Court Opinion

ID: 9427256
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:20:13.014303+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:05.616658
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
with whom Mr. Justice Rehnquist joins, dissenting.
This case, of course, is an odd and an unusual one, factually and procedurally. Because it is, the case will afford little guidance as precedent in the Court’s continuing struggle to create order and understanding out of the confusion of the lengthening list of its decisions on the Double Jeopardy Clause. I would have thought, however, that the principles enunciated late last Term in Lee v. United States, 432 U. S. 23 (1977) — which I deem a more difficult case for the Government than this one — had application to the facts here. I do not share the Court’s distinction of Lee, ante, at 75, and I do not agree that Lee is “manifestly inapposite.” Here, as in Lee, there is misdescription by the trial court of the nature of its order, and, as in Lee, the defendant-petitioner’s maneu*81vers should result in a surrender of his right to receive a verdict by the jury that had been drawn. Further, it appears to me that petitioner has succeeded in having the indictment read one way in the trial court, and another way here, as the situation required.
I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.