USA v. Aurora Lopez-Avila

Filing

FILED OPINION (JOHN T. NOONAN, CARLOS T. BEA and DONALD E. WALTER) AFFIRMED; REMANDED. Judge: CTB Authoring, FILED AND ENTERED JUDGMENT. [8029229]

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FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
AURORA LOPEZ-AVILA,
Defendant-Appellant.





No. 11-10013
D.C. No.
4:10-cr-00035-CKJJCG-1
OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Arizona
Cindy K. Jorgenson, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted
November 14, 2011—San Francisco, California
Filed January 12, 2012
Before: John T. Noonan and Carlos T. Bea, Circuit Judges,
and Donald E. Walter, Senior District Judge.*
Opinion by Judge Bea

*The Honorable Donald E. Walter, Senior District Judge for the U.S.
District Court for Western Louisiana, sitting by designation.

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COUNSEL
Robert L. Miskell, Office of the United States Attorney, Tucson, Arizona for the plaintiff-appellee.
Mark F. Williman, Tucson, Arizona, for the defendantappellant.

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OPINION
BEA, Circuit Judge:
On the second day of trial in this drug trafficking prosecution, during the cross-examination of Defendant-Appellant
Aurora Lopez-Avila, the prosecutor read back supposed testimony of Lopez-Avila from her earlier change of plea hearing.
What he read back seemed to contradict Lopez-Avila’s earlier
statements on direct examination. Using this supposed prior
testimony, the prosecutor—Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA)
Jerry R. Albert, of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District
of Arizona—accused Lopez-Avila of having lied to the federal magistrate presiding at an earlier hearing.
But the prosecutor’s quotation was only part of what he
represented was a question asked the defendant under oath by
the magistrate judge. It was a half-truth. Without telling the
court or defense counsel, the prosecutor presented to court
and counsel an altered version of the prior hearing’s question
and answer, and the altered version of such dialogue made it
appear as though Lopez-Avila had contradicted herself on a
material point, when she plainly had not. The district court
naturally assumed the prosecutor had read the question and
answer whole, and allowed the questioning to proceed. When
the prosecutor’s misrepresentation was discovered by defense
counsel, he moved for a mistrial, which the court swiftly
granted. The defense then moved to dismiss the indictment
with prejudice, on double jeopardy grounds, but the district
court denied that motion. Lopez-Avila’s appeal from the
denial of that motion is the legal issue before us.
We affirm the district court’s denial of the motion to dismiss the indictment on double jeopardy grounds. In addition,
we take several steps to ensure that AUSA Jerry Albert’s
actions are properly investigated, and that he is disciplined if
the relevant authorities deem it proper. In so doing, we bear
in mind that AUSA Albert’s conduct is not directly before us,

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and we express no judgment as to what sanctions, if any, are
proper.
I.
Defendant Aurora Lopez-Avila attempted to enter the
United States from Mexico at the Nogales Port of Entry in
Arizona. Upon a tip from an informant, customs officials
searched her car and found 9.7 kilograms of cocaine behind
the back seat cushion. Lopez-Avila was charged by indictment with possession with intent to distribute over 5 kilograms of cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and 21
U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A)(ii)(II).
Lopez-Avila initially pleaded guilty. At the guilty plea
hearing, Lopez-Avila was asked a standard set of questions by
a magistrate judge, including questions put to ascertain
whether Lopez-Avila was knowingly and voluntarily entering
a plea of guilty to the charges against her. The questioning
included the following colloquy:
COURT: In the last 48 hours have you had any
drugs, prescription medication, or alcoholic beverage?
DEFENDANT: No.
COURT: Have you ever been treated for a mental
condition?
DEFENDANT: No.
COURT: Ms. Lopez, has anyone threatened you or
forced you to plead guilty?
DEFENDANT: No.
COURT: Has anyone made any promises to you as
to what would happen in your case?

