# Crist v. Bretz

> Supreme Court of the United States · June 14, 1978 · 437 U.S. 28

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9427251

## Case

- **Full name:** CRIST, WARDEN, Et Al. v. BRETZ Et Al.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** June 14, 1978
- **Citations:** 437 U.S. 28; 10 Ohio Op. 3d 466; 98 S. Ct. 2156; 57 L. Ed. 2d 24; 1978 U.S. LEXIS 107
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Blackmun
- **Judges:** Burgee, Stewart, Brennan, White, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens, Blacicmun, Burger, Powell, Rehnquist
- **Cited by:** 953 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9427251

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- explaining that the defendant's "valued right to have his trial completed by a particular tribunal ... is an interest with roots deep in the historic development of trial by jury in the Anglo-American system of criminal justice" (quotation omitted)
- recognizing that a defendant's right to a particular jury is integral to the guarantee against double jeopardy because it "lies at the foundation of the federal rule that jeopardy attaches when the jury is empaneled and sworn"
- holding that the rule that jeopardy attaches when a jury is impaneled and sworn is an integral part of the fifth amendment guarantee against double jeopardy and is binding on the States through the fourteenth amendment
- holding that the federal rule that jeopardy attach, in a jury trial, once the jury is empaneled and sworn in, is applicable to the States via the doctrine of incorporation
- explaining that jeopardy attaches in a criminal prosecution when the jury is empaneled and sworn or, in a bench trial, when the first witness is sworn

## Opinion text

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
concurring.
Although I join the Court’s opinion, I write to emphasize the fact that I am not content to rest the result, as the Court seems to be, ante, at 36, solely on the defendant’s “valued right to have his trial completed by a particular tribunal,” a factor mentioned by Mr. Justice Black, speaking for the Court, in Wade v. Hunter, 336 U. S. 684, 689 (1949). That approach would also support a conclusion that jeopardy attaches at the very beginning of the jury selection process. See Schulhofer, Jeopardy and Mistrials, 125 U. Pa. L. Rev. 449 , 512-514 (1977).
Other interests are involved here as well: repetitive stress *39 and anxiety upon the defendant; continuing embarrassment for him; and the possibility of prosecutorial overreaching in the opening statement.
It is perhaps true that each of these interests could be used, too, to support an argument that jeopardy attaches at some point before the jury is sworn. I would bring all these interests into focus, however, at the point where the jury is sworn because it is then and there that the defendant’s interest in the jury reaches its highest plateau, because the opportunity for prosecutorial overreaching thereafter increases substantially, and because stress and possible embarrassment for the defendant from then on is sustained.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9427251. Public record. Not legal advice.