Quick Mistrial Bars Retrial
A federal appeals court has ruled that two executives cannot be retried for alleged securities law violations because a judge declared a mistrial too quickly.
The New York City-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that retrying the defendants would violate the ban on double jeopardy, the New York Law Journal reports.
If the judge had polled the jury, he would have learned jurors wanted to acquit executives Michael DeGennaro and Frank Borghese of Symbol Technologies, a New York bar code scanning company. The jury was deadlocked only on charges against the company’s chief financial officer.
DeGennaro and Borghese had been charged with securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud, while the CFO faced 23 counts related to financial improprieties.
U.S. District Judge Leonard Wexler of New York declared a mistrial in the case after receiving a note from the jurors during the third day of deliberations. It read: “Judge, We are at a deadlock. We have exhausted all our options. This has been going on since Thursday. P/S – We are ready to go home today. Thank You.”
The New York-based appeals court said Wexler had several options short of declaring a mistrial. He could have polled the jury, told it to continue deliberations, or told it that a partial verdict could be rendered.
“The decision by a district court to declare a mistrial is of great consequence,” the court said in its opinion (PDF). “The case at hand calls on us to review such a ruling, to determine whether it was an abuse of discretion for a trial court to decide that a single jury note indicating deadlock created a ‘manifest necessity’ to declare a mistrial. On the record before us, we conclude that it was.”
