U.S. v. Ruhbayan

• Decision Date: 07 April 2003
• Docket Number: No. 02-4331.,02-4331.
• Citation: 325 F.3d 197
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Rajul RUHBAYAN, a/k/a Creme, a/k/a Kreem, a/k/a Day-Ja, a/k/a Deja, a/k/a Amir Ruhbayan, a/k/a Jibra'el Ruhalamin, a/k/a Jibrael Ruhalamin, a/k/a James Vernon Wood, a/k/a James Vernette Johnson, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

325 F.3d 197

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Rajul RUHBAYAN, a/k/a Creme, a/k/a Kreem, a/k/a Day-Ja, a/k/a Deja, a/k/a Amir Ruhbayan, a/k/a Jibra'el Ruhalamin, a/k/a Jibrael Ruhalamin, a/k/a James Vernon Wood, a/k/a James Vernette Johnson, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 02-4331.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: January 21, 2003.

Decided: April 7, 2003.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

ARGUED: Joseph Barry McCracken, Cook & McCracken, Norfolk, Virginia, for Appellant. James Ashford Metcalfe, Assistant United States Attorney, Norfolk, Virginia, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Paul J. McNulty, United States Attorney, Norfolk, Virginia, for Appellee.

Before KING, Circuit Judge, HAMILTON, Senior Circuit Judge, and GREENBERG, Senior Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, sitting by designation.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge KING wrote the opinion, in which Senior Judge HAMILTON and Senior Judge GREENBERG joined.

OPINION

KING, Circuit Judge:

Rajul Ruhbayan appeals from the district court's refusal to dismiss charges of perjury and subornation of perjury levied against him by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia. Ruhbayan maintains that, because of a favorable jury verdict rendered in an earlier prosecution, those charges are barred by the doctrine of collateral estoppel. As explained below, we reject Ruhbayan's collateral estoppel claim and affirm the decision of the district court.

I.

On August 25, 2000, Ruhbayan was indicted in the Eastern District of Virginia for multiple felonies, including being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) (the "Firearms Charge"), and related drug-trafficking offenses. In September of 2000, Ruhbayan was tried by a jury in Norfolk, Virginia (the "First Trial"). During the First Trial, the prosecution presented several witnesses, including police officers, who testified that Ruhbayan had been involved in drug-trafficking and firearms activities. On the Firearms Charge, officers testified about their search of Ruhbayan's van on the morning of April 14, 2000. During the search, the police found a loaded nine-millimeter pistol (the "pistol") hidden between cushions of the van's back seat.

Ruhbayan testified in the First Trial, admitting that he was a convicted felon, but denying that he was a drug dealer or that he had possessed the pistol. He specifically denied knowing the pistol was in his van on April 14, 2000. In his defense Ruhbayan also called Yolanda Goodman, who testified that she was his girlfriend, that she had often been to his home, and that she had never seen him with either drugs or firearms. Most importantly, she asserted that, without Ruhbayan's knowledge, she had placed the pistol in his van on April 14, 2000. The jury found Ruhbayan guilty of two lesser-included misdemeanor offenses, simple possession and conspiracy to possess crack cocaine, but acquitted him of the remaining charges, including the Firearms Charge.

Following the First Trial, Goodman was indicted for a federal firearms offense relating to the pistol. Her indictment, for violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), was premised on her admissions in the First Trial that she (1) possessed the pistol, and (2) was a convicted felon. After her indictment, Goodman's lawyer advised the United States Attorney that, contrary to her trial testimony, Goodman had nothing to do with the pistol. Instead, she claimed to have testified falsely to assist Ruhbayan's defense. Goodman then agreed to plead guilty to an information charging obstruction of justice and, inter alia, to cooperate with the prosecutors, in exchange for the dismissal of her indictment. In her plea agreement, Goodman stipulated that:

On September 1, 2000, in the United States District Court ... Defendant GOODMAN testified falsely that she had possessed the firearm and ammunition and that she had placed them in Ruhbayan's vehicle without his knowledge on or about April 14, 2000, in Suffolk, Virginia, when she knew in fact that she had never possessed the firearm and ammunition, had never placed them in Ruhbayan's vehicle, and was testifying falsely as requested by the defendant Ruhbayan in order to assist him in misleading the jury in order to obtain an acquittal on Ruhbayan's pending firearms charges.

Goodman provided the Government with more than fifty letters that Ruhbayan had written to her while he was in custody awaiting the First Trial (the "Ruhbayan Letters"). The Ruhbayan Letters corroborate Goodman's obstruction of justice plea and provide compelling evidence that Ruhbayan had concocted a scheme to offer false testimony in his First Trial.

