State v. Huss, 01-2048.

• Decision Date: 26 February 2003
• Docket Number: No. 01-2048.,01-2048.
• Parties: STATE of Iowa, Appellee, v. Loren Glen HUSS, Jr., Appellant.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

657 N.W.2d 447

STATE of Iowa, Appellee, v. Loren Glen HUSS, Jr., Appellant.

No. 01-2048.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

February 26, 2003.

Barbara A. Schwartz, University of Iowa Clinical Programs, and Teonta Williams

and Anthony Haughton, Student Legal Interns, Iowa City, for appellant.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Robert P. Ewald and Thomas H. Miller, Assistant Attorneys General, for appellee.

LARSON, Justice.

This is another chapter in the long history of this case. The defendant, Loren Huss, was arrested and charged with murder in the gruesome death of his girlfriend, Marilyn Sheets, in 1986. He was ultimately convicted and appealed to this court. State v. Huss, 430 N.W.2d 621 (Iowa 1988), cert. denied, 490 U.S. 1024, 109 S.Ct. 1755, 104 L.Ed.2d 191 (1989) (Huss I). We affirmed his conviction. Huss took his case to federal district court in a habeas corpus action, lost there, and appealed to the eighth circuit. See Huss v. Graves, 252 F.3d 952 (8th Cir.2001)

. The eighth circuit reversed and remanded the case for entry of a habeas corpus order by the federal district court unless the State, within ninety days, retried Huss by submitting the stipulated record to a new judge. Huss was tried in a nonjury trial in Polk County and found not guilty by reason of insanity. Huss filed this appeal, claiming the trial violated the double jeopardy provisions of the United States and Iowa Constitutions. We affirm.

I. Facts and Prior Proceedings.

On May 19, 1986, police broke into the apartment that Huss shared with the victim. They discovered Sheets' mutilated body on the floor. Huss was spreading blood over the walls. With blood in his mouth and caked on his face, Huss was screaming passages of scripture. Later, while confined in a padded cell, Huss banged his head against the bed frame until he bled profusely, then smeared the cell walls with blood.

The State charged Huss with first-degree murder, and Huss filed a notice of insanity. After extensive discovery, the prosecutor became convinced that Huss was insane at the time of the killing. The State and defense counsel agreed the appropriate disposition would be to present the evidence in a bench trial on a stipulated record. In closing arguments both sides argued that Huss was insane at the time of the killing. The court took the matter under advisement. Two months after the hearing the court ruled that it would not render a verdict and could not find the defendant was insane at the time of the murder. The court set the case for trial to a jury, characterizing the aborted submission on the stipulated record as a "pretrial hearing."

In the jury trial that followed the prosecutor abandoned the insanity approach and aggressively pursued a guilty verdict. The jury found Huss guilty of first-degree murder. Huss appealed to this court on the ground the jury trial violated his double-jeopardy rights. We found the original proceeding on the stipulated record was indeed a trial, not a "pretrial hearing," as the judge had characterized it, and that jeopardy had attached. However, we ruled that the trial court's refusal to enter a verdict in the original proceeding and to set the case for trial to a jury was in effect a mistrial declared in the sole interest of the defendant. State v. Huss, 430 N.W.2d at 624. We reasoned that, after the trial court determined that its assessment of the evidence did not match the arguments of the prosecutor and defense counsel, the court was reasonable in assuming the defendant had not contemplated the risk of a guilty verdict. Id. We found that the subsequent jury trial did not violate double jeopardy and affirmed the conviction.

Huss sought habeas corpus relief in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. That court denied relief, and Huss appealed to the eighth circuit, which granted the writ. It held Huss had been subjected to double jeopardy but that his release under the writ would be conditional. He would be released unless, within ninety days, the State retried him by submitting the original stipulated record to a new judge. Huss, 252 F.3d at 958-59. Huss petitioned for certiorari in the United States Supreme Court, but certiorari was denied. Huss, 535 U.S. 933, 122 S.Ct. 1308, 152 L.Ed.2d 218 (2002).

The State resumed proceedings in district court as allowed by the eighth circuit, based on the original stipulated record, and Huss filed a motion to dismiss on double-jeopardy grounds. The court denied the motion to dismiss, ruling that the eighth circuit's decision was the law of the case. It did not address Huss's double-jeopardy arguments. Huss unsuccessfully applied for interlocutory appeal to this court. The district court, on the stipulated record, found Huss not guilty by reason of insanity and ordered his evaluation for criminal commitment. The resulting commitment order is the subject of a separate appeal, and it is not at issue here.