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DEFENDANT: No.1
One month later, during a presentence interview, LopezAvila stated that she had been “ ‘forced’ to commit this
offense, or she would face dire consequences.” Lopez-Avila
had not earlier mentioned to defense counsel that she had
been threatened to transport the contraband. Her counsel
forthwith moved to withdraw the guilty plea in light of this
new information. Following a hearing, the court granted the
motion to withdraw the guilty plea.
The case proceeded to trial. Lopez-Avila conceded that she
had been transporting contraband and therefore, as the district
court later stated, “the whole issue in [the] case [was] whether
[Lopez-Avila] was under duress, or threatened, or forced to
commit this crime.”2 The government’s case-in-chief took
approximately one-and-a-half days. During that time, according to the district court, there were “no big surprises” during
the testimony of the government’s three witnesses. Rather,
“the government . . . was moving forward as it had expected
as the evidence was being presented.”
1

As is clear from this exchange, the only relevance of questions as to
whether Lopez-Avila had been “threatened” was as to the voluntariness of
the upcoming guilty plea. The proper place to raise her claim that she was
“threatened” to commit the drug trafficking crime was as a defense to her
guilt. See, e.g., United States v. Navarro, 608 F.3d 529, 532 (9th Cir.
2010) (quoting model jury instructions regarding the duress defense). She
later did just that. Lopez-Avila could also have made a duress argument
to mitigate her sentence. See U.S.S.G. § 5K2.12 (allowing for downward
departure where defendant “committed the offense because of serious
coercion, blackmail or duress, under circumstances not amounting to a
complete defense”). But not at the change of plea hearing.
2
Lopez-Avila contends that she thought that she was transporting pills
called “Hoodia,” a weight loss drug. However, Lopez-Avila conceded that
she knew she was transporting some banned substance, and “[a] defendant
charged with importing or possessing a drug is not required to know the
type and amount of drug” in her possession to be found guilty of possessing contraband. United States v. Carranza, 289 F.3d 634, 644 (9th Cir.
2002).

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On the afternoon of the second day of trial, Lopez-Avila
took the stand in her own defense. She testified she had been
coerced to transport the drugs found in her car. During crossexamination, the prosecutor—Jerry Albert of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Tucson—attempted to impeach Lopez-Avila’s
testimony regarding such coercion by asking questions
regarding what Lopez-Avila had said during her initial guilty
plea hearing. Defense counsel objected, and at sidebar defense
counsel argued that there was “an agreement that this change
of plea and her admitting guilt was not going to be a part of
this record.” The prosecutor stated that he wanted to use certain questions and answers from that hearing to impeach
Lopez-Avila but that, pursuant to counsels’ agreement, he
would not “bring out [that] she pled guilty.” In particular, the
prosecutor requested that he be allowed to recite to LopezAvila the following question and answer from the initial
guilty plea hearing:
COURT: Ms. Lopez, has anybody threatened you?
DEFENDANT: No.
The court overruled the objection and allowed the prosecution
to proceed.
The prosecution then asked Lopez-Avila about that
exchange:
Q: Do you recall testifying under oath on February
24th, 2010, and being asked this question by the
Court—by the Magistrate Judge:
Ms. Lopez, has anyone threatened you?
And you gave—did you give the following answer:
No.

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Did you tell that under oath to Magistrate Judge
Guerin?
DEFENDANT: Yes.
Q: Was that a lie?
DEFENDANT: How is that? I don’t understand.
Q: Well, are you—you’ve now admitted that you in
fact told the judge that you were not threatened in
this case. And I’m asking you was your testimony on
February 24th, 2010, while you were under oath,
was that a lie? Did you lie to the judge about not
being threatened?
DEFENDANT: Yes.
(Emphasis added.)
Cross-examination proceeded for approximately forty more
minutes, when the court took a brief recess. At the recess,
defense counsel asked the prosecution for a copy of the transcript from the guilty plea hearing. Immediately upon reviewing the transcript, defense counsel noticed that the prosecutor
had misquoted the magistrate judge’s question to LopezAvila, without notifying the court or defense counsel of his
alteration. At the guilty plea hearing, Lopez-Avila was asked
the following question:
COURT: Ms. Lopez, has anyone threatened you or
forced you to plead guilty?
DEFENDANT: No.
(Emphasis added.)
At trial, however, the prosecutor omitted the latter clause of
the magistrate’s question—“or forced you to plead guilty”—

