United States v. Liotard

638 F. Supp. 1101, 1986 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 23086
CourtDistrict Court, D. New Jersey
DecidedJuly 8, 1986
DocketCrim. 86-143
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 638 F. Supp. 1101 (United States v. Liotard) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. New Jersey primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Liotard, 638 F. Supp. 1101, 1986 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 23086 (D.N.J. 1986).

Opinion

STERN, District Judge.

This matter comes before the Court on a motion by defendant Russell Liotard to reconsider this Court’s order denying his motion to dismiss the indictment returned by a Federal Grand Jury in Newark, New Jersey on April 18, 1986. For the reasons stated below, the motion will be denied.

FACTS

The challenged indictment charges Mr. Liotard and two others with conspiracy to steal goods from an interstate shipment of freight, as well as the substantive offenses of stealing, receiving, concealing and storing the goods. Mr. Liotard was a dispatcher for Veteri Trucking Company. The indictment charges that Mr. Liotard told a Veteri driver, unindicted co-conspirator Albert Little, that a trailer-load of Sony electronic goods on a Veteri parking lot in Fairfield, New Jersey, would be a good load to steal. On or about August 4, 1985, Little allegedly drove the trailer to Elmer, New Jersey. There, Mr. Liotard, his co-defendants and others, allegedly unloaded the trailer and placed the goods on another trailer at the home of defendant Lee J. Folk. These goods were allegedly moving in interstate commerce and worth over $400,000.

Prior to his indictment in New Jersey, Mr. Liotard was indicted, tried and acquitted in Pennsylvania for criminal activity beginning on September 27, 1985. On that day, the Pennsylvania indictment charged, Mr. Liotard discussed with Albert Little the theft of goods loaded on trailers at the Veteri lot. Liotard gave Little a list of approximately ten trailers parked at the lot. Little removed one of the trailers to Parsippany, New Jersey on September 27, 1985. The next day, Little and co-defendant Otis Thompson stole two more trailers from the same lot. Together with co-defendant Ernest Fleming, Thompson and Little drove the three stolen trailers to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 28, 1985.

All four of Mr. Liotard’s co-defendants pleaded guilty to offenses charged in the Pennsylvania indictment. All four testified against Mr. Liotard at his trial. Under Fed.R.Evid. 404(b), the trial judge admitted certain testimony outside the scope of the charged conspiracy regarding the theft of the Sony electronic goods in early August 1985, as well as testimony about discussions between Liotard and Little in April or May 1985 pertaining to a planned theft of oil trucks. After the five-day trial in Pennsylvania, Mr. Liotard was acquitted of all counts on March 7, 1986.

After being named in the New Jersey indictment, Liotard moved to dismiss on the grounds of double jeopardy and the policy of Petite v. United States, 361 U.S. 529, 530, 80 S.Ct. 450, 451, 4 L.Ed.2d 490 (1960) against multiple prosecutions, even absent double jeopardy, where several offenses *1103 arise “out of a single transaction.” Both sides briefed these issues, and after an oral hearing before this Court on June 11, 1986, defendant’s motion was denied. The present motion for reconsideration was filed on June 19, 1986.

DISCUSSION

As defendant points out, in denying his original motion to dismiss, this Court expressly relied on United States v. Sargent Electric Co., 785 F.2d 1123 (3d Cir.1986) and United States v. Felton, 753 F.2d 276 (3d Cir.1985). Judge Adams summarized concisely the Third Circuit test for assessing double jeopardy claims and the special concern that arises in conspiracy cases:

This Court has adopted the “same evidence” test for assessing double jeopardy claims. See United States v. Young, 503 F.2d 1072, 1076 (3d Cir.1974). Under this test, a second indictment for an offense violates the double jeopardy clause “only when the evidence required to support a conviction upon [the offense] would have been sufficient to warrant a conviction upon” a prior indictment. Id. at 1075 (quoting United States v. Pacelli, 470 F.2d 67, 72 (2d Cir.1972)). However, Young cautioned that application of the same evidence test “must be tempered ... with the consideration that a single conspiracy may not be subdivided arbitrarily for the purposes of prosecution.” Id. As we explained there, “[different alleged overt acts are not necessarily inconsistent with an improper division of a single conspiracy into multiple crimes. It is the agreement which constitutes the crime, not the overt acts.” Id. at 1976. See also Felton, 753 F.2d at 278.

785 F.2d at 1138-39 (Adams, J., dissenting).

We believe that application of the “same evidence” test leads necessarily to a finding of no double jeopardy problem in the present case. “Offenses are not the same merely because they arise out of the same general course of criminal conduct, 'they are the same only when the evidence required to support a conviction upon one of [the indictments] would have been sufficient to warrant a conviction upon the others.’ ” Felton, 753 F.2d at 278 (quoting United States v. Young, 503 F.2d 1072, 1075 (3d Cir.1974)). In the present case, the evidence required to support conviction on the Pennsylvania indictment could not conceivably have led to conviction on the New Jersey indictment. In Pittsburgh, Mr. Liotard was charged with conspiracy to transport three trailers from New Jersey to Pittsburgh at the end of September 1985. In New Jersey, the grand jury charged that Mr. Liotard conspired to steal a different trailer-load of goods early in August. The government asserts, and defendant does not deny, that these alleged crimes were discussed on August 3, 1985 and September 27-28, 1985 respectively.Three persons, including Liotard, were allegedly involved in both conspiracies, but five persons were involved only in one of them. It is self-evident that these indictments charge separate agreements. In Sargent Electric, the court found that defendants who allegedly conspired to rig bids at several facilities could be charged with multiple Sherman Act offenses, despite their common objective of price-fixing, because the conspiracies involved different markets. 758 F.2d at 1130. It is far more obvious that two conspiracies may be charged in the present case because the objectives and offenses were different, as well as many of the participants.

In deciding to deny the original motion to dismiss, this Court applied a more intricate “totality of the circumstances” test favored by Judge Adams in his Sargent Electric dissent:

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United States v. Rigas
605 F.3d 194 (Third Circuit, 2010)
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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
638 F. Supp. 1101, 1986 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 23086, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-liotard-njd-1986.