On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme court in Arkansas ruled that a murder case can be retried when the jury concluded it was deadlocked and after telling the judge that it was against holding the defendant guilty on most counts including one that carried the death penalty.
The attempt to retry the case was challenged on the ground of the constitutional protection against being tried twice for the same crime. However, in a 6-3 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court held that retrial may be held, because there was no official final verdict in the earlier trial.
The ruling was a major setback for Alex Blueford, the defendant, whose murder trial in Arkansas ended with the jury voting unanimously against capital murder and first degree murder charges, but deadlocked over the charge of manslaughter. Even though the trial judge urged the jury to continue their deliberations, the jury reported that they had no hope of emerging from the deadlock. The judge declared a mistrial.
Blueford argued that the jury had acquitted him on the more serious charges, but his arguments were not accepted by the prosecutors who held that acquittal cannot follow without an official verdict of the jury.
The Supreme Court accepted the arguments of the prosecutors and ruled that Blueford can be tried on all of the charges related to the death of his girlfriend and her 20-month old son, and the forewoman’s report in the earlier trial cannot be taken as a final finding in absence a full official verdict. The Supreme Court held that the lower court was right in declaring a mistrial.
Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan dissented with Sotomayor opining that the court ruling gave the prosecutor’s a wrongful “second bite at the apple.”
The Supreme Court case is Blueford v. Arkansas, No. 10-1320.