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when he purported to quote from the transcript of the prior
proceeding. The prosecutor represented to court and counsel
the exchange was:
COURT: Ms. Lopez, has anybody threatened you?
DEFENDANT: No.
The defense immediately moved for a mistrial. Defense
counsel contended that the prosecutor had made it seem as
though Lopez-Avila had been asked whether she had been
threatened to commit the offense, when the magistrate judge
in fact had asked Lopez-Avila a different question: whether
she had been threatened to plead guilty. The prosecutor admitted that his misquoting of the transcript had been intentional
but claimed that his reading was a fair one: the transcript
“didn’t say threaten you to plead guilty. So I wasn’t going to
mention force you to plead guilty. That’s not—I read exactly
the way it was. And it’s—to me, that says anyone threatened
you? Period.” But, of course, the prosecutor had not read the
question magistrate’s question “exactly the way it was.”
AUSA Albert omitted an important ellipsis between the words
“threatened you” and the end of the magistrate’s question,
which ellipsis would reveal that words were missing. Here,
that missing phrase made all the difference.
The court agreed that the defense had the better reading of
the real question and answer: that Lopez-Avila was answering
whether she been threatened or forced to plead guilty and not
whether she had been threatened or forced to commit any
other act. The court told the prosecutor that “it would have
been helpful to bring this to the court’s attention at sidebar in
advance.” After a brief recess to consider the matter, the court
concluded that it could not cure the error by giving a jury
instruction. The court then declared a mistrial.
Following the mistrial order, defense counsel moved to dismiss the case on double jeopardy grounds. At the hearing on

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that motion, the court said that it was “very surprised the
[prosecution] had attempted to present . . . that evidence in
that way to this jury.” However, the court denied the motion.
It correctly stated that under Oregon v. Kennedy, 456 U.S.
667 (1982), the Double Jeopardy Clause bars retrial after a
defendant requests a mistrial “only where the governmental
conduct in question is intended to ‘goad’ the defendant into
moving for a mistrial.” Kennedy, 456 U.S. at 676. Considering what had occurred at trial up to that point, the court found
no evidence “that this was a strategy decision on [the prosecution’s] part to abort the trial.” Instead, the government “was
moving forward as it had expected as the evidence was being
presented,” and the prosecutor’s presentation of the edited
transcript “was a deliberate strategy . . . to attempt to convict
the defendant, or present evidence that [the prosecution] felt
was supporting guilt rather than presenting evidence in order
to go to a mistrial.”
Lopez-Avila took an interlocutory appeal challenging the
district court’s denial of her double jeopardy motion. The district court divested itself of jurisdiction over the case and
allowed the appeal to proceed because of its conclusion that
the claim presented by this interlocutory appeal is “colorable.”
II.
As a preliminary matter, this court has jurisdiction to hear
this interlocutory appeal. Even though a denial of a motion to
dismiss the indictment on double jeopardy grounds is not a
“final decision” of a district court, “[d]enials of a motion to
dismiss on double jeopardy grounds have long been considered immediately appealable under the collateral order doctrine so long as the double jeopardy claim is at least
colorable.” United States v. Alvarez-Moreno, 657 F.3d 896,
899 (9th Cir. 2011) (internal quotations and citations omitted).
“A ‘colorable’ claim in this context is one for which there is
‘some possible validity.’ ” Id. (quoting Richardson v. United

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States, 468 U.S. 317, 326 n.6 (1984)). The district court held
that Lopez-Avila’s claim is colorable, and the government
does not object to this court exercising jurisdiction. As
explained below, although Lopez-Avila’s claim fails, it is not
a “frivolous” double jeopardy claim that this court could dismiss on jurisdictional grounds. See Alvarez-Moreno, 657 F.3d
at 899.
III.
When reviewing a denial of a motion to dismiss on double
jeopardy grounds before trial, this court “review[s] de novo
legal questions” but “review[s] factual findings, including
those on which denial may be based, for clear error.” United
States v. Ziskin, 360 F.3d 934, 943 (9th Cir. 2003).
IV.
Lopez-Avila makes two arguments for why double jeopardy should bar retrial in this case: (1) retrial is barred under
Oregon v. Kennedy’s “goading” exception to the usual rule
that double jeopardy does not bar retrial where a mistrial is
granted with the defendant’s consent, and (2) retrial is barred
by the Arizona Supreme Court’s interpretation of its state
constitutional protection against double jeopardy, which interpretation is incorporated into federal proceedings in Arizona
through 28 U.S.C. § 530B. Both contentions fail. The Double
Jeopardy Clause provides no bar to Lopez-Avila’s retrial.
A.
[1] Because “[a] defendant’s motion for a mistrial constitutes a deliberate election on his part to forgo his valued right
to have his guilt or innocence determined before the first trier
of fact,” Oregon v. Kennedy, 456 U.S. 667, 676 (1982) (internal quotations and citation omitted), the Double Jeopardy
Clause usually does not bar retrial when a mistrial is declared
with the consent of the defendant. Instead, “[o]nly where the

