Dowling v. United States

Justice WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.

At petitioner's trial for various offenses arising out of a bank robbery, testimony was admitted under Rule 404(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence, relating to an alleged crime that the defendant had previously been acquitted of committing. We conclude that neither the Double Jeopardy nor the Due Process Clause barred the use of this testimony.

On the afternoon of July 8, 1985, a man wearing a ski mask and armed with a small pistol robbed the First Pennsylvania Bank in Frederiksted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands, taking over $7,000 in cash from a bank teller, approximately $5,000 in cash from a customer, and various personal and travelers' checks. The culprit ran from the bank, scurried around in the street momentarily, and then commandeered a passing taxi van. While driving away from the scene, the robber pulled off his ski mask. An eyewitness, who had slipped out of the bank while the robbery was taking place, saw the maskless man and at trial identified him as petitioner, Reuben Dowling. Other witnesses testified that they had seen Dowling driving the hijacked taxi van outside of Frederiksted shortly after the bank robbery.

Following his arrest, Dowling was charged with the federal crimes of bank robbery, 18 U.S.C. §2113(a), and armed robbery, §2113(d), and with various crimes under Virgin Islands law. Dowling pleaded not guilty to all charges. Dowling's first trial ended with a hung jury. He was tried again and convicted, but the Third Circuit reversed this conviction on appeal. Government of Virgin Islands v. Dowling, 814 F.2d 134 (1987). After a third trial, Dowling was convicted on most of the counts; the trial judge sentenced him to 70 years imprisonment.

During petitioner's third trial, the Government over petitioner's objection called a woman named Vena Henry to the stand. Ms. Henry testified that a man wearing a knitted mask with cutout eyes and carrying a small handgun had, together with a man named Delroy Christian, entered her home in Frederiksted approximately two weeks after the First Pennsylvania Bank robbery. Ms. Henry testified that a struggle ensued and that she unmasked the intruder, whom she identified as Dowling. Based on this incident, Dowling had been charged under Virgin Islands law with burglary, attempted robbery, assault, and weapons offenses, but had been acquitted after a trial held before his third trial in the bank robbery case.

The Government assertedly elicited Henry's testimony for two purposes. First, it believed that Henry's description of Dowling as wearing a mask and carrying a gun similar to the mask worn and the gun carried by the robber of the First Pennsylvania Bank strengthened the Government's identification of Dowling as the bank robber. Second, the Government sought to link Dowling with Delroy Christian, the other man who entered Henry's home. The day before the bank robbery, Dowling had borrowed a white Volkswagen from a friend. At Dowling's trial for the First Pennsylvania Bank robbery, a police officer testified that, shortly before the bank robbery, she and her partner had come upon Christian and another man parked in a white Volkswagen in front of the bank with the car door open into the street; Christian was in the backseat. The officers told the two men to close the door, and the men drove away to the north. The police followed the Volkswagen for about a mile and, shortly thereafter, received a radio message that the bank had been robbed. The Government's theory was that Christian and his friend were to drive the getaway car after Dowling robbed the bank.

Before opening statements, the Government disclosed its intention to call Ms. Henry and explained its rationale for doing so, relying on Rule 404(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which provides that evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts may be admissible against a defendant for purposes other than character evidence. After a hearing, the District Court characterized the testimony as highly probative circumstantial evidence and ruled that it was admissible under Rule 404(b). When Henry left the stand, the District Court instructed the jury that petitioner had been acquitted of robbing Henry, and emphasized the limited purpose for which Henry's testimony was being offered. The court reiterated that admonition in its final charge to the jury.

On appeal, the Third Circuit determined that the District Court should not have admitted Henry's testimony, but nevertheless affirmed Dowling's conviction. Relying on its decision in United States v. Keller, 624 F.2d 1154 (1980), the court held that petitioner's acquittal of the charges arising out of the incident at Henry's home collaterally estopped the Government from offering evidence of that incident at petitioner's trial for the First Pennsylvania Bank robbery.

