The double jeopardy clause of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment protects a defendant from being tried twice for the same offense. The Arkansas murder case of Alex Blueford, which the Supreme Court will hear Wednesday, poses a twist to that principle. A jury deadlocked on some charges against Mr. Blueford, so the state wants to retry him on all charges, even the ones for which a jury found him not guilty.
Mr. Blueford was tried for capital murder and the “lesser included offenses” of first-degree murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide in the death of a 20-month-old boy. The jury was instructed to consider the offenses one at a time, in descending order of seriousness: it could proceed to the next charge only if it voted unanimously that he was not guilty of the previous one.
The jurors agreed he was not guilty of capital murder and not guilty of first-degree murder. But it split 9 to 3 on the manslaughter charge and did not vote on negligent homicide. The judge declared a mistrial, discharging the jury as deadlocked.
When a jury is truly deadlocked, a state can retry a defendant without violating the double jeopardy principle. As the Supreme Court has said, the law’s goal must be “fair trials designed to end in just judgments.”
The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that the jury was deadlocked and reached no verdict, so Mr. Blueford could be retried. But all 12 jurors voted that Mr. Blueford was not guilty on the murder charges, effectively acquitting him on both. Retrying him on those charges would unfairly allow Arkansas to use the first proceeding as a trial run, exposing him a second time to grave consequences despite the jury’s unequivocal votes.
Supreme Court cases going back to the early 19th century have made clear that jeopardy must end when a jury reaches a judgment, as it did on the murder charges against Mr. Blueford. The justices should reaffirm the fundamental rule that protects defendants from double jeopardy.