Petition for Cert on Collateral Estoppel

This wikilog article is a draft, it was not published yet.

by: Ryan • January 9, 2012 • no comments

Don't know how often this situation comes up, but apparently often enough that there's a 3-way split among different jurisdictions. The abbreviated version of the question presented is:

Issue: Whether the doctrine of collateral estoppel . . . bars relitigation of a fact necessarily decided in the defendant's favor in an initial prosecution, when that fact is deemed evidentiary in nature in a subsequent prosecution.

Briefs available here. A decision on the petition will likely be made within a couple of weeks.