Alternatively, the Court of Appeals ruled that the evidence was inadmissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence. The court noted that we had recently held in Huddleston v. United States that "[i]n the Rule 404(b) context, similar act evidence is relevant only if the jury can reasonably conclude that the act occurred and that the defendant was the actor." The Third Circuit found Henry's testimony inadmissible under Rule 404(b) because "when the prior act sought to be introduced was the subject of an acquittal by a jury, a second jury should not be permitted to conclude 'that the act occurred and that the defendant was the actor.' " The court also relied on Rule 403 of the Federal Rules of Evidence because, in the Third Circuit's opinion, the danger of unfair prejudice outweighed the probative value of Henry's testimony.

The Third Circuit, however, held that the admission of Henry's testimony was harmless because it was highly probable that the error did not prejudice the petitioner.... We granted certiorari to consider Dowling's contention that Henry's testimony was inadmissible under both the Double Jeopardy and the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth Amendment.

There is no claim here that the acquittal in the case involving Ms. Henry barred further prosecution in the present case. The issue is the inadmissibility of Henry's testimony.

In Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 90 S. Ct. 1189, 25 L. Ed. 2d 469 (1970), we recognized that the Double Jeopardy Clause incorporates the doctrine of collateral estoppel. In that case, a group of masked men had robbed six men playing poker in the basement of a home. The State unsuccessfully prosecuted Ashe for robbing one of the men. Six weeks later, however, the defendant was convicted for the robbery of one of the other players. Applying the doctrine of collateral estoppel which we found implicit in the Double Jeopardy Clause, we reversed Ashe's conviction, holding that his acquittal in the first trial precluded the State from charging him for the second offense. We defined the collateral estoppel doctrine as providing that "when an issue of ultimate fact has once been determined by a valid and final judgment, that issue cannot again be litigated between the same parties in any future lawsuit." Ashe's acquittal in the first trial foreclosed the second trial because, in the circumstances of that case, the acquittal verdict could only have meant that the jury was unable to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was one of the bandits. A second prosecution was impermissible because, to have convicted the defendant in the second trial, the second jury had had to have reached a directly contrary conclusion.

Dowling contends that, by the same principle, his prior acquittal precluded the government from introducing into evidence Henry's testimony at the third trial in the bank robbery case. We disagree because, unlike the situation in Ashe v. Swenson, the prior acquittal did not determine an ultimate issue in the present case. This much Dowling concedes, and we decline to extend Ashe v. Swenson and the collateral estoppel component of the Double Jeopardy Clause to exclude in all circumstances, as Dowling would have it, relevant and probative evidence that is otherwise admissible under the Rules of Evidence simply because it relates to alleged criminal conduct for which a defendant has been acquitted.

For present purposes, we assume for the sake of argument that Dowling's acquittal established that there was a reasonable doubt as to whether Dowling was the masked man who entered Vena Henry's home with Delroy Christian two weeks after the First Pennsylvania Bank robbery. But to introduce evidence on this point at the bank robbery trial, the Government did not have to demonstrate that Dowling was the man who entered the home beyond a reasonable doubt: the Government sought to introduce Henry's testimony under Rule 404(b), and, as mentioned earlier, in Huddleston v. United States we held that "[i]n the Rule 404(b) context, similar act evidence is relevant only if the jury can reasonably conclude that the act occurred and that the defendant was the actor." Because a jury might reasonably conclude that Dowling was the masked man who entered Henry's home, even if it did not believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Dowling committed the crimes charged at the first trial, the collateral estoppel component of the Double Jeopardy Clause is inapposite.

Our decision is consistent with other cases where we have held that an acquittal in a criminal case does not preclude the government from relitigating an issue when it is presented in a subsequent action governed by a lower standard of proof. In United States v. One Assortment of 89 Firearms, 465 U.S. 354, 104 S. Ct. 1099, 79 L. Ed. 2d 361 (1984), for example, we unanimously agreed that a gun owner's acquittal on a charge of dealing firearms without a license did not preclude a subsequent in rem forfeiture proceeding against those firearms, even though forfeiture was only appropriate if the jury in the forfeiture proceeding concluded that the defendant had committed the underlying offense. Because the forfeiture action was a civil proceeding, we rejected the defendant's contention that the government was estopped from relitigating the issue of the defendant's alleged wrongdoing: "[The acquittal did] not prove that the defendant is innocent; it merely proves the existence of a reasonable doubt as to his guilt.... [T]he jury verdict in the criminal action did not negate the possibility that a preponderance of the evidence could show that [the defendant] was engaged in an unlicensed firearms business.... It is clear that the difference in the relative burdens of proof in the criminal and civil actions precludes the application of the doctrine of collateral estoppel."

