''Ashe v. Swenson'', 397 U.S. 436 (1970), was a decision by the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

, which held that "when an issue of ultimate fact has once been determined by a valid and final judgment, that issue cannot again be litigated between the same parties in any future lawsuit." The

Double Jeopardy Clause The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: ''" r shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb..."'' The four essential protections included a ...

prevents a state from relitigating a question already decided in favor of a defendant at a previous trial. Here, the guarantee against double jeopardy enforceable through the Fifth Amendment provided that where the defendant was acquitted of robbing one victim, the government could not prosecute the criminal defendant in a second trial for a different victim in the same robbery.

Background

After a group of masked robbers committed

armed robbery Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take anything of value by force, threat of force, or by use of fear. According to common law, robbery is defined as taking the property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive the perso ...

of a

poker Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...

game in

Lee's Summit Lee's Summit is a city located within the counties of Jackson (primarily) and Cass in the U.S. state of Missouri. It is a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. As of the 2020 census its population was 101,108, making it the sixth-largest city in both ...

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

, Bob Fred Ashe was indicted on six separate counts of committing an armed robbery of one of the six players. At trial, a jury returned a general verdict of not guilty "due to insufficient evidence". Six weeks later, Ashe was brought to trial for the robbery of another of the poker players. This time, a prosecution witness who did not confidently identify Ashe as a robber was not called, and several witnesses expressed greater confidence that Ashe was the robber. At the conclusion of the trial, Ashe was found guilty and sentenced to thirty-five years. The Missouri Supreme Court affirmed the conviction, holding no former jeopardy violation. After the federal district court denied habeas corpus relief, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed.

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court, however, granted certiorari and concluded from the record of the prior trial that the "single rationally conceivable issue in dispute before the jury was whether

she She most commonly refers to: *She (pronoun), the third person singular, feminine, nominative case pronoun in modern English. She or S.H.E. may also refer to: Literature and films *'' She: A History of Adventure'', an 1887 novel by H. Rider Hagga ...

had been one of the robbers. And the jury by its verdict found that he had not. The federal rule of law, therefore, would make a second prosecution for the robbery . . . wholly impermissible." Because the first jury, by its verdict, had rejected the claim that Ashe was one of the robbers, the Supreme Court held that the State could not "constitutionally hail him before a new jury to litigate that issue again."

References

External links

* * United States Supreme Court decisions that overrule a prior Supreme Court decision United States Supreme Court cases United States Double Jeopardy Clause case law 1970 in United States case law United States Supreme Court cases of the Burger Court {{SCOTUS-case-stub

Background

Supreme Court

See also

Further reading

References

External links