The Fifth, Sixth, and
Fourteenth
MS. WEIGL
Fifth Amendment

Double jeopardy

Self incrimination

Eminent domain
Blueford v. Arkansas 2012

On November 28, 2007, Alex Blueford and a friend of his were left in
charge of the 20-month-old son of Blueford’s live-in girlfriend.
Approximately one hour after being left with the child, Blueford’s friend
called emergency services because the child was having difficulty
breathing. The child died two days after being rushed to the hospital. A
medical examiner concluded that the cause of death was a close head
injury, and the State of Arkansas subsequently brought several charges
against Blueford for the death of the child.
Blueford v. Arkansas

The state charged Blueford with capital murder, first-degree murder,
manslaughter, and negligent homicide. At the conclusion of the trial, the
court instructed the jury to consider each charge one at a time, and to
consider the greater offenses before lesser offenses. After over four hours
of deliberation, the jury returned. The forewoman stated that the jury was
deadlocked. The Judge asked the forewoman about each charge, and
she stated that the jury was unanimously against the capital murder
charge, unanimously against the first-degree murder charge, and
deadlocked on the manslaughter charge. The jury returned for further
deliberation but remained deadlocked. The judge released the jury, and
the court declared a mistrial.
Blueford v. Arkansas

The state sought to retry Blueford on all charges. Blueford filed a motion to
dismiss the capital murder and first-degree murder charges on double
jeopardy grounds, arguing that the jury had made a decision on those two
counts. The trial court denied the motion on the basis that the juror’s
communication to the judge was a casual communication and not an
acquittal. Blueford made an interlocutory appeal to the Supreme Court of
Arkansas, which affirmed the trial court’s denial of the motion. After the
Supreme Court of Arkansas denied Blueford’s petition for rehearing,
Blueford appealed the decision.
Issues

1. Did the jury forewoman's announcements of unanimous votes on capital
and first-degree murder constitute acquittals under the Fifth Amendment's
Double Jeopardy Clause, prohibiting Arkansas from retrying Blueford on
those charges?

2. Was there was a manifest necessity to declare a mistrial on charges of
capital and first-degree murder?
Supreme Court

Decision: 6 votes for Arkansas, 3 vote(s) against
Legal provision: Fifth Amendment

No and yes. In a 6-3 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the
Court held that the Double Jeopardy Clause did not prohibit Arkansas
from retrying Blueford on charges of capital and first-degree murder. Chief
Justice Roberts rejected Blueford’s argument that the jury actually
acquitted him of capital and first-degree murder. He determined that the
forewoman's report was not a final resolution of anything, reasoning that
the jury instructions left the jury free to reconsider its vote on the capital
and first-degree murder charges after the forewoman's report. Unlike cases
where acquittal on lesser charges precluded retrial on greater charges,
the jury’s decision here was not final.
Sixth Amendment

Lereed Shelton represented himself in an Alabama Circuit Court criminal trial.
The court warned Shelton about the difficulties that self-representation
entailed, but at no time offered him assistance of counsel at state expense.
Ultimately, Shelton was convicted of misdemeanor assault and sentenced to a
30-day jail term, which the trial court suspended, placing Shelton on two years'
unsupervised probation. Shelton appealed on Sixth Amendment grounds. The
Alabama Supreme Court reversed Shelton's suspended jail sentence, reasoning
that U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U.S. 25, and
Scott v. Illinois, 440 U.S. 367, require provision of counsel in any petty offense,
misdemeanor, or felony prosecution, "that actually leads to imprisonment even
for a brief period." The court concluded that, because a defendant may not
be imprisoned absent provision of counsel, Shelton's suspended sentence
could never be activated and was therefore invalid.
Issue

Does the Sixth Amendment right to appointed counsel, as defined in
Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U.S. 25, and Scott v. Illinois, 440 U.S. 367, apply to
a defendant who was sentenced to a suspended sentence?
Supreme Court

Decision: 5 votes for Shelton, 4 vote(s) against
Legal provision: Right to Counsel

Yes. In a 5-4 opinion delivered by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Court held,
according to Argersinger, that a suspended sentence that may "end up in the
actual deprivation of a person's liberty" may not be imposed unless the
defendant was accorded "the guiding hand of counsel" in the prosecution for
the crime charged. The Court reasoned that, because the invocation of the
suspended incarceration would constitute a prison term imposed for the
assault offense of which defendant was convicted without the assistance of
counsel, the Constitution required the provision of counsel. Justice Antonin
Scalia, with whom Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Anthony M.
Kennedy and Clarence Thomas joined, dissented. Justice Scalia argued that
the Court's prior decisions emphasized actual imprisonment as the touchstone
of entitlement to appointed counsel.
The Fourteenth Amendment

Proposed by Congress June 13, 1866; ratified July 9, 1868.

Section 1 defines citizenship. It provides for the acquisition of United States
citizenship by birth or by naturalization. Citizenship at birth is determined
according to the principle of jus soli - "the law of the soil," where born;
naturalization is the legal process by which one acquires a new citizenship at
some time after birth. Under certain circumstances, according to the principle
of jus sanguinis - "the law of the blood," to whom born. This section also contains
two major civil rights provisions: the Due Process Clause forbids a State (and its
local governments) to discriminate against, draw unreasonable distinctions
between, persons.

Section 2 eliminates the Three-Fifths Compromise provision. Essentially, all
persons in the United States are counted in each decennial census, the basis
for the distribution of House seats. The balance of this section has never been
enforced and is generally thought to be obsolete.
The Fourteenth Amendment

Section 3 limited the President's power to pardon those persons who had
led the Confederacy during the Civil War. Congress removed this disability
in 1898.

Section 4 also dealt with matters directly related to the Civil War. It
reaffirmed the public debt of the United States; but it invalidated,
prohibited payment of, any debt contracted by the Confederate States
and also prohibited any compensation of former slave owners.
Hollingsworth v. Perry 2013

In 2000, the citizens of California passed Proposition 22, which affirmed a legal
understanding that marriage was a union between one man and one woman.
In 2008, the California Supreme Court held that the California Constitution
required the term “marriage” to include the union of same-sex couples and
invalidated Proposition 22. Later in 2008, California citizens passed Proposition 8,
which amended the California Constitution to provide that “only marriage
between a man and a woman is valid or recognized by California.”

The respondents, a gay couple and a lesbian couple, sued the state officials
responsible for the enforcement of California’s marriage laws and claimed that
Proposition 8 violated their Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection of
the law. When the state officials originally named in the suit informed the
district court that they could not defend Proposition 8, the petitioners, official
proponents of the measure, intervened to defend it. The district court held that
Proposition 8 violated the Constitution, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Ninth Circuit affirmed.
Issues

Do the petitioners have standing under Article III of the Constitution to
argue this case?

Does the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibit
the state of California from defining marriage as the union of one man and
one woman?
Supreme Court

Decision: 5 votes for Perry, 4 vote(s) against
Legal provision: Article III

No, the petitioners do not have standing. The Court did not reach the question
on the merits of the case. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. delivered the
opinion of the 5-4 majority. The Supreme Court held that federal courts only
have the authority to decide cases in which there is an “actual controversy,”
which means that the complaining party must have suffered a “concrete and
particularized injury” that can be redressed through court action. In this case,
because the petitioners had only a generalized grievance in the form of a
desire to defend Proposition 8, they did not have standing under Article III. The
Court also held that the petitioners could not invoke the standing of the state
to appeal because a litigant must assert his/her own rights and cannot claim
relief through the intervention of a third party. Because the petitioners did not
have standing to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, that
court did not have jurisdiction to reach a decision on the case.