Opinion ID: 2614563
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The United States Supreme Court The Specific Intent Test

Text: In Kennedy, the United States Supreme Court held that the double jeopardy clause of the fifth amendment to the United States Constitution does not bar a subsequent reprosecution unless the prosecution acted with the specific intent to cause the defendant to move for a mistrial. 456 U.S. at 676, 102 S.Ct. 2083. Kennedy was charged with the theft of an oriental rug. Id. at 669, 102 S.Ct. 2083. At trial, the prosecution called an expert witness on the subject of Middle Eastern rugs to testify regarding the value and identity of the rug in question. Id. On redirect examination, the prosecution sought to elicit the reasons for the witness' complaint against Kennedy. Id. After the trial court sustained a series of objections to this line of questioning, the following colloquy ensued: Prosecutor: Have you ever done business with the Kennedys? Witness: No, I have not. Prosecutor: Is that because he is a crook? Id. (emphasis added). The trial court then granted Kennedy's motion for a mistrial, but found that it was not the intention of the prosecution to cause a mistrial. Id. (citation omitted). On appeal, the Oregon Court of Appeals applied the rule that retrial is barred where the error that prompted the mistrial is intended to provoke a mistrial or is `motivated by bad faith or undertaken to harass or prejudice' the defendant. Id. at 670, 102 S.Ct. 2083 (citation omitted). According to the Oregon Court of Appeals, the prosecution's conduct constituted overreaching, and Kennedy's conviction was reversed. Id. On certiorari to the United States Supreme Court, a plurality of the Court chose not to concentrate on the egregiousness of the prosecution's overall conduct at trial, focusing instead on the prosecutor's subjective intent. Id. at 675-76, 102 S.Ct. 2083. The Kennedy Court reasoned that this specific intent standard was preferable in situations involving prosecutorial misconduct because a more general test would bar more retrials after findings of prosecutorial misconduct and could have a chilling effect on the prosecution. See id. at 674-75, 102 S.Ct. 2083. The Kennedy Court further noted that the specific intent standard, which was narrower than the standard applied by the Oregon Court of Appeals, was more manageable because it merely call[ed] for the [trial] court to make a finding of fact as to the prosecutor's intent. Id. at 675, 102 S.Ct. 2083. Consequently, the Kennedy Court limited the application of the double jeopardy bar to situations where the prosecutor intended to goad the defendant into requesting a mistrial and where the primary motivation for such goading was to obtain a second chance to obtain a more favorable opportunity to convict on retrial. See id. at 675-76, 102 S.Ct. 2083. In other words, regardless how egregious, a prosecutor's misconduct does not bar reprosecution absent intent ... to subvert the protections afforded by the Double Jeopardy Clause. Id. In a concurring opinion authored by Justice Stevens, four justices disagreed with the plurality, [7] contending that the specific intent test would make it nearly impossible for a defendant to prove that the prosecutor intended by deliberate misconduct to provoke a mistrial and not merely to prejudice the defendant. Id. at 688, 102 S.Ct. 2083 (Stevens, Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun, JJ., concurring). According to Justice Stevens's concurring opinion, [t]here are other situations in which the defendant's double jeopardy interests outweigh society's interest in obtaining a judgment on the merits even though the defendant has moved for a mistrial. For example, a prosecutor may be interested in putting the defendant through the embarrassment, expense, and ordeal of criminal proceedings even if he cannot obtain a conviction. In such a case, with the purpose of harassing the defendant the prosecutor may commit repeated prejudicial errors and be indifferent between a mistrial or mistrials and an unsustainable conviction or convictions. Another example is when the prosecutor seeks to inject enough unfair prejudice into the trial to ensure a conviction but not so much as to cause a reversal of that conviction. This kind of overreaching would not be covered by the Court's standard because, by hypothesis, the prosecutor's intent is to obtain a conviction, not to provoke a mistrial. Yet the defendant's choiceto continue the tainted proceeding or to abort it and begin anew can be just as hollow in this situation as when the prosecutor intends to provoke a mistrial. To invoke the exception for overreaching, a court need not divine the exact motivation for the prosecutorial error. It is sufficient that the court is persuaded that egregious prosecutorial misconduct has rendered unmeaningful the defendant's choice to continue or to abort the proceeding. Id. at 689, 102 S.Ct. 2083 (emphasis added).