Young v. Kemp

• Decision Date: 03 May 1985
• Docket Number: No. 84-8408,84-8408
• Citation: 760 F.2d 1097
• Parties: Charlie YOUNG, Jr., Petitioner-Appellant, v. Ralph KEMP, Warden, Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Center, Joseph H. Briley, District Attorney of Ocmulgee Circuit, Respondents-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1097

760 F.2d 1097

Charlie YOUNG, Jr., Petitioner-Appellant, v. Ralph KEMP, Warden, Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Center, Joseph H. Briley, District Attorney of Ocmulgee Circuit, Respondents-Appellees.

No. 84-8408.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

May 3, 1985.

Wade M. Crumbley, McDonough, Ga., for petitioner-appellant.

Susan V. Boleyn, Asst. Atty. Gen., Atlanta, Ga., for respondents-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia.

Before KRAVITCH and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges, and ATKINS ^*, District Judge.

R. LANIER ANDERSON, III, Circuit Judge:

Appellant Young's habeas corpus death penalty petition appears for a second time in this court. Young maintains that the district court's initial judgment, Young v. Zant, 506 F.Supp. 274 (M.D.Ga.1980)--holding that there was insufficient evidence to support the death sentence, i.e., insufficient evidence to prove the alleged statutory aggravating factors beyond a reasonable doubt as required by the Georgia death penalty statute, Ga.Code Ann. Sec. 17-10-30(c)--bars the state under the Double Jeopardy Clause from seeking the death penalty in its current retrial of Young.

I. PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Young was tried and convicted of murder, armed robbery, and robbery by intimidation in the Superior Court of Green County, Georgia, in February of 1976. The evidence presented at trial showed that after a heated argument with his banker, Flynt, over a loan, Young shot and killed the banker. After the shooting, Young took a wallet from his victim's back pants pocket and left the scene of the crime. ¹ Pursuant to Georgia's bifurcated death sentencing procedures, see Ga.Code Ann. Sec. 17-10-30, et seq., Young was sentenced to death after the jury found that Young was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of two statutory aggravating factors. ² The two aggravating factors found were:

(1) "[T]he offense of murder ... was committed while the offender was engaged in the commission of another capital felony," i.e., armed robbery; and

(2) "[T]he offender committed the offense of murder ... for the purpose of receiving money"

Ga.Code Ann. Sec. 17-10-30(b)(2), (4).

After exhausting all available state remedies, Young filed a habeas corpus petition in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia pursuant to 28 U.S.C.A. Sec. 2254. Young alleged several constitutional infirmities, only two of which are relevant to this appeal. First, he maintained that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance of counsel at both the guilt/innocence phase of his trial and at the sentencing phase. Second, Young maintained that the evidence adduced at trial was insufficient to support either aggravating circumstance beyond a reasonable doubt. Thus, Young argued, his death sentence could not stand because Georgia law requires such a sentence to be supported by at least one legitimate aggravating factor. Ga.Code Ann. Sec. 17-10-31. The district court ruled that Young's trial counsel had been reasonably effective at the guilt/innocence phase of the trial. However, the court held that Young's counsel had been constitutionally ineffective at the sentencing phase of the trial. In addition, the district court agreed with Young that the evidence was insufficient to support either of the statutory aggravating factors. See Young v. Zant, 506 F.Supp. at 278-81. The court found that there was no evidence that Young had formed the intent to rob his victim prior to the killing and, thus, the murder was not perpetrated while Young was engaged in another capital felony (i.e., armed robbery), nor for the purpose of receiving money. Thus, the district court granted the writ of habeas corpus with respect to Young's death sentence.

The state appealed the district court's ruling with respect to Young's death sentence, and Young cross-appealed from the denial of his other claims. On appeal, this court made only one explicit ruling: that Young's counsel provided ineffective assistance during the guilt/innocence phase of the trial, as well as during the sentencing phase. Young v. Zant, 677 F.2d 792 (11th Cir.1982). Thus, the court held that "[t]he district court's denial of the writ of habeas corpus with respect to the guilt phase of Charlie Young's trial is ... REVERSED." Id. at 800. With respect to the district court's holding that there was insufficient evidence to support the statutory aggravating factors, this court made no explicit determination. ³ However, the court acknowledged the district court's ruling in this regard, id. at 794, 799, and discussed the "deficiency in the evidence" in the course of highlighting Young's ineffectiveness claim. Id. at 799.