In the Ruhbayan Letters, Ruhbayan repeatedly asked Goodman to find a nonfelon who would admit to placing the pistol in his van, without his knowledge, on or before April 14, 2000. When Goodman was unsuccessful in locating such an individual, Ruhbayan convinced her to testify that it was she who placed the pistol in his van. In his letters, Ruhbayan laid out a "roadmap" for her to follow, writing that she should contact his lawyer and say that she had placed the pistol in the van about 3:00 a.m. on April 14, 2000. She should add, Ruhbayan wrote, that she had planned to retrieve the pistol around 5:00 a.m., but that Ruhbayan was arrested before she could do so. Ruhbayan promised not to "cross up" Goodman when he testified. (Goodman's recantation and the Ruhbayan Letters are referred to collectively as the "Goodman Evidence.")

On the basis of the Goodman Evidence, a grand jury, on February 12, 2002, returned a five-count indictment against Ruhbayan (the "Indictment"). In the Indictment, Ruhbayan was charged with: (1) conspiracy to commit perjury and obstruct justice; (2) corruptly influencing the testimony of a witness; (3) perjury, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1623 (the "Perjury Charge"); (4) suborning Goodman's perjury, in contravention of 18 U.S.C. § 1622 (the "Subornation Charge"); and (5) obstructing justice. Ruhbayan sought dismissal of the Indictment on collateral estoppel grounds, contending that all five counts were barred by his acquittal on the Firearms Charge in his First Trial. The district court refused to dismiss the Indictment, however, concluding that the doctrine of collateral estoppel was inapplicable to Ruhbayan's situation. Ruhbayan has appealed, challenging the court's refusal to dismiss the Perjury Charge and the Subornation Charge.¹ We possess jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291, because the denial of Ruhbayan's motion to dismiss constitutes an appealable final order under Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 546, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949).²

II.

We review de novo a district court's refusal to dismiss an indictment assertedly barred by collateral estoppel. United States v. Fiel, 35 F.3d 997, 1005 (4th Cir.1994). Findings of fact made by a district court in connection with such a ruling are reviewed for clear error. See United States v. Ward, 171 F.3d 188, 193 (4th Cir.1999).

III.

A.

For criminal purposes, the doctrine of collateral estoppel derives from the Fifth Amendment's guarantee against double jeopardy. Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 445, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 25 L.Ed.2d 469 (1970). As the Court explained in Ashe, "[w]hen 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." Id. at 443, 90 S.Ct. 1189. Similarly, as we have held previously, "[d]ouble jeopardy is a constitutional bar not only to retrial for the same offense, but also to relitigation of adjudicated issues whether they emerge in trials for the same or distinct offenses." United States v. Nash, 447 F.2d 1382, 1385 (4th Cir.1971). Although the doctrine of collateral estoppel was first developed in the realm of civil litigation, it now constitutes a fixed principle of federal criminal law. See United States v. Oppenheimer, 242 U.S. 85, 87, 37 S.Ct. 68, 61 L.Ed. 161 (1916) ("It cannot be that the safeguards of the person, so often and so rightly mentioned with solemn reverence, are less than those that protect from a liability in debt."). Collateral estoppel is not to be applied mechanically, however, but only with "realism and rationality." Ashe, 397 U.S. at 444, 90 S.Ct. 1189.

While the doctrine of collateral estoppel is constitutionally based and will, in proper circumstances, constitute a bar to a criminal trial, a criminal defendant's right to testify in his own defense "does not include a right to commit perjury." United States v. Dunnigan, 507 U.S. 87, 96, 113 S.Ct. 1111, 122 L.Ed.2d 445 (1993). Thus, an acquittal does not constitute an automatic bar to a subsequent prosecution for perjury committed during the earlier trial. As the Ninth Circuit has aptly observed, "[t]o hold otherwise ... would be to put a premium on perjury and to make immunity from punishment for perjury rest on success in commission of the crime." United States v. Sarno, 596 F.2d 404, 407 (9th Cir.1979) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).

In our 1994 Fiel decision, Chief Judge Ervin identified the five elements relevant to a collateral estoppel claim (the "Fiel test"). They are:

(1) whether the issue in question is identical to the issue adjudicated in a prior proceeding;

(2) whether the issue was actually determined in the prior adjudication;

(3) whether the issue was necessarily decided in that proceeding;

(4) whether the resulting judgment settling the issue was final and valid; and

(5) whether the parties had a full and fair opportunity to litigate the issue in the prior proceeding.

Fiel, 35 F.3d at 1006. In order for a criminal prosecution to be barred by collateral estoppel under the Fiel test, each of these five elements must be resolved in the movant's favor. In seeking relief here, Ruhbayan contends that the Fiel test is satisfied and that our decision in N...