# Crist v. Bretz

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

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9427252

## 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:** Dissent by Burgee
- **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/9427252

## 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

Me. Chief Justice Burgee,
dissenting.
As a “rulemaking” matter, the result reached by the Court is a reasonable one; it is the Court’s decision to constitution-alize the rule that jeopardy attaches at the point when the jury is sworn — so as to bind the States — that I reject. This is but another example of how constitutional guarantees are trivialized by the insistence on mechanical uniformity between state and federal practice. There is, of course, no reason why the state and federal rules must be the same. In the period between the swearing of the jury and the swearing of the first witness, the concerns underlying the constitutional guarantee against double jeopardy are simply not threatened in any meaningful sense even on the least sanguine of assumptions about prosecutorial behavior. We should be cautious about constitutionalizing every procedural device found useful in federal courts, thereby foreclosing the States from experimentation with different approaches which are equally compatible with constitutional principles. All things “good” or “desirable” are not mandated by the Constitution. States should remain free to have procedures attuned to the special problems of the criminal justice system at the state and local levels. Principles of federalism should not so readily be com *40 promised for the sake of a uniformity finding sustenance perhaps in considerations of convenience but certainly not in the Constitution. Countless times in the past 50 years this Court has extolled the virtues of allowing the States to serve as “laboratories” to experiment with procedures which differ from those followed in the federal courts. Yet we continue to press the States into a procrustean federal mold. The Court’s holding will produce no great mischief, but it continues, I repeat, the business of trivializing the Constitution on matters better left to the States.
Accordingly, I join Mr. Justice Powell’s dissent.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9427252. Public record. Not legal advice.