After this court's decision in Young v. Zant, supra, Young was reindicted by the Green County grand jury. The grand jury again charged Young with murder, armed robbery, and robbery by intimidation. Subsequently, on December 8, 1982, Young's trial counsel was served with a new "notice of statutory aggravating circumstances," indicating that the state would again seek the death penalty. The notice stated that the two aggravating circumstances alleged in Young's first trial would again serve as bases for the imposition of the death penalty. In addition, the notice indicated that the state would seek to submit to the jury a third aggravating circumstance: that the murder was "outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated battery to the victim." See Ga.Code Ann. Sec. 17-10-30(b)(7).

Upon receiving this new notice of statutory aggravating circumstances, Young pleaded double jeopardy, arguing that the federal district court's insufficiency finding amounted to former jeopardy under Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1, 98 S.Ct. 2141, 57 L.Ed.2d 1 (1978), and Bullington v. Missouri, 451 U.S. 430, 101 S.Ct. 1852, 68 L.Ed.2d 270 (1981). This plea was overruled by the trial court and appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court. The Georgia Supreme Court agreed with the trial court, finding no double jeopardy bar to the imposition of a new death sentence based on the same aggravating factors alleged in the first trial. Young v. State, ⁴ 251 Ga. 153, 303 S.E.2d 431 (1983) (one Justice dissented), cert. denied sub nom. Young v. Georgia, --- U.S. ----, 104 S.Ct. 740, 79 L.Ed.2d 198 (1984) (two Justices dissented from denial of certiorari). Subsequently, the case was returned to the Green County Superior Court for trial. On March 14, 1984, Young filed in federal district court a "Motion to Enforce Judgment" in his original federal habeas corpus proceeding. Young argued that the state's attempt to impose the death penalty violated the Double Jeopardy Clause in light of the district court's prior determination of evidentiary insufficiency with regard to the statutory aggravating factors alleged in Young's first trial. The district court declined to enforce its prior habeas judgment by applying the Double Jeopardy Clause to bar imposition of the death penalty in Young's retrial, suggesting instead that it was appropriate for this court to determine the validity of the double jeopardy claim, because the decision would turn in part on the meaning of the previous decision of this court. Young v. Zant, 585 F.Supp. 295 (M.D.Ga.1984) ("Young II").

We conclude that the previous judgment of this court left intact the district court's finding of insufficient evidence to support the death sentence. That being the case, the double jeopardy principles announced in Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1, 98 S.Ct. 2141, 57 L.Ed.2d 1 (1978), and Bullington v. Missouri, 451 U.S. 430, 101 S.Ct. 1852, 68 L.Ed.2d 270 (1981), prevent the state from seeking the death penalty in Young's retrial. We therefore reverse.

II. DISCUSSION

In reviewing Young's double jeopardy claim, we must answer two principal questions: (1) what was the effect of this court's decision in Young v. Zant, 677 F.2d 792, on the validity of the district court's finding that there was insufficient evidence to buttress the aggravating factors alleged to support Young's death sentence? See Young v. Zant, 506 F.Supp. 274, 280-81; and (2) what are the double jeopardy implications of the district court's holding?

A. This Court's Initial Decision

As indicated above, this court made no explicit ruling with regard to the district court's holding that there was insufficient evidence to support the aggravating factors alleged by the state. It is important to ask whether this court implicitly affirmed or reversed the district court's sufficiency finding. ⁵

It is clear that the court of appeals was cognizant of the district court's finding regarding sufficiency and that the state sought reversal of this finding. 677 F.2d at 794. Although the court did not entertain the sufficiency issue for adjudication per se, it did comment on the issue with respect to Young's ineffective assistance of counsel claim:

Turning to the armed robbery count, we note the district court, in assessing the sufficiency of the State's evidence of aggravating circumstances on the malice murder charge, concluded that the State did not produce sufficient evidence to permit the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Young had formed the intent to rob Flynt prior to the fatal assault. Young v. Zant, 506 F.Supp. at 280-81. This deficiency in the evidence should have been sufficiently clear to Garland [Young's trial attorney] to suggest a strong argument that Young did not rob Flynt by use of an offensive weapon and thus could not be guilty of armed robbery under Ga.Code Ann. Sec. 26-1902.

677 F.2d at 799 [footnote omitted]; see also id. at 794 n. 3. Young urges this court to consider the above quoted language as an implicit affirmance of the district court's sufficiency finding. While we acknowledge that the appellate court's description of the "deficiency in the evidence" amounts to a favorable comment upon ...