L3 Blueford v. Arkansas: Summary

Blueford v. Arkansas (2012)

(See booklet, p. 84-85)

Summary

Blueford, the defendant in this case, had been left in charge of his girlfriend’s one-year-old child. After a short while, the child had to be taken to hospital / Blueford’s friend, present at the scene, had to call emergency services to take the child to hospital because the latter was breathing with difficulty.

Having established that the death of child had been caused by close head injury, the police charged Blueford with capital murder, first-degree murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide.

Following protracted deliberation, the jury still deadlocked on some of the charges and proved unable either to find Blueford guilty of at least one the charges, or to acquit him of all charges. The judge therefore declared a mistrial.

When the State of Arkansas re-indicted Blueford (tried to retry Blueford on all charges), the latter moved to dismiss the capital murder and first-degree murder counts (the two most serious charges) arguing that such charges infringed on his Fifth Amendment protection against double-jeopardy.

In its majority opinion, however, the Supreme Court first contended that the jury had not formally acquitted the defendant so that his second trial did not violate Blueford’s constitutional rights. (“Unlike cases where acquittal on lesser charges precluded retrial on greater charges, the jury’s decision here was not final”: Distinction report / verdict). Indeed, Justice Roberts further argued, Arkansas law requires either a conviction or a complete acquittal on all charges, which was not the case in Blueford’s trial.

Sotomayor’s vigorous dissent (/ The main argument of Sotomayor’s vigorous dissent) rests on a different interpretation of Arkansas law. Arkansas, she claims, is what is called an “acquittal-first jurisdiction” in which a jury may not consider a lesser-included offense unless and until it rejects a more serious offense. Although Blueford had not formally been acquitted, the fact that the jury deadlocked when considering manslaughter proves / necessarily implies that they had implicitly rejected the counts of capital murder and first-degree murder. 

Closed-head injuries are a type of traumatic brain injury in which the skull and dura mater remain intact.

Arkansas is an "acquittal-first" jurisdiction, in which a jury may not consider a lesser-included offense unless and until it rejects a more serious offense. In other words, Blueford's jury could not consider the first-degree murder charge unless and until it rejected the capital murder charge, and it could not consider manslaughter unless and until it rejected first-degree murder. When Blueford's jury told the court it could not reach agreement, the forewoman told the judge that it was "unanimous against" capital and first-degree murder, but could not agree on manslaughter or negligent homicide. The judge sent the jury to deliberate further, refusing Blueford's request that the jury be allowed to enter a partial acquittal on the two charges.