Court Opinion

ID: 9426744
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:49.185376+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:02.854061
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
dissenting.
The order of acquittal in favor of respondents was entered by the District Judge after a mistrial had been declared due to a jury deadlock. Once the jury was dismissed, respondents *582ceased to be in jeopardy in that proceeding; they could no longer be convicted except after undergoing a new trial. For a century and a half it has been accepted that a defendant may properly be reprosecuted after the declaration of such a mistrial, United States v. Perez, 9 Wheat. 579 (1824). Therefore the District Judge’s ruling here was made “prior to a trial that the Government had a right to prosecute and that the defendant was required to defend.” United States v. Sanford, 429 U. S. 14, 16 (1976).1
The present case cannot be distinguished from Sanford in constitutionally material respects. It is true that the District Judge here phrased his order as an acquittal rather than as a dismissal, and that the order was entered pursuant to a timely Rule 29 (c) motion. However, such mechanical niceties are not dispositive of whether retrial would expose defendants to double jeopardy; our Fifth Amendment inquiry should focus on the substance rather than the form of the proceedings below. In ruling on a motion for acquittal the District Judge must pass on the sufficiency, not on the weight, of the Government’s case, United States v. Isaacs, 516 F. 2d 409, 410 (CA5), cert. denied, 423 U. S. 936 (1975); United States v. Wooten, 503 F. 2d 65, 66 (CA4 1974). “[T]he applicable standard is whether [the District Judge as a trier of fact] *583could, not whether he would, find the accused guilty on the Government’s evidence.” United States v. Consolidated Laundries Corp., 291 F. 2d 563, 574 (CA2 1961) (emphasis in original).
The District Judge’s ruling is thus plainly one of law, not of fact; it could only exonerate, not convict, the defendant. No legitimate interest of the defendant requires that this ruling be insulated from appellate review. On the other hand, barring the appeal jeopardizes the Government’s substantial interest in presenting a legally sufficient case to the jury. The Court’s holding today is thus wholly inconsistent with the intent of Rule 29 (c) as described by the drafters in the Advisory Committee Notes. In explaining the 1966 amendments to the Rule, the Notes expressly state: “No legitimate interest of the government is intended to be prejudiced by permitting the court to direct an acquittal on a post-verdict motion.” 18 U. S. C. App., p. 4505. Surely the well-recognized right to reprosecute is such a “legitimate interest of the government,” and should remain unaffected by the District Judge’s order of acquittal.
Nor will the interest of clarity and consistency in the administration of the criminal justice system be served by today’s holding. By hinging the outcome of this case on the timing of the post-trial motion and the label on the order, the Court is elevating form over substance and undermining the theoretical framework established by the Wilson-Jenkins-Serfass trilogy2 of two Terms ago and the Sanford and United States v. Morrison, 429 U. S. 1 (1976), decisions earlier this Term. All litigants in our criminal courts—Government and defendants alike—are harmed by the uncertainty thus created. For these reasons, I cannot join the Court’s holding and I respectfully dissent.

 Fong Foo v. United States, 369 U. S. 141 (1962), on which the Court relies so heavily, is not in point. There the District Judge directed a verdict while the original trial was still in progress. Unlike the case before us, the jury there was still properly empaneled, and had not yet even begun to deliberate. Where the District Judge interrupts the trial process, important rights of the defendant may be jeopardized. The opportunity to try the case is frustrated so that the possibility of an acquittal from the originally empaneled jury is lost. No such rights are implicated where, as here, the original trial has ended when the jury cannot agree; at that point the defendant is already subject to a second trial. Thus, the timing of the District Court's order is not, as the Court suggests, an irrelevant technicality. A midtrial judgment of acquittal interrupts the trial process at a time when the defendant is constitutionally entitled to have it proceed to verdict.

 United States v. Wilson, 420 U. S. 332 (1975); United States v. Jenkins, 420 U. S. 358 (1975); Serfass v. United States, 420 U. S. 377 (1975).