Opinion ID: 2280600
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Trend of Federal Cases Under Fourteenth Amendment

Text: In Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319 (1937), it was contended that the Fourteenth Amendment made all of the specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states, but the Supreme Court rejected that idea and stated instead that certain of the privileges and immunities of the Bill of Rights had been taken over and brought within the Fourteenth Amendment by a process of absorption, namely, those that protect the fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions. In Palko, the defendant was indicted and tried for first degree murder and the jury returned a verdict of murder in the second degree. The State, alleging a prejudicial error of law, appealed the conviction. On appeal the conviction was reversed and a new trial was ordered. At the second trial, the objection of the defendant that he was being placed in jeopardy twice for the same offense in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment was overruled and the jury returned a verdict of murder in the first degree. The Supreme Court, in affirming the second conviction, stated that the lack of protection afforded by the State of Connecticut against double jeopardy in such circumstances did not violate a principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental. Ten years after Palko the Supreme Court was again confronted with the question of whether a defendant was entitled to constitutional protection from state action because he had been twice placed in jeopardy. In Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, 329 U.S. 459 (1947), involving an unsuccessful execution and the desire to try again, four of the justices concluded that there was no double jeopardy here which can be said to amount to a denial of federal due process in the proposed execution. Justice Frankfurter, concurring to form the majority, stated that the Due Process Clause    expresses a demand for civilized standards which are not defined by the specifically enumerated guarantees of the Bill of Rights [in that they]    neither contain the particularities of the first eight amendments nor are they confined to them and concluded that the state action in that case did not offend a principle of justice rooted in the tradition and conscience of the people. The question of double jeopardy was raised again in Gryger v. Burke, 334 U.S. 728 (1948), by a petitioner who was convicted of being a multiple offender and was sentenced to life imprisonment in a state court. Again, the Supreme Court instead of saying that constitutional protection could not be invoked against the states in some cases of double jeopardy, decided that double jeopardy was not involved. Five years later in Brock v. North Carolina, 344 U.S. 424 (1953), where a motion for a mistrial was granted after witnesses for the state refused to testify, the Court answered the claim of the petitioner that his retrial amounted to double jeopardy by saying: the pattern here    does not deny the fundamental essentials of a trial, `the very essence of a scheme of ordered justice,' which is due process. Again the Court, although not rejecting the idea that due process imposes some limitations on the power of a state to reprosecute an individual for the same crime, restated the basic questions asked in Palko v. Connecticut, supra : Is that kind of double jeopardy to which the statute has subjected him a hardship so acute and shocking that our polity will not endure it? Does it violate those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions? and, in answering the questions in the negative, said: As in all cases involving what is or is not due process, so in this case, no hard and fast rule can be laid down. The pattern of due process is picked out in the facts and circumstances of each case. Hoag v. New Jersey, 356 U.S. 464 (1958), and Ciucci v. Illinois, 356 U.S. 571 (1958), involved the problems of successive prosecutions by the two states of several robberies in the first case, and homicides, in the second, arising out of single occurrences. In these cases, the Court recognized that the Fourteenth Amendment does impose some limitations on the state in the area of double jeopardy, but stating that the question in any given case is whether [the course followed] has led to fundamental unfairness, refused to grant constitutional protection from the states' actions because there was no showing that due process had been violated. More recently, in Bartkus v. Illinois, 359 U.S. 121 (1959), where a state prosecution followed an acquittal in a federal district court for the same offense  robbing a federally insured savings and loan association  a majority of the Court acknowledged the fact that the attack on the constitutionality of the state's action rested on the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment since that clause does not apply to the States any of the provisions of the first eight amendments as such,  but based their decision on the premise that crimes committed by the same act against two sovereignties were different crimes. The Court, however, at p. 127 of 359 U.S., quoted the statement of Justice Cardozo in Palko v. Connecticut, supra : `In these and other situations immunities that are valid as against the federal government by force of the specific pledges of particular amendments have been found to be implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, and thus, through the Fourteenth Amendment, become valid as against the states.' 302 U.S., at 324-325. and concluded that decisions under the Due Process Clause require close and perceptive inquiry into fundamental principles of our society. While the Supreme Court has yet to decide that reprosecution by a state of a person for the same crime has transgressed the limitations imposed by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, [5] there would seem to be little doubt as to what the Court will do where, in its opinion, the power of a state to prosecute violates some principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental. 302 U.S., at p. 325. The United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals, however, had no difficulty holding that the State of New York had deprived an accused of his liberty without due process of law in United States ex rel. Hetenyi v. Wilkins, 348 F.2d 844 (1965), cert. den. 34 U.S. Law Week 3285 (U.S. Feb. 21, 1966), when the state tried the accused a third time on the same indictment after he had previously been tried twice for first degree murder and had won reversal of both convictions (one for second degree murder and the other for first degree murder) for errors committed during the respective trials was again convicted of first degree murder at the third trial. Whether or not protection is afforded to Leslie Barger under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is a question we do not reach since we think this case raises a question of double jeopardy which is controlled by Maryland law.