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Justices Allow Retrial on Rejected Charges

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: May 24, 2012

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/supreme_court/index.html ] ruled on Thursday [ http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1320.pdf ] 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.

The case arose from the death in 2007 of a 1-year-old Arkansas boy, Matthew McFadden Jr., from a head injury he suffered while at home with his mother’s boyfriend, Alex Blueford. The prosecution said Mr. Blueford had slammed Matthew into a mattress; Mr. Blueford said he had accidentally knocked the boy to the floor.

Mr. Blueford was charged under four theories, in decreasing order of seriousness: capital murder (though the state did not seek the death penalty), first-degree murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide.

The jurors were instructed to consider the most serious charge first and move to the next only if they unanimously agreed that Mr. Blueford was not guilty. In this way, they were to work their way down to the appropriate conviction, or to an acquittal.

After a few hours of deliberation, the jurors announced that they were deadlocked. The forewoman told the judge that the jury had unanimously agreed that Mr. Blueford was not guilty of capital or first-degree murder, but she said it was divided, 9 to 3, in favor of guilt on the manslaughter charge.

The jury deliberated for an additional half-hour but could not reach a verdict. The court declared a mistrial.

Prosecutors sought to retry Mr. Blueford on all four charges. His lawyers agreed that he could be retried on the less serious ones but said double jeopardy principles should preclude his retrial on the charges of capital murder and first-degree murder.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said Mr. Blueford could be retried on all of the charges because “the foreperson’s report was not a final resolution of anything.” When the jurors returned to their deliberations after the forewoman spoke, he said, they could have changed their minds about the two more serious charges.

“The fact that deliberations continued after the report deprives that report of the finality necessary to constitute an acquittal on the murder offenses,” the chief justice wrote. Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Stephen G. Breyer and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined the majority opinion.

Mr. Blueford’s lawyers also argued that the trial judge should not have declared a mistrial without first asking the jury whether, in the end, the defendant had been found not guilty of some charges. Chief Justice Roberts said the judge had acted appropriately, as “the jury’s options in this case were limited to two: either convict on one of the offenses, or acquit on all.”

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the majority had improperly given prosecutors “the proverbial second bite at the apple.”

“The forewoman’s announcement in open court that the jury was ‘unanimous against’ conviction on capital and first-degree murder,” she wrote, “was an acquittal for double jeopardy purposes.”

Justice Sotomayor said the trial judge should have asked for a partial verdict from the jury before declaring a mistrial. She added that the protections of the Constitution’s double jeopardy clause were needed in light of “the threat to individual freedom from reprosecutions that favor states and unfairly rescue them from weak cases.”

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan joined the dissent in the case, Blueford v. Arkansas, No. 10-1320.

© 2012 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/us/justices-uphold-retrials-even-after-juries-reject-charges.html


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A Failure of Vigilance

Editorial
Published: May 27, 2012

In the trial of Alex Blueford, an Arkansas jury voted [ http://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/document/Blueford_v_State_2011_Ark_8_Court_Opinion ] him not guilty on charges of capital and first-degree murder, but deadlocked on lesser charges. By a 6-to-3 vote [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/us/justices-uphold-retrials-even-after-juries-reject-charges.html (above)] last week, the Supreme Court misguidedly ruled that the state can retry him on all charges, including those for murder.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor properly noted in dissent, “the threat to individual freedom from reprosecutions that favor states and unfairly rescue them from weak cases has not waned with time. Only this court’s vigilance has.”

For the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote that the Constitution’s protection against double jeopardy — trying a defendant twice for the same offense — does not apply in this case. There was “no formal judgment of acquittal” on the murder charges, he said, so there was no “final resolution of anything” that would trigger the bar against double jeopardy.

But Justice Sotomayor rightly explained that the principle of double jeopardy applies when a jury makes a decision for acquittal, and that the form of the acquittal is less important than the substantive determination. In this case, the forewoman announced in open court that the jury had voted unanimously that Mr. Blueford was not guilty of the murder charges. Justice Sotomayor also said that the trial judge should have asked the jury to deliver a partial verdict before declaring a mistrial, as the defendant requested. Chief Justice Roberts said the Supreme Court has “never required” a trial judge to break the impasse of a jury by seeking a partial verdict.

That position ignores a reality of Arkansas law. The jury was instructed to decide the most serious charge first, and then move on to the next charge (in descending order of seriousness) only if it acquitted on the previous charge. The Blueford jury reached an impasse only when it got to the lesser charge of manslaughter; it did not vote on the least serious charge, negligent homicide.

The trial judge, as Justice Sotomayor noted, failed to respect the finality of the jury’s vote to acquit on murder. The court’s majority failed to protect the defendant’s constitutional right to be spared double jeopardy, and instead protected the trial judge’s mistake.

© 2012 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/opinion/a-failure-of-vigilance.html


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