Supreme Court rules double jeopardy applies even after judicial mistake

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Supreme Court rules double jeopardy applies even after judicial mistake

February 20, 2013 03:12:05 pm

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website] ruled 8-1 [opinion, PDF] on Wednesday in Evans v. Michigan [SCOTUblog backgrounder; JURIST report] that double jeopardy [Cornell LII backgrounder] applies even if the trial judge acquitted the defendant based upon an erroneous ruling on the required elements of the offense. The defendant was charged with arson for burning down a vacant house in violation of a Michigan statute [MCL 750.73 text]. The trial court added an additional element to the state law requiring the prosecution to prove that the burned house was a dwelling. Failing to prove the nonexistent element, the trial court granted defendant’s motion for a directed verdict and entered an order of acquittal, dismissing the case. The Michigan Supreme Court [official website] reversed the lower court’s decision, reasoning that this case does not involve giving the prosecution a second opportunity to present evidence that it could have in the first proceeding. The US Supreme Court reversed the Supreme Court of Michigan. The US Supreme Court had previously ruled [SCOTUSblog report] that double jeopardy applies when the trial judge makes an erroneous evidentiary finding regarding a required element of a crime. The state of Michigan tried to distinguish the precedent, where the trial court erroneously required the prosecution to prove more with regard to an element, with the current situation, where the trial court added an additional erroneous element. However, the US Supreme Court stated that both cases involved “an antecedent legal error that led to an acquittal because the State failed to prove a fact it was not actually required to prove” and that there was no distinguishable difference between the precedent and the current case.

Justice Samuel Alito, the lone dissenting opinion, argued that the court’s decision does not serve the original purpose of the double jeopardy clause. Alito stated that the original purpose of the double jeopardy clause was to prevent the state, with its superior resources and power, from getting multiple attempts to convict an individual for the same crime. Alito argued that in this situation the state never received a fair opportunity to prosecute the defendant in the first place. Alito further argued that there was no actual acquittal because acquittals are decisions based on resolution of elements of the charged offense, whereas in this case the decision was based on element that was not part of the charged offense.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.

Former communist countries admitted for EU accession

On April 16, 2003, the 2003 Treaty of Accession was signed by 10 countries, admitting them for European Union (EU) ascension. After Malta and Cyprus, eight of the ten new EU nations (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) were former communist countries. The signing of the treaty in Athens marked the first time that former members of the Soviet Bloc joined the EU.

Learn more about EU expansion from the organization's website.