Simpson v. Florida

• Decision Date: 14 June 1971
• Docket Number: No. 1267,1267
• Citation: 91 S.Ct. 1801,29 L.Ed.2d 549,403 U.S. 384
• Parties: Macio Bernard SIMPSON v. State of FLORIDA
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

403 U.S. 384

91 S.Ct. 1801

29 L.Ed.2d 549

Macio Bernard SIMPSON

v State of FLORIDA.

No. 1267.

June 14, 1971.

PER CURIAM.

On November 9, 1966, two armed men entered a store in Jacksonville, Florida, and robbed the manager and a customer. During 1967 petitioner was tried and convicted in the state courts, after a jury trial, of the armed robbery of the manager, but the conviction was reversed on appeal because the trial judge neglected to instruct the jury on the lesser-included offense of larceny. Griffin v. State, 202 So.2d 602 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App.1967). In 1968 petitioner was retried on the same charge and acquitted. Subsequently, he was charged with robbing the customer. His motion to quash the information on double jeopardy grounds was overruled and a jury found petitioner guilty of armed robbery. Each of the three jury verdicts here involved was a general one. The trial court imposed a 30-year sentence and petitioner appealed to the District Court of Appeal.

Prior to the adjudication of petitioner's apppeal, this Court rendered its decision in Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 25 L.Ed.2d 469. We there held that the principle of collateral estoppel, which 'bars relitigation between the same parties of issues actually determined at a previous trial,' id., at 442, 90 S.Ct. 1193, is 'embodied in the Fifth Amendment guarantee against double jeopardy,' id., at 445, 90 S.Ct., at 1195, and is fully applicable to the States, by force of the Fourteenth Amendment, in light of Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 89 S.Ct. 2056, 23 L.Ed.2d 707.

The factual situation presented in Ashe remarkably parallels that of the instant case. There three or four men had interrupted a poker game and robbed all six participants. Petitioner had been acquitted by a general jury verdict on a charge of robbing one of the poker players, but was later tried and convicted of robbing a second. He contended that the prohibition against double jeopardy operated as a bar to the second prosecution because the only issue in each trial was the identity of the robbers. We held in Ashe that:

'Where a previous judgment of acquittal was based upon a general verdict * * * (the rule of collateral estoppel) requires a court to 'examine the record of a prior proceeding, taking into account the pleadings, evidence, charge, and other relevant matter, and conclude whether a rational jury could have grounded its verdict upon an issue other than that which the defendant seeks to foreclose from consideration." Ashe, supra, at 444, 90 S.Ct., at 1194.

Here, as in Ashe, petitioner contends that his identity as one of the robbers was the sole disputed issue at each of his trials. The District Court of Appeal, however declined to examine the record of the second trial, but simply held instead, as a matter of law, that while petitioner's acquittal at the second trial entitled him to invoke collateral estoppel, his conviction at the first trial (where the sufficiency of the evidence was not disputed on appeal) gave rise to a 'double collateral estoppel in that by application of this doctrine, appellant is estopped from contending without further proof that the State failed to prove the issue of his identity as one of the robbers on * * * the second trial inasmuch as on the first trial a jury had found above and beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant was a participant in the robbery.' Simpson v. State, 237 So.2d 341, 342 (Fla.App.1970).

The Supreme Court of Florida, by a divided vote, declined review, 240 So.2d 645, and petitioner filed a timely petition for a writ of certiorari with this Court. We grant the writ and we vacate...