concluding that “the trial judge acted responsibly and deliberately, and accorded careful consideration to respondent’s interest in having the trial concluded in a single proceeding” because the court “evince[d] a concern for the possible double jeopardy consequences of an erroneous ruling” and “gave both defense counsel and the district attorney full opportunity to explain their positions on the propriety of a mistrial”
How later courts described this case
- concluding that “the trial judge acted responsibly and deliberately, and accorded careful consideration to respondent’s interest in having the trial concluded in a single proceeding” because the court “evince[d] a concern for the possible double jeopardy consequences of an erroneous ruling” and “gave both defense counsel and the district attorney full opportunity to explain their positions on the propriety of a mistrial”
- holding that district courts “may discharge a genuinely deadlocked jury and require the defendant to submit to a second trial” because no verdict has been reached, and “[u]nlike the situation in which the trial has ended in an acquittal or conviction, retrial is not automatically barred when a criminal proceeding is terminated without finally resolving the merits of the charges against the accused”
- recognizing that, "whenever a trial is aborted before it is completed," there is a "danger of ... unfairness to the defendant" because "[i]t increases the financial and emotional burden on the accused, prolongs the period in which he is stigmatized by an unresolved accusation of wrongdoing, and may even enhance the risk that an innocent defendant may be convicted" (footnote call numbers omitted)
- holding that a district court is not required to make a specific finding of manifest necessity or “articulate on the record all the factors which informed the deliberate exercise of [its] discretion^]” as long as the record as a whole provides sufficient justification for the ruling
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by State v. Nielsen, 2000 Me. LEXIS 207 (2000)
434 U.S. 497, 508, 98 S.Ct. 824, 54 L.Ed.2d 717 (1978), we reject the bright line rule he proposes and conclude that the determination should be made instead on a case by case basis.
Distinguished by Commonwealth v. Cantrell, 5 Va. Cir. 353 (1986)
But Arizona is distinguishable
The opinion
Mr. Justice White,
dissenting.
I cannot agree with the Court of Appeals that the failure of a state trial judge to express the legal standard under which *518 he has declared a mistrial is, in itself and without further examination of the record, sufficient reason to infer constitutional error foreclosing a second trial. The Court’s opinion in Townsend v. Sain, 372 U. S. 293 (1963), is to the contrary. There, in the course of a full scale exposition of the proper approach to be followed by a federal court in determining whether a writ of habeas corpus should be issued on the petition of a state prisoner, the Court addressed the situation where the state trial judge, in making the challenged ruling, did not articulate the constitutional standard under which he acted. The Court concluded that “the coequal responsibilities of state and federal judges in the administration of federal constitutional law are such that we think the district judge may, in the ordinary case in which there has been no articulation, properly assume that the state trier of fact applied correct standards of federal law to the facts, in the absence of evidence . . . that there is reason to suspect that an incorrect standard was in fact applied.” Id., at 314-315 . A silent record is not a sufficient basis for concluding that the state judge has committed constitutional error; the mere possibility of error is not enough to warrant habeas corpus relief.
The Court of Appeals, as well as the District Court, was therefore in error in granting relief without further examination of the record to determine whether the use of an incorrect legal standard was sufficiently indicated by something beyond mere silence and, if not, whether the declaration of a mistrial, which the Court of Appeals said it was “normally inclined to uphold,” at least in the absence of “clear abuse of discretion,” was constitutionally vulnerable. I would not, however, undertake an examination of the record here in the first instance. Rather, I would vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals and direct that court to remand the case to the District Court to make the initial judgment, under the correct legal standard, as to whether the writ should issue. *519 This disagreement with the Court’s disposition leads me to dissent.