We thus cannot agree that the Government was constitutionally barred from using Henry's testimony at the bank robbery trial, and for the same reasons we find no merit in the Third Circuit's holding that the common-law doctrine of collateral estoppel in all circumstances bars the later use of evidence relating to prior conduct which the government failed to prove violated a criminal law.

Even if we agreed with petitioner that the lower burden of proof at the second proceeding does not serve to avoid the collateral estoppel component of the Double Jeopardy Clause, we agree with the Government that the challenged evidence was nevertheless admissible because Dowling did not demonstrate that his acquittal in his first trial represented a jury determination that he was not one of the men who entered Ms. Henry's home. In Ashe v. Swenson, we stated that where a previous judgment of acquittal was based on a general verdict, courts must " 'examine the record of [the] prior proceeding, taking into account the pleadings, evidence, charge, and other relevant matter, and conclude whether a rational jury could have grounded its verdict on an issue other than that which the defendant seeks to foreclose from consideration."' 397 U.S., at 444, 90 S. Ct., at 1194 (citation omitted). The Courts of Appeals have unanimously placed the burden on the defendant to demonstrate that the issue whose relitigation he seeks to foreclose was actually decided in the first proceeding.... We see no reason to depart from the majority rule in this case....

There are any number of possible explanations for the jury's acquittal verdict at Dowling's first trial. As the record stands, there is nothing at all that persuasively indicates that the question of identity was at issue and was determined in Dowling's favor at the prior trial; at oral argument, Dowling conceded as much. As a result, even if we were to apply the Double Jeopardy Clause to this case, we would conclude that petitioner has failed to satisfy his burden of demonstrating that the first jury concluded that he was not one of the intruders in Ms. Henry's home.

Besides arguing that the introduction of Henry's testimony violated the Double Jeopardy Clause, petitioner also contends that the introduction of this evidence was unconstitutional because it failed the due process test of "fundamental fairness." We recognize that the introduction of evidence in circumstances like those involved here has the potential to prejudice the jury or unfairly force the defendant to spend time and money relitigating matters considered at the first trial. The question, however, is whether it is acceptable to deal with the potential for abuse through nonconstitutional sources like the Federal Rules of Evidence, or whether the introduction of this type of evidence is so extremely unfair that its admission violates "fundamental conceptions of justice." United States v. Lovasco, 431 U.S. 783, 790, 97 S. Ct. 2044, 2048, 52 L. Ed. 2d 752 (1977).... Petitioner lists four reasons why, according to him, admission of Henry's testimony was fundamentally unfair. First, petitioner suggests that evidence relating to acquitted conduct is inherently unreliable. We disagree: the jury in this case, for example, remained free to assess the truthfulness and the significance of Henry's testimony, and petitioner had the opportunity to refute it. Second, Dowling contends that the use of this type of evidence creates a constitutionally unacceptable risk that the jury will convict the defendant on the basis of inferences drawn from the acquitted conduct; we believe that the trial court's authority to exclude potentially prejudicial evidence adequately addresses this possibility.

Third, petitioner claims that the exclusion of acquitted conduct evidence furthers the desirable goal of consistent jury verdicts. We, however, do not find any inconsistency between Dowling's conviction for the First Pennsylvania Bank robbery and his acquittal on the charge of robbing Ms. Henry for the obvious reason that the jury's verdict in his second trial did not entail any judgment with respect to the offenses charged in his first. In any event, inconsistent verdicts are constitutionally tolerable. See Standefer v. United States, 447 U.S. 10, 25, 100 S. Ct. 1999, 2008, 64 L. Ed. 2d 689 (1980). Fourth, petitioner argues that the introduction of Henry's testimony in this case contravenes a tradition that the government may not force a person acquitted in one trial to defend against the same accusation in a subsequent proceeding. We acknowledge the tradition, but find it amply protected by the Double Jeopardy Clause. We decline to use the Due Process Clause as a device for extending the double jeopardy protection to cases where it otherwise would not extend.

