the same offense to which he had already pled guilty. The district court denied the motion, and defendant appealed. Both appeals are now before this court.

The issues in the first appeal are (1) whether an order vacating the plea agreement and dismissing the information is immediately appealable as a final judgment, and (2) if so, whether the trial court properly vacated the plea agreement.

The issues in the second appeal are (1) whether defendant is entitled to an interlocutory appeal of the pretrial order denying his motion to dismiss the indictment, and (2) if defendant is entitled to an appeal, whether or not the indictment is barred on double jeopardy grounds.

*1474 The right to appeal is created by statute. For defendant to be able to appeal at this time, therefore, his appeals must fall within either the statutory provision or the common-law exception to the statute. Federal law permits appellate courts to review “all final decisions of the district courts____” 28 U.S.C. § 1291 (1982), and courts have strictly adhered to the policy of finality to avoid piecemeal review. United States v. Hollywood Motor Car Co., 458 U.S. 263, 265, 102 S.Ct. 3081, 3082, 73 L.Ed.2d 754 (1982). “Adherence to this rule of finality has been particularly stringent in criminal prosecutions because ‘the delays and disruptions attendant upon intermediate appeal,’ which the rule is designed to avoid, ‘are especially inimical to the effective and fair administration of the criminal law.’ ” Abney v. United States, 431 U.S. 651, 657, 97 S.Ct. 2034, 2039, 52 L.Ed.2d 651 (1977) (quoting DiBella v. United States, 369 U.S. 121, 126, 82 S.Ct. 654, 658, 7 L.Ed.2d 614 (1962)).

I.

Defendant argues that the district court orders to vacate the plea agreement and to dismiss the information are final orders and, therefore, immediately appealable. We first address the trial court’s dismissal of the information. In a criminal case, a decision is not final until both conviction and imposition of sentence. See Flanagan v. United States, 465 U.S. 259, 263, 104 S.Ct. 1051, 1053, 79 L.Ed.2d 288 (1984); Berman v. United States, 302 U.S. 211, 212, 58 S.Ct. 164, 165, 82 L.Ed. 204 (1937); United States v. Romero, 642 F.2d 392, 397 (10th Cir.1981). Thus, the district court’s order dismissing the information is not a final order, because it neither convicted nor sentenced defendant, and he has not been convicted since. 1 Moreover, the Supreme Court has specifically held a dismissal without prejudice to be an interlocutory step in the prosecution. Parr v. United States, 351 U.S. 513, 518, 76 S.Ct. 912, 916, 100 L.Ed. 1377 (1956).

In Parr, petitioner was indicted in one division of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Texas. The trial court granted his motion to transfer the case to another division. The Government subsequently obtained a new indictment in a different division and moved to dismiss the original indictment. Petitioner appealed from the trial court’s grant of the motion to dismiss. The Supreme Court affirmed the appellate court’s decision that it had no jurisdiction to hear an appeal from the dismissal of an indictment. Looking at the indictments first in isolation and then as part of the same prosecution, the Court found no basis for petitioner’s claim of jurisdiction to appeal.

Because the information and indictment in this case are in two separate proceedings, 2 we rely on the Court’s initial analysis in Parr. Like petitioner in Parr, Mr. Thompson was not injured by the dismissal of the information because the judgment was terminated in his favor, and only one who has been injured by a judgment may seek review on appeal. Id. at 516-17, 76 S.Ct. at 915. “So far as petitioner’s standing to appeal is concerned, it makes no difference whether the dismissal still leaves him open to further prosecution____ The testing of the effect of the dismissal order must abide petitioner’s trial, and only then, if convicted, will he have been aggrieved.” Id. at 517, 76 S.Ct. at 915.

Defendant fares no better with his argument that vacation of the plea agreement was a final order. By vacating the plea agreement, the court neither convicted defendant nor sentenced him. Thus, the court’s decision was not a final order for purposes of appeal. As with the dismissal order, we believe that “[t]he testing of the effect of the [vacation] order must abide *1475 petitioner’s trial____” Id. Thus, neither the vacation of a plea agreement nor the dismissal of an information are properly before this court as appeals from a final decision.

Moreover, defendant’s claim merits no further consideration under the “collateral order” exception first articulated in Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949). A collateral order may be considered a final decision for purposes of section 1291 if it fits within the narrow group of claims “too important to be denied review and too independent of the cause itself to require that appellate consideration be deferred until the whole case is adjudicated.” Id. at 546, 69 S.Ct. at 1226. Generally, the Supreme Court narrowly interprets this exception and, in criminal cases, has permitted interlocutory appeal of a pretrial order in only three instances in its name. 3 The Court has already foreclosed Mr. Thompson’s argument with respect to the information dismissal. Parr, 351 U.S. at 519, 76 S.Ct. at 916. Therefore, we are left with the issue of whether voiding a plea agreement falls within the collateral order exception.

The Supreme Court has outlined three factors that must be satisfied in order to qualify an order for interlocutory appeal.

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Bluebook (online)
814 F.2d 1472, 1987 U.S. App. LEXIS 3844, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-horace-greely-thompson-ca10-1987.