the Ninth Circuit held that defendant’s acquittal in traffic court for a speeding ticket precluded the state court from charging him with perjury based upon his testimony at the traffic court trial.
The panel affirmed a district court’s ruling granting James Kendell Wilkinson’s habeas corpus petition. The petition challenged his conviction for perjury for testifying in a traffic court proceeding that he was not the driver of a car that had been stopped for speeding and whose driver had been ticketed. The State of California brought the perjury prosecution after Wilkinson was acquitted of the speeding offense. The panel agreed with the district court that the state appellate court unreasonably applied Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436 (1970), when it held that Wilkinson’s acquittal in traffic court did not bar the subsequent perjury prosecution. The panel held that the traffic court necessarily decided, in Wilkinson’s favor, an issue that was critical to both the traffic court and the perjury case —that Wilkinson was not the driver of the speeding car—and that the State was therefore precluded by the Double Jeopardy Clause from bringing the perjury prosecution.
Under principles of collateral estoppel, an issue of fact that has been determined by a valid and final judgment may not be litigated between the same parties in the future. In Ashe, the Supreme Court found that collateral estoppel applied to the double jeopardy clause. The analysis has three steps: (1) identify the issues in the two actions to determine whether they are sufficiently similar and material to invoke the doctrine; (2) examine the record in the prior case to determine whether the similar issue was litigated and (3) examine the record in the prior case to determine whether the similar issue was necessarily decided. Applying AEDPA's standard of review (see 28 U.S.C. §2254(d)(1)), the Ninth Circuit concluded that the state court unreasonably applied Ashe. The issue in the traffic case (whether Wilkinson was the driver) and the issue in the perjury case (whether Wilkinson was telling the truth when he denied being the driver) were sufficiently similar and material for collateral estoppel and double jeopardy to apply. The traffic court judge in the first case necessarily decided that Wilkinson was not the driver and that he was telling the truth when he stated this.
Copyright © 2015 Christine Esser
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