Two federal officers, Eric Heinze and Kristopher Hutchens, were charged in state court with felony murder, aggravated assault, and other crimes stemming from a 2016 raid by the U.S. Marshal Service's Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force that resulted in the death of Jamarion Robinson, who had outstanding felony warrants and suffered from schizophrenia.
The officers successfully removed the case to federal court under 28 U.S.C. § 1442, which allows federal officers to have cases tried in federal district court. When Georgia sought to add conspiracy and malice murder charges through a superseding indictment, the state argued it needed a limited remand to state court because Georgia law requires superseding indictments to be brought in a court with jurisdiction over the case.
The federal district court denied the motion for limited remand, finding no legal authority for such a procedure and expressing concerns about timing and the precedent it would set for future remand requests. The court noted the state had other options, including dismissing the current charges and refiling in state court.
On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit requested briefing on whether it had jurisdiction to review the denial of the limited remand motion, since it was a non-final order. The court applied strict scrutiny to the jurisdictional question under the final judgment rule, which generally prohibits appellate review of pretrial orders in criminal cases.
The court rejected Georgia's argument that the collateral order doctrine provided jurisdiction, finding that the state's interpretation of federal removal statutes was flawed. Using the 'rule of the last antecedent' canon of statutory interpretation, the court determined that 28 U.S.C. § 1455(b)(5) only requires the removed prosecution to proceed no further in state court, not that the state court loses all jurisdiction to conduct grand jury proceedings for superseding indictments.