Huss now appeals the court's verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, raising two issues: (1) whether the federal court's habeas corpus ruling is binding as the law of the case, as the district court concluded; and (2) whether Huss's retrial following the federal court's grant of habeas corpus relief subjected him to double jeopardy so as to prevent a retrial.

II. The Constitutional Provisions.

The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution states, "nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb ...." U.S. Const. amend. V. This provision is applied to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justices of Boston Mun. Ct. v. Lydon, 466 U.S. 294, 306, 104 S.Ct. 1805, 1812, 80 L.Ed.2d 311, 323 (1984). The Iowa Constitution provides that "No person shall after acquittal, be tried for the same offence ..." Iowa Const. art. I, § 12. See generally State v. Franzen, 495 N.W.2d 714 (Iowa 1993)

.

III. The Habeas Corpus Ruling.

The eighth circuit disagreed with our opinion in Huss I and held that the trial in which Huss was convicted of first-degree murder violated double jeopardy principles because the earlier "mistrial" was not based on "manifest necessity" as required by federal cases. Huss, 252 F.3d at 955 (citing United States v. Perez, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 579, 580, 6 L.Ed. 165, 165 (1824), and United States v. Jorn, 400 U.S. 470, 481, 91 S.Ct. 547, 557, 27 L.Ed.2d 543, 554 (1971)). The eighth circuit ruled that our court in Huss I erred by focusing on the benefit to Huss in granting a mistrial sua sponte. Huss, 252 F.3d at 956. The court held, however, that a proceeding that places a defendant in double jeopardy does not necessarily prevent a retrial, id. at 958. This is consistent with general constitutional principles:

[I]n cases in which a mistrial has been declared prior to verdict, the conclusion that jeopardy has attached begins, rather than ends, the inquiry whether the Double Jeopardy Clause bars retrial.

Illinois v. Somerville, 410 U.S. 458, 467, 93 S.Ct. 1066, 1072, 35 L.Ed.2d 425, 433 (1973) (emphasis added). The eighth circuit said in Huss:

"[H]abeas corpus is, at its core, an equitable remedy," Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298, 319, 115 S.Ct. 851, 863, 130 L.Ed.2d 808, 831 (1995). Because of the equitable nature of the writ, a federal court "has broad discretion in conditioning a judgment granting habeas relief [and is] authorized ... to dispose of habeas corpus matters `as law and justice require,'" Hilton v. Braunskill, 481 U.S. 770, 775, 107 S.Ct. 2113, 2118, 95 L.Ed.2d 724, 732 (1987). When a double jeopardy violation is found on habeas review, the normal relief is to release the prisoner and forbid further retrial.

This case, however, is quite obviously far removed from the norm. Rather than maintaining his innocence, Mr. Huss sought at his bench trial to be excused from his acts because of insanity. Even if Mr. Huss had received what he asked for, therefore, he would have been deprived of his liberty, since a defendant in Iowa who is found not guilty by reason of insanity is subject to involuntary commitment in a mental facility. If we were to release Mr. Huss, he would be in a better position than he would have been in if the bench trial had concluded in his favor.

We do not believe that under the unique circumstances of this case the double jeopardy clause prohibits the retrial of Mr. Huss altogether. The Constitution does not absolutely require "that every time a defendant is put to trial before a competent tribunal he is entitled to go free if the trial fails to end in a final judgment," Wade v. Hunter, 336 U.S. 684, 688, 69 S.Ct. 834, 837, 93 L.Ed. 974, 978 (1949). A retrial is permissible when a defendant's interest in a single trial is "outweighed by the competing and equally legitimate demand for public justice," United States v. Givens, 88 F.3d 608, 611 (8th Cir.1996).... Mr. Huss's first trial was conducted on a stipulated record, and the same evidence can be submitted to another judge.

Huss, 252 F.3d at 958. The court then ordered this disposition:

[I]t is appropriate to issue a writ of habeas corpus releasing Mr. Huss, unless the State of Iowa, within 90 days after the mandate issues in this case, retries Mr. Huss by submitting the stipulated record from the first trial to the new judge.

Id.

IV. The Trial Following Federal Remand.

The State argues, and the district court ruled, that the holding of the federal case binds this court because it is the law of the case. Huss responds that law-of-the-case principles do not apply because a holding in a habeas corpus case between Huss and a warden cannot bind the court in a subsequent case in which Huss and the state are the parties. Huss suggests we could reach a conclusion as to the application of the federal constitutional provision different from that of the federal court in Huss v. Graves. In any event, Huss argues we should interpret Iowa's double-jeopardy provision to prevent his retrial. We...