Jermain V. Richards v. Connecticut

After Ramos v. Louisiana required unanimous juries to convict criminal defendants, only Oregon preserved nonunanimous jury verdicts in criminal cases, allowing nonunanimous acquittals. Every other state and the United States require unanimous acquittals. If juries cannot agree on verdicts, Perez v. United States authorizes trial judges to declare mistrials if Allen charges fail to persuade juries to reach unanimous verdicts. Perez, however, did not invoke the Double Jeopardy Clause. Its manifest necessity doctrine flowed from common law jury practice. 150 years later, Richardson v. United States transformed Perez into a double jeopardy decision to permit retrials after juries cannot unanimously reach verdicts. In this case, the trial court declared mistrials after two juries hung on whether to convict Jermain Richards of murder. Connecticut prosecuted Richards a third time, and a third jury convicted him. The questions presented are:

1. Whether the Fifth Amendment’s Double Jeopardy Clause bars a criminal defendant’s retrial after the government has had a fair opportunity to prove its case and a mistrial is declared due to a hung jury, thus abrogating Richardson v. United States, 468 U.S. 317 (1984) and United States v. Perez, 9 Wheat. 579 (1824).

2. Whether the retrial of a criminal defendant after the government has had a fair opportunity to prove its case and a mistrial is declared due to a hung jury violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by placing a burden on him to prove his innocence.