Juror B37 's Husband who is an Attorney Knows Mark O' Mara (Zimmerman's Defense Lawyer)

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108. That is incorrect.

These are the issues that were before the Court:

Traditional Principles of Double Jeopardy: Generally stated, the traditional principles of double jeopardy bar repeated “prosecution for the same identical act and crime.” 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 330 (1769). See also Yeager, 129 S.Ct. at 2371 (Scalia, J., dissenting). Therefore, the state may notre-prosecutee a defendant on a charge after being found not guilty on that charge. On the other hand, it is uniformly held that if a jury is unable to reach a decision on all charges against a defendant, resulting in a mistrial, that double jeopardy does not-absent other circumstances-prevent the state fromre-prosecutingg the defendant on the deadlocked charges. Where a jury has deadlocked on a charge in an indictment, and a mistrial declared, jeopardy has not terminated and the state can properly retry the defendant on the deadlocked charge absent other circumstances. Yeager, 129 S.Ct. at 2366.

Collateral Estoppel. Issues relevant to collateral estoppel in criminal cases generally arise where a jury has acquitted a defendant on some charges, but has deadlocked on other charges, and where the acquitted charges and the deadlocked charges arise from the same or similar conduct and depend on the same or similar proof. The Yeager Court held that collateral estoppel precludes “relitigating any issue that was necessarily decided by a jury's acquittal in a prior trial.” Yeager, 129 S.Ct. at 2366. “ ‘When an issue of ultimate fact has once been determined by a valid and final judgment’ of acquittal, it ‘cannot bere-litigatedd’ in a second trial for a separate offense.” Yeager, Id., at 2367, citing Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 443, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 25 L.Ed.2d 469 (1970).

This decision affirmed the defendant could not be tried again for the charge of conspiracy on which he was acquitted, Double Jeopardy once again governed.

On the issue of collateral estoppel, or the preclusion of an issue already determined, the court ruled that the jury could have acquitted the defendant of conspiracy on other grounds than those the prosecution intended to introduce at his retrial on the murder charge. Therefore, the court concluded, the prosecution was not estopped from bringing in that evidence used in the conspiracy prosecution in the murder prosecution.

Simply, the state could not retry him on that charge of which he was acquitted. Black letter law.

Nor could the state be barred from bringing in evidence used in the conspiracy to prove his guilt of murder, a charge on which the jury hung. Again, a retrial after a hung jury does not violate due process or double jeopardy.

The only unusual aspect of this case is the arcane issue of whether the state could use the evidence used in the acquitted charge in the retrial on the murder charge.

Since the jury could of acquitted on any number of reasons, the holding was that collateral estoppel did not apply.