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governmental conduct in question is intended to ‘goad’ the
defendant into moving for a mistrial may a defendant raise the
bar of double jeopardy to a second trial after having succeeded in aborting the first on his own motion.” Id. In adopting this standard, the Supreme Court expressly rejected the
idea that double jeopardy would bar retrial when mere “ ‘bad
faith conduct’ or ‘harassment’ on the part of the judge or
prosecutor” provoked the defense to ask for a mistrial. Id. at
674. In other words, in the language of veteran trial lawyers,
the Double Jeopardy Clause bars retrial when a prosecutor’s
misconduct aims to “burn” the jury, but not when he merely
aims to convict the defendant by methods foul.
In practice, the Kennedy standard is rarely met. That is
because “ ‘[i]t doesn’t even matter that [the prosecutor]
knows he is acting improperly, provided that his aim is to get
a conviction. The only relevant intent is intent to terminate the
trial, not intent to prevail at this trial by impermissible
means.’ ” United States v. Perlaza, 439 F.3d 1149, 1173 (9th
Cir. 2006) (quoting United States v. Oseni, 996 F.2d 186, 188
(7th Cir. 1993)). Lopez-Avila cites no published Ninth Circuit
case since Kennedy that has held that retrial was barred after
the defense consented to a mistrial motion. Nationwide, such
cases are few and far between. See, e.g., Sheldon Shapiro,
Double Jeopardy As Bar To Retrial After Grant Of Defendant’s Motion For Mistrial, 98 A.L.R.3d 997 (1980 & Supplements) (collecting cases from state and federal courts).
Lopez-Avila points to a single fact in the record that supposedly shows why the government may have been unhappy
with the way the trial was proceeding and therefore attempted
to sink its case: the fact that the border patrol agent who
searched Lopez-Avila’s car testified that there was no evidence that Lopez-Avila knew she was transporting cocaine. In
particular, Agent Lozania testified that Lopez-Avila consistently maintained during questioning that she did not know
the vehicle contained cocaine. But this fact would provide no
reason for the prosecution to subvert its case, since it did not

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affect any element needed for conviction. While Lopez-Avila
said that she thought she was importing diet pills, she admitted that she knew such importation would be unlawful. That
admission is enough to satisfy the statute’s intent requirement
under Ninth Circuit law. See United States v. Carranza, 289
F.3d 634, 644 (9th Cir. 2002).3 Notably, Agent Lozania gave
no testimony to bolster Lopez-Avila’s claim that she had been
coerced to carry the diet pills she admitted she was smuggling.
[2] As the district court found, all of the evidence led to the
conclusion that the prosecutor’s conduct was “deliberate,” a
“trial strategy” used to “attempt to convict the defendant.”
These are all findings of fact, made by the trial judge, who
heard the evidence and observed the conduct of AUSA
Albert. We review such findings for clear error. United States
v. Ziskin, 360 F.3d 934, 943 (9th Cir. 2003). Of course, there
was abundant evidence to support the district court’s quoted
findings. There was no error, much less clear error. Retrial is
not barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause based on Oregon
v. Kennedy’s “goading” exception.
B.
[3] Lopez-Avila’s second argument is that the Double
Jeopardy Clause bars retrial in light of 28 U.S.C. § 530B,
which governs ethical standards for government lawyers. 28
U.S.C. § 530B states that “an attorney for the Government
shall be subject to State laws and rules, and local Federal
court rules, governing attorneys in each State where such
attorney engages in that attorney’s duties, to the same extent
and in the same manner as other attorneys in that State.”
3

Even if it is possible that some juror might use Lopez-Avila’s lack of
knowledge of the identity of the contraband to acquit, doing so would be
contrary to our settled law, as noted above in footnote 2. The court cannot
presume that a prosecutor would want to sabotage his case because he
thought that a jury would fail to follow the law.

