bignflnut wrote:GWC wrote:
He is not an authority on anything, just a TV personality.
The court got it right.
Sorry, sir. I didn't mean to get you worked up by posting this video.
His point, if you value it or not, was that the jury had declared "not guilty", and that ends the trial. There was a clerical error that sent this to the SCOTUS and that the "double jeopardy" clause was added to address this very issue.
We live in a day and age where the concepts of due process, Posse Comitatus, and now double jeopardy is being reversed.
Happy Memorial Day?
I am not worked up at all. The facts do not support his, or your opinion on this matter. When there is a mistrial there is no verdict, period. A mistrial means that legally, the trial did not happen. So if there is a mistrial, there is no double jeapordy when the defendent is retried.
This is not something new, in fact if the dissenters had prevailed they would have been changing the definition of double jeapordy, not the other way around.
Now a totally different issue is IF this is the way that double jeapordy should work. And judge Napalitano, as he often does, substitutes his personal opinion of what the law SHOULD be for what the law actually is. I often agree with those opinions, but that does not make them the law any more than when I disagree with him. In this particular case, I really don't have an opinion on that.
But the Supreme Court of the US is supposed to rule based on the law, the constitution and the precedents established by previous decisions, not by their personal opinions of what the law should be.
For too long, too many justices have done just that. Roberts, Thomas , Scalia and Alito have a pretty good record of following the constitution, the law and precedents. To make this rather large change (by making a mistrial count as a trial for double jeapordy purposes) would be as bad IF NOT WORSE than many of the instances rightfully deplored by US citizens when liberal justices substitute their opinions for the law and create nonexistent "rights" or disparage those rights explicitly protected by the constitution and/or natural law.
Precendents can overruled, but not lightly. This would be a very major change in american jurisprudence, and if it needs to be changed, it should be with a constitutional amendment, or at least an act of Congress, not by the whim of 5 justices.
"The police are not here to create disorder. They are here to preserve disorder".
Mayor Richard Daley, 1968
I am not a lawyer. Nothing I say or write is legal advice.