United States v. Bravo-Fernandez, No. 14-1089 (1st Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseIn 2011, Defendants were convicted of, among other closely related charges, federal program bribery under 18 U.S.C. 666. The First Circuit vacated the convictions, holding that the jury had received improper instructions about what constituted “bribery” under the statute. The Court remanded for possible re-prosecution of the section 666 counts under that same indictment. Defendants filed two motions for acquittal on the section 666 charges, arguing that the Double Jeopardy Clause barred the renewed prosecutions because (1) the jury acquitted on the related offenses in the earlier trial and necessarily found that the government failed to prove issues that it would have to relitigate in the new prosecutions, and (2) a line order that the district court issued and then corrected immediately after the First Circuit issued its mandate in the last appeal constituted a final and irrevocable order of acquittal on the renewed section 666 charges. The district court denied the two acquittal motions. The First Circuit affirmed, holding (1) Defendants failed to meet their burden of showing that the acquittals involving section 666 collaterally estopped the renewed, standalone section 666 prosecutions; and (2) the district court’s line order did not constitute an acquittal under the Double Jeopardy Clause, and thus double jeopardy did not prevent the district court from reconsidering it.
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