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(Emphasis added). Lopez-Avila contends that this statute,
which by its terms applies to “rules . . . governing attorneys,”
also means that the Arizona Supreme Court’s interpretation of
the Arizona Constitution’s Double Jeopardy Clause applies in
federal criminal proceedings in Arizona. Therefore, LopezAvila contends, an Arizona state Double Jeopardy case, Pool
v. Superior Court, 677 P.2d 261 (Ariz. 1984), applies in this
proceeding. As a final step, Lopez-Avila contends that under
Pool, which is more defendant-friendly than Kennedy, her
retrial should be barred.
To begin with, Lopez-Avila admits that she did not raise
this argument below, so we can review only for plain error.
United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 731 (1993). But LopezAvila’s contention on § 530B fails under any standard of
review.
[4] First, her argument is contradicted by the plain text of
§ 530B, which states that “an attorney for the Government
shall be subject to State laws and rules . . . governing attorneys.” 28 U.S.C. § 530B(a) (emphasis added). The Supreme
Court has said that the Constitution’s protection against double jeopardy in the Fifth Amendment “affords a criminal
defendant a valued right to have his trial completed by a particular tribunal.” Kennedy, 456 U.S. at 671 (emphasis added)
(internal quotations omitted). Even if one of the purposes of
the Double Jeopardy Clause is to protect against prosecutorial
overreaching, the right itself is plainly a right held by a criminal defendant, not one that directly governs the conduct of
prosecutors. There is simply no language in § 530B that
would allow this court to apply Arizona’s substantive interpretation of the double jeopardy clause in its own state constitution to this case, on the basis of a federal statutory provision
governing ethical standards of conduct for government lawyers.
Second, regulations promulgated by the Department of Justice pursuant to § 530B(b) confirm that § 530B(a) “should not

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be construed in any way to alter federal substantive, procedural, or evidentiary law.” 28 C.F.R. § 77.1(b). Lopez-Avila
gives no reason why this regulation is invalid or does not
apply to this case. Its application makes clear that the content
of the federal Double Jeopardy Clause is not to be transmuted
into Arizona’s, by reference to § 530B.
[5] Finally, although no decision in our circuit has
responded to this precise argument, other courts that have
examined whether § 530B changes other substantive legal
rules have unanimously rejected the claim. See, e.g., U.S. v.
Lowery, 166 F.3d 1119 (11th Cir. 1999) (violation of Florida
state rules of professional conduct does not require exclusion
of otherwise admissible evidence in federal court even if evidence is obtained in violation of state professional conduct
rules); United States v. Syling, 553 F. Supp. 2d 1187, 1192
(D. Haw. 2008) (Section 530B does not compel the government to provide exculpatory evidence to a grand jury where
defendant contended Hawaii state ethical rules required government lawyer to do so). We agree with the reasoning of
those courts. Section 530B requires federal attorneys to
behave within a state’s rules for attorney conduct. It does not
amend the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to
include a state’s notions of what constitutes double jeopardy
as used in that state’s constitution.
[6] In sum, we conclude that the Double Jeopardy Clause
does not bar a retrial of Lopez-Avila under these circumstances. We therefore affirm the district court’s denial of her
motion to dismiss based on the Double Jeopardy Clause.
V.
We must note, however, that our conclusion on the double
jeopardy question may not be the end of this matter. AUSA
Jerry Albert represented to the trial court an altered version of
the dialogue between the court and a witness at a hearing
which had taken place in that same federal court. He pre-

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sented a falsified version of an exchange as the true recitation
of the transcript, until caught out by defense counsel. He did
so to make it seem to the jury as if Lopez-Avila had lied
under oath about being threatened to commit the cocaine possession crime, when she had plainly responded to a magistrate
judge’s question about whether she had been threatened to
enter a plea of guilty. It is hard to see—and, from our vantage
point as an appellate tribunal, we do not see—how a prosecutor could interpret a magistrate’s question, “Has anyone
threatened you or forced you to plead guilty?”, asked at a runof-the-mill guilty plea hearing, to mean “Has anyone threatened you to commit this offense or forced you to plead
guilty?”
After the mistrial was granted, AUSA Albert maintained
that his reading was plausible. Perhaps Albert truly thought
this, or perhaps he thought that consistently maintaining this
position would minimize the possibility of any potential sanctions against him. We have no way of knowing, as it is not
our task to conduct a thorough investigation of Albert’s conduct for disciplinary purposes. We do note that Albert’s name
does not appear on the prosecution’s brief in our court, and he
did not appear at oral argument before us. But whatever
Albert’s motivation, it is worth reminding him and all federal
prosecutors of Justice Sutherland’s famous statement that the
dual obligation of a federal prosecutor in our justice system
is to strike hard blows but to refrain from striking foul ones;
to use legitimate means to attempt to secure a conviction
without employing improper methods to do so. Berger v.
United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88 (1935).
We recognize that this court is not the proper venue for
direct discipline of Albert, so we will not state here that the
blow struck by Albert necessarily was one so foul as to
require some form of sanction. We were not in district court
to see what occurred; Albert has not appeared before us to
explain himself; and this appeal is not directly about his misconduct, but rather about the question whether the Double

