If you are uncertain about something important, you should use Google or some other search engine to resolve the question. Someone needs to explain this to Maureen Dowd. Her column this week is about the mistrial in the government’s case against star pitcher Roger Clemens. On the second day of the trial, the government introduced hearsay evidence from the wife of one of Clemens’s former teammates. Because the evidence was inadmissible and highly prejudicial, the judge felt he couldn’t “unring the bell” and cancelled the trial. Roger Clemens was not acquitted. There was no final judgment in the case. If the government wants to retry the case, they are free to do. But here’s Dowd writing on the opinion page of the New York Times:
“Government counsel doesn’t do just what government counsel can get away with doing,” the judge said sternly. “I’m very troubled by this. A lot of government money has been used to reach this point.” He added, “I don’t see how I can unring the bell.”
Walton also upbraided Clemens’s folksy Texas lawyer, Rusty Hardin, for not objecting the instant the video began playing.
Clemens may benefit from the double jeopardy rule, and the case could disappear. But like Casey Anthony and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, he will not be seen as an innocent.
There is no way that Clemens can benefit from the double jeopardy rule.
As double jeopardy applies only to charges that were the subject of an earlier final judgment, there are many situations in which it does not apply despite the appearance of a retrial. For example, a second trial held after a mistrial does not violate the double jeopardy clause because a mistrial ends a trial prematurely without a judgment of guilty or not as decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Josef Perez.
Five seconds it took me to verify what I already knew. That’s five seconds that Maureen Dowd could not bother to invest to make sure she doesn’t look like a complete idiot. That’s five seconds that no editor invested to check the integrity of Dowd’s work.
Update [2011-7-17 13:17:1 by BooMan]: Okay. I’ll retract this criticism and call myself a wanker. There is a possibility that the judge can deny a second trial if he believes that prosecutors deliberately ignored his pre-trial orders. And, while I find that outcome unlikely, the potential for it to happen justifies Dowd’s use of the word ‘may.’