United States v. LaRouche Campaign

695 F. Supp. 1317, 1988 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9625, 1988 WL 91897
District Court, D. Massachusetts·Decided August 11, 1988·No. Crim. No. 86-323-K·Published·Cited by 1 cases

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

KEETON, District Judge.

Before the court are defendants’ Motion to Dismiss and Memorandum in Support of Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss on Grounds of Double Jeopardy (Docket No. 1640) and the government’s opposition (Docket No. 1650).

On May 2, 1988, the jury in this case returned from a several-week break in tes[1318]*1318timony necessitated by hearings on defense motions alleging violation of disclosure obligations by the government. Upon the jury’s return, the court conducted a voir dire in order to determine whether the jurors had been exposed to any publicity about the case during the period they were not sitting and also to determine whether the fact that the trial was by this time expected to last beyond mid-July would cause any hardship on the jurors. The court made individual inquiries of the five jurors who responded affirmatively to the inquiry about hardship: Costa, Graves, Dashawetz, Wilkins, and Montville. Transcript Vol. 90, pp. 32-52. All five indicated that the trial was either a current hardship on them or would become a hardship if it lasted beyond mid-July. The court excused juror Wilkins without objection from any party. Id. at 133-35. On May 2 and May 3 the court heard arguments from counsel regarding whether the hardship on the remaining four jurors necessitated their ex-cusal and also entertained discussion regarding the possibility of severing some part of the case and declaring a mistrial only as to that part in the hope that the remaining portion could be completed by mid-July.

When final positions were announced, no party was requesting a severance. All defendants joined in a motion, over the government’s objection, for the excusal of the remaining four jurors who expressed hardship. The court took the matter under advisement overnight on May 3. Transcript Vol. 91, p. 97.

On the morning of May 4,1988, the court announced its view that the standard for excusal of sitting jurors is that they may be excused only if they “become or are found to be unable or disqualified to perform their duties,” pursuant to Fed.R.Crim. P. 24(c), and that hardship alone does not justify excusal unless it rises to that level. Transcript Vol. 92, p. 3. The court then determined that it would not be proper to proceed with a trial that would last well into the fall without disclosing the revised estimate of length of trial to the jurors. Id. at 10. Also the court found that, once that disclosure was made, the hardships and anticipated hardships on the four jurors were such that “these jurors not only will be unable to continue to perform their duties as fair and impartial jurors [once the trial extends past mid-July] but that they are from this point forward unable to do so.” Id. at 11. The court then excused the four additional jurors. Id. After the defendants rejected the government’s offer to stipulate to a ten-person jury pursuant to Fed.R.Crim.P. 23(b), the court declared a mistrial. Id. at 14-15.

The Supreme Court in Oregon v. Kennedy, 456 U.S. 667,102 S.Ct. 2083, 72 L.Ed.2d 416 (1982), explained that two different standards apply when evaluating post-mistrial double jeopardy motions, depending on the position taken by the defendant with respect to the granting of the mistrial:

Where the trial is terminated over the objection of the defendant, the classical test for lifting the double jeopardy bar to a second trial is the “manifest necessity” standard first enunciated in Justice Story’s opinion for the Court in United States v. Perez, 9 Wheat. 579, 580 [6 L.Ed. 165] (1824)....
But in the case of a mistrial declared at the behest of the defendant, quite different principles come into play____

A defendant’s motion for a mistrial constitutes “a deliberate election on his part to forgo his valued right to have his guilt or innocence determined before the first trier of fact.” United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 93, 98 S.Ct. 2187, 2195, 57 L.Ed.2d 65 (1978).

Id. at 672, 676, 102 S.Ct. at 2087, 2090.

The government argues that the “deliberate election” standard should be applied in this case, rather than the “manifest necessity” standard, because the mistrial resulted from the court’s excusal of the four jurors on the joint motion of all defendants, which motion was made with the explicit recognition that the result would be a mistrial. The defendants contend that they should not be held to have made a “deliberate election” to accept a mistrial because a mistrial was unavoidable.

[1319]*1319I conclude that it is unnecessary to decide whether the “deliberate election” standard announced in Kennedy should be applied because even the more rigorous “manifest necessity” standard is satisfied here. Because none of the defendants wanted to attempt to continue to verdict as part of a smaller trial and none of the defendants was willing to proceed with ten jurors, mistrial became manifestly necessary when the court made the findings that the four jurors would not be able to perform their duties impartially once they learned the expected length of the trial. Those fact findings remain effective for two independent reasons.

First, defendants are now precluded from challenging (and, in the submissions before me, no defendant has challenged) my findings with respect to the disqualification of the four jurors because defendants urged the court to find each of them disqualified, over the objection of the government, with the explicit understanding that the necessary result would be a mistrial. In other words, defendants did make an election that is relevant to a determination that the “manifest necessity” standard is satisfied in this ease, perhaps not in the broad sense of choosing to forego their right to continue before that jury, but at least in the narrow sense of choosing to contend that the jurors were disqualified.

Second, and more importantly, the four jurors were in fact disqualified. The court so determined on the evidence, including the answers of the jurors during voir dire of May 2, 1988. Counsel for the government argued vigorously that measures could be taken which would eliminate or reduce the hardship on certain jurors, such as extending the hours during which the jury was hearing testimony to advance the end of the trial and/or recessing the trial for several weeks in July-August to accommodate the vacation schedule of two jurors and allow another juror to undergo already-postponed surgery. The court considered these possibilities but concluded that no set of measures would ensure, or even make likely, that the trial could be completed before the number of jurors dropped below twelve. The prosecutor also argued that although the four jurors either were experiencing hardship or would experience hardship once the trial extended beyond-mid-July, those hardships were not so severe as to cause the jurors to be disqualified. The court rejected this contention and found that, despite the explicit statements of some of the jurors that they believed they remained impartial, credited by the court, “jurors required to serve in the circumstances of hardship that I have found ...

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United States v. LaRouche Campaign, 695 F. Supp. 1317, 1988 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9625, 1988 WL 91897 (D. Mass. 1988).

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