Mullin v. Wyoming, 414 U.S. 940

Mullin v. Wyoming

414 U.S. 940

SCOTUS

1973

Check Treatment

MULLIN v. WYOMING

No. 72-6906

Supreme Court of the United States

414 U.S. 940

here, sitting here today asking you to believe this story.

“If this was an accidental shooting, why didn‘t he go and say, ‘I just accidentally shot somebody.‘”

Burt v. Yeager, 342 F. Supp. 188, 192 (N. J. 1972).

In upholding the conviction the court below found that

Harris v. New York, 401 U. S. 222 (1971), not Griffin, supra, was controlling. In the majority held that statements otherwise barred by Miranda may be introduced to impeach a defendant with the temerity to testify in his own behalf. It is argued that here, as in , the defendant‘s prior statements are inconsistent. But of course here there are no prior statements; it is the defendant‘s silence that is used against him. The District Court, after carefully reviewing the record, found that the silence was just as consistent with the defendant‘s story as with the prosecution‘s case. In reversing, the Court of Appeals concluded otherwise. We thus seem to have come to the point where the exercise of one‘s constitutional rights can be offered to the jury as evidence of guilt.

We should grant this petition for certiorari.

No. 72-6906.

MULLIN v. WYOMING. Sup. Ct. Wyo. Certiorari denied.

MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, with whom MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS and MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL concur, dissenting.

Petitioner and three friends observed a case of whiskey being placed into a truck. A short time later petitioner encouraged Richard Anderson, who had not been present to see the case being put into the vehicle, to steal the spirits. Later in the day, Anderson removed the case from the truck and gave eight bottles to one of petitioner‘s friends, who in turn delivered three bottles to petitioner. Petitioner was arrested and convicted in the Justice of the Peace Court for Platte County, Wyoming, of the misdemeanor offense of being a minor in possession of alcoholic beverages. A few months later petitioner was charged and convicted in the District Court of Platte County with feloniously counseling and encouraging Anderson to commit grand larceny. The Supreme Court of Wyoming affirmed, rejecting petitioner‘s claim that the second prosecution violated his constitutional protection against double jeopardy,

505 P. 2d 305 (1973).

Although both the misdemeanor and felony charges arose out of the “same transaction or occurrence,” they were prosecuted by the State in separate proceedings. That, in my opinion, requires that we grant the petition for certiorari and reverse, for I adhere to the view that the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which is applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment,

Benton v. Maryland, 395 U. S. 784 (1969), requires the prosecution, except in most limited circumstances not present here, “to join at one trial all the charges against a defendant that grow out of a single criminal act, occurrence, episode, or transaction.” (BRENNAN, J., concurring); see (BRENNAN, J., dissenting); (separate opinion of DOUGLAS, J.); (BRENNAN, J., concurring).