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Jeopardy Clause bars a new prosecution. We are, however, in
a position to do three things to address the potential misconduct: remand the case to allow the district court to consider
dismissal with prejudice of the indictment as an exercise of its
supervisory powers and to prevent other misconduct in the
future; instruct the district court to consider disciplinary
options also pursuant to its supervisory powers; and note that
the Office of Professional Responsibility within the Department of Justice has the responsibility of investigating allegations of misconduct by federal prosecutors.
[7] First, we remand to the district court to consider two
different courses of action that would deter future misconduct
like this since “[q]uite as important as assuring a fair trial . . .
is assuring that the circumstances that gave rise to the misconduct won’t be repeated in other cases.”4 United States v.
Kojayan, 8 F.3d 1315, 1324 (9th Cir. 1993). If a request by
the defense is made, one option on remand may be for “the
district court to determine whether to retry the defendant[ ] or
dismiss the indictment with prejudice as a sanction for the
government’s misbehavior.” Id. at 1325. The remedy of dismissal with prejudice, which is strong medicine for the entire
prosecutorial group, is available pursuant to a district court’s
supervisory powers over the attorneys who practice before it.
Id.; see also United States v. Chapman, 524 F.3d 1073, 1085
4

Lopez-Avila argued in her motion to dismiss in district court that the
indictment should be dismissed with prejudice pursuant to the Double
Jeopardy Clause, but she did not argue for a dismissal pursuant to the
court’s supervisory powers. Thus, that issue is not before us and we
express no opinion whether this case should be dismissed with prejudice
pursuant to the court’s supervisory powers. The fact that we affirm the
denial of Lopez-Avila’s motion to dismiss on double jeopardy grounds
does not preclude the district court from considering a motion to dismiss
on other grounds if a motion is made. See United States v. Simpson, 927
F.2d 1088, 1089 (9th Cir. 1991) (considering an appeal from a dismissal
with prejudice pursuant to the district court’s supervisory powers after the
Ninth Circuit had, in the same case, previously reversed a dismissal with
prejudice under the Due Process Clause).

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(9th Cir. 2008) (holding that the district court did not abuse
its discretion in dismissing an indictment with prejudice
where the prosecutor showed “reckless disregard for the prosecution’s constitutional obligations”).
[8] Second, the district court may want to discipline the
prosecutor directly. If it thinks it appropriate, the district court
has the power to issue an order to show cause why Albert
should not be disciplined. United States v. Hasting, 461 U.S.
499, 506 n.5 (1983). We state here once again that we express
no opinion on whether Albert in fact should be disciplined.
[9] Third and finally, we note that the district court is not
the sole institution with the authority to investigate and discipline prosecutorial misconduct. Within the Department of Justice, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is
required to “[r]eceive, review, investigate and refer for appropriate action allegations of misconduct involving Department
attorneys that relate to the exercise of their authority to . . .
litigate.” 28 C.F.R. § 0.39a(a)(1). If a complaint is filed, OPR
would therefore be required to review the conduct of the
Department attorney. Anyone may file a complaint with the
Office by sending a letter to the address listed on OPR’s website at http://www.justice.gov/opr/process.htm (last visited
January 4, 2012).5
***
The defense consented to a mistrial, and there is no evidence that the prosecution was attempting to “goad” the
defense into making the mistrial request—rather, the evidence
reveals that this is a case of a prosecutor crossing the line in
an attempt to “win at all costs.” Thus, the Double Jeopardy
Clause does not bar Lopez-Avila’s retrial. The district court’s
5

The website also includes the specific information that any letter of
complaint should include.

Case: 11-10013

01/12/2012

ID: 8029229

DktEntry: 25-1

UNITED STATES v. LOPEZ-AVILA

Page: 18 of 18

277

denial of that motion is therefore AFFIRMED. The case is
REMANDED for further proceedings.