Posted on 05/25/2012 6:08:23 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a criminal defendant may be retried even though the jury in his first trial had unanimously rejected the most serious charges against him. The vote was 6 to 3, with the justices split over whether the constitutional protection against double jeopardy barred such reprosecutions.
(Excerpt) Read more at mobile.nytimes.com ...
What a sick world. We MUST defeat Obama in November and take over the Senate to give ourselves even a small chance at keeping the Supreme Court friendly to the Republic.
I guess we just don’t understand the law the way that the wise latina does.
Why don’t women such as these stop acting like second class citizens?
The lawyer advancing the double jeopardy argument was very clever, but announcing in open court jury deliberations THAT ARE NOT A VERDICT does not equal a verdict for attachment of double jeopardy. It was a question that needed an answer, now there is an answer.
BUMP
RE BUMP
and BUMP AGAIN!!!!
While not the NYT, this thread has very good comments.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2887759/posts
The minority got it right this time. This is double jeopardy. But then we started down that road long ago by allowing the feds to come back on “civil rights” violations after a state jury acquits.
I disagree—the jury did NOT return any official verdict. They merely stated what the current vote was at a particular time in their deliberations.
If the jury had come back with an official verdict and not just a statement as to where they stood at a particular time, then I would agree with you.
This allows a judge to just stop any trail if he does not like the verdict. A person can be retried indefinitely until the desired result is achieved. Thus another constitutional protection is tossed in the trash can.
GroothWander is correct. There was a mistrial, never a final jury finding. If the judge had allowed a final finding on two of the charges, then called a mistrial on the other two charges, then there would not be an issue. But since there never was a final verdict on any of the charges, it does not become double-jeopardy.
This was a technical decision, not a fact-based decision, based solely on the actions of the court. It does not allow for a retrial where a final court decision has been reached.
Is it reasonable to believe that, if the jury had been allowed to issue an acquittal for the first two charges, that it would not have done so? What basis would there be for such a belief? The government should not be allowed to escape 'double jeopardy' restrictions by refusing to accept a jury's attempt to acquit and then declaring that because the jury was not allowed to officially register their acquittal, it didn't acquit.
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