Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Louisiana charged Blair Taylor with two counts of second-degree murder and five counts of attempted second-degree murder arising from a New Orleans shooting. His 2017 state conviction was vacated on appeal following the Supreme Court’s decision in Ramos v. Louisiana. Taylor was acquitted at a 2022 state retrial.
The federal government later charged Taylor with two counts of causing a death through the use of a firearm. Inga Petrovich, who had prosecuted Taylor’s 2017 state trial as an assistant district attorney and later became an assistant U.S. attorney, served on the federal prosecution team. After his federal conviction, Taylor argued for the first time on appeal that Petrovich’s participation violated double jeopardy and made the federal prosecution vindictive in violation of due process. He also raised ineffective assistance of counsel.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Circuit affirmed because Taylor could not establish plain error. Since he had not raised his double-jeopardy or due-process arguments in the district court, he had to show, among other things, an error that was clear or obvious under existing law. His double-jeopardy argument failed because he supplied no supporting case law establishing a clear or obvious violation in these circumstances.
The due-process argument likewise failed. The court noted the general rule that successive prosecutions by different sovereigns tend to negate a finding of prosecutorial vindictiveness, and Taylor identified no controlling precedent establishing otherwise here. The court did not resolve his ineffective-assistance claim because the record had not been developed sufficiently for appellate review.
Key Takeaways
- Constitutional objections first raised on appeal were reviewed only for plain error.
- Taylor failed to identify existing law clearly establishing that the federal prosecution violated double jeopardy or due process.
- The court declined to decide the ineffective-assistance claim on the undeveloped direct-appeal record.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates the difficulty of obtaining reversal on an unpreserved constitutional claim. Under plain-error review, a defendant generally cannot prevail by asking the appellate court to extend precedent into an unsettled area.
It also applies the Fifth Circuit’s rule that prosecutions by different sovereigns generally weigh against an inference of prosecutorial vindictiveness, even where a prosecutor participated in both the earlier state case and the later federal case.