Opinion ID: 2038757
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Continuing Jeopardy

Text: ¶ 19. The Double Jeopardy Clause does not necessarily act as a bar to a second trial for the same charge after conviction. For instance, there is generally no bar to a second trial when a conviction is overturned on appeal. Ball v. United States, 163 U.S. 662 (1896). As the Supreme Court explained in a more recent case: [I]f the first trial has ended in a conviction, the double jeopardy guarantee  imposes no limitations whatever upon the power to retry a defendant who has succeeded in getting his first conviction set aside . . . . [T]o require a criminal defendant to stand trial again after he has successfully invoked a statutory right of appeal to upset his first conviction is not an act of governmental oppression of the sort against which the Double Jeopardy Clause was intended to protect.  United States v. DiFrancesco, 449 U.S. 117, 131 (1980) (first and third emphasis added) (citations omitted). ¶ 20. The notion that a convicted defendant is not placed in jeopardy a second time when he is retried after his conviction is reversed, has been justified on grounds of waiver and on the legal fiction that the second trial is a continuation of the first. See State v. Schmear, 28 Wis. 2d 126, 135-36, 135 N.W.2d 842 (1965). [9] ¶ 21. In 1964 Justice Harlan offered perhaps the most intellectually honest justification for the continuing jeopardy principle: While different theories have been advanced to support the permissibility of retrial, of greater importance than the conceptual abstractions employed to explain the Ball principle are the implications of that principle for the sound administration of justice. Corresponding to the right of an accused to be given a fair trial is the societal interest in punishing one whose guilt is clear after he has obtained such a trial. It would be a high price indeed for society to pay were every accused granted immunity from punishment because of any defect sufficient to constitute reversible error in the proceedings leading to conviction. From the standpoint of a defendant, it is at least doubtful that appellate courts would be as zealous as they now are in protecting against the effects of improprieties at the trial or pretrial stage if they knew that reversal of a conviction would put the accused irrevocably beyond the reach of further prosecution. In reality, therefore, the practice of retrial serves defendants' rights as well as society's interest. The underlying purpose of permitting retrial is as much furthered by application of the rule to this case as it has been in cases previously decided. United States v. Tateo, 377 U.S. 463, 466 (1964); see also Justices of Boston Municipal Court v. Lydon, 466 U.S. 294, 308 (1984) ([I]mplicit in the Ball rule permitting retrial after reversal of a conviction is the concept of `continuing jeopardy.' That principle `has application where criminal proceedings against an accused have not run their full course.'); Price v. Georgia, 398 U.S. 323, 329, (1970) (The concept of continuing jeopardy implicit in the Ball case would allow petitioner's retrial for voluntary manslaughter after his first conviction for that offense had been reversed.). ¶ 22. There are exceptions to the principle of continuing jeopardy. For example, double jeopardy principles prevent a defendant from being retried when a court overturns his conviction due to insufficient evidence. Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1, 11 (1978). Where the evidence is found insufficient to convict the defendant at trial, the defendant cannot again be prosecuted. [I]t should make no difference that the reviewing court, rather than the trial court, determined the evidence to be insufficient. Id.