Because we conclude that the admission of Ms. Henry's testimony was constitutional and the Court of Appeals therefore applied the correct harmless-error standard, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

It is so ordered.

Justice BRENNAN, with whom Justice MARSHALL and Justice STEVENS join, dissenting....

The question in this case is whether the criminal collateral estoppel doctrine should apply when the Government seeks to introduce in a subsequent trial evidence relating to a prior criminal offense for which the defendant has been acquitted. Before a jury can consider facts relating to a prior criminal offense as proof of an element of the presently charged offense, the jury must conclude by a preponderance of the evidence "that the act occurred and that the defendant was the actor.'' Huddleston v. United States. To the extent that the acquittal of the prior offense determined either of those factual issues in the defendant's favor, the introduction of this evidence imposes on the defendant the burden of relitigating those facts and thereby increases the likelihood of an erroneous conviction on the charged offense. Thus, I would extend the collateral estoppel doctrine to preclude the Government from introducing evidence which relies on facts previously determined in the defendant's favor by an acquittal.

The Court refuses to apply the collateral estoppel doctrine in this case for two reasons. First, it asserts that petitioner failed to carry his burden of proving that the issue on which he sought to foreclose relitigation was decided in his favor by the first acquittal. More importantly, the Court refuses to apply the collateral estoppel doctrine when facts underlying a prior acquittal are used as evidence of another offense. Both the Court's conclusions are inconsistent with the purposes of the collateral estoppel rule.

The Court first asserts that petitioner did not prove that the issue on which he sought to foreclose relitigation "was actually decided in the first proceeding.'' The Court's summary conclusion that the defendant should bear the burden of proof when invoking the collateral estoppel doctrine fails to serve the purposes of the doctrine and the Double Jeopardy Clause in general. Since the doctrine serves to protect defendants against governmental overreaching, the Government should bear the burden of proving that the issue it seeks to relitigate was not decided in the defendant's favor by the prior acquittal. As we noted in Ashe, because criminal verdicts are general verdicts, it is usually difficult to determine the precise route of the jury's reasoning and the basis on which the verdict rests. By putting the burden on the defendant to prove what issues were "actually decided,'' the Court essentially denies the protection of collateral estoppel to those defendants who affirmatively contest more than one issue or who put the Government to its burden of proof with respect to all elements of the offense....

Even assuming that petitioner was properly required to bear the burden of proof, I conclude that petitioner carried it in this case. Vena Henry testified that petitioner had entered her home wearing a mask and carrying a gun but that, after a struggle in which she pulled off the mask, he ran away. There is every reason to believe that the jury rested its verdict on the belief that petitioner was not present in the Henry home. Petitioner was charged with such a wide array of offenses relating to the Henry incident that no other conclusion is "rationally conceivable.'' Ashe, 397 U.S., at 445, 90 S. Ct., at 1195. For example, if the jury had acquitted petitioner of attempted robbery because he lacked the requisite intent, it would still have found him guilty of a weapons offense. Neither the comments of the trial judge in this trial that petitioner had not "seriously contested'' the issue of identity in the Henry trial but had stated a general defense, nor the prosecutor's statement in this case that petitioner's codefendant in the Henry trial had admitted being in the house, provides a sufficient basis on which to conclude that the issue of identity was not resolved in petitioner's favor by the acquittal. Thus, if collateral estoppel applies to the evidentiary use of facts, the Government should not have been allowed to introduce Henry's testimony.

The Court holds, however, that collateral estoppel does not apply when facts previously found in a defendant's favor are later introduced as evidence of a second offense. The Court excepts from the normal rule of criminal collateral estoppel those situations when the jury can consider the facts under a lower standard of proof in the second proceeding than in the first trial. The Court endorses this exception without any consideration of the purposes underlying the collateral estoppel doctrine; it is not surprising that the Court's holding reflects an unrealistic view of the risks and burdens imposed on the defendant when facts relating to a prior offense for which defendant has been acquitted are introduced in a subsequent criminal proceeding.

As the Court notes, we have held that an acquittal in a criminal case does not bar subsequent civil forfeiture actions for the same transaction because the acquittal "merely proves the existence of a reasonable doubt as to [the defendant's] guilt.'' ... However, those forfeiture cases involved civil remedial measures rather than criminal punishment.... We have never before applied such reasoning to a successive criminal prosecution in which the Government seeks to punish the defendant and hinges that punishment at least in part on a criminal act for which the defendant has been acquitted. Indeed, in Ashe we indicated to the contrary: " 'It is much too late to suggest that [collateral estoppel] is not fully applicable to a former judgment in a criminal case, ... because the judgment may reflect only a belief that the Government had not met the higher burden of proof exacted in such cases for the Government's evidence as a whole....' '' We have always recognized a distinction between governmental action intended to punish and that which is not, see, e.g., United States v. Halper, 490 U.S. 435, 109 S. Ct. 256, 102 L. Ed. 2d 244 (1989) (Double Jeopardy Clause implicated when civil fine is punitive); United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 746-747, 107 S. Ct. 2095, 2101, 95 L. Ed. 2d 697 (1987) (upholding Bail Reform Act as regulatory rather than punitive measure). Thus, it would be consistent to hold that the collateral estoppel doctrine applies in the criminal (or quasi-criminal) context and not in the civil; when the Government seeks to punish a defendant, the concern for fairness is much more acute. Whenever a defendant is forced to relitigate the facts underlying a prior offense for which he has been acquitted, there is a risk that the jury erroneously will decide that he is guilty of that offense. That risk is heightened because the jury is required to conclude that the defendant committed the prior offense only by a preponderance of the evidence.

The fact that the prior offense is used as evidence of the presently charged offense raises concerns about the reliability of the jury's ultimate conclusion that the defendant committed the presently charged offense. These concerns stem in large part from the inherent danger of evidence relating to an extrinsic criminal offense. First, "[o]ne of the dangers inherent in the admission of extrinsic offense evidence is that the jury may convict the defendant not for the offense charged but for the extrinsic offense. This danger is particularly great where ... the extrinsic activity was not the subject of a conviction; the jury may feel the defendant should be punished for that activity even if he is not guilty of the offense charged.'' United States v. Beechum, 582 F.2d 898, 914 (C.A.5 1978) (en banc) (citations omitted). Alternatively, there is the danger that the evidence "may lead [the jury] to conclude that, having committed a crime of the type charged, [the defendant] is likely to repeat it.'' Ibid. Thus, the fact that the defendant is forced to relitigate his participation in a prior criminal offense under a low standard of proof combined with the inherently prejudicial nature of such evidence increases the risk that the jury erroneously will convict the defendant of the presently charged offense.

The Court's only response is that the defendant is free to introduce evidence to rebut the contention that he committed the prior offense. This response, of course, underscores the flaw in the Court's reasoning: introduction of this type of evidence requires the defendant to mount a second defense to an offense for which he has been acquitted. That the facts relating to the prior offense are used only as evidence of another crime does not reduce the burden on the defendant; he is still required to defend against the prior charges. Moreover, because of the significance a jury may place on evidence of a prior criminal offense, presenting a defense against that offense may be as burdensome as defending against the presently charged offense. Finally, since the lower standard of proof makes it easier for the jury to conclude that the defendant committed the prior offense, the defendant is essentially forced to present affirmative evidence to rebut the contention that he committed that offense.

The Court today adds a powerful new weapon to the Government's arsenal. The ability to relitigate the facts relating to an offense for which the defendant has been acquitted benefits the Government because there are many situations in which the defendant will not be able to present a second defense because of the passage of time, the expense, or some other factor. Indeed there is no discernible limit to the Court's rule; the defendant could be forced to relitigate these facts in trial after trial....