Allen v. State

Citations

• 52 Fla. 1

Syllabus

<p>CRIMINAL LAW — FORMER JEOPARDY — WHEN JEOPARDY BEGINS — IMPROPER DISCHARGE OF JURY BEFORE VERDICT.</p> <p>1. A person is in legal jeopardy when he is put upon trial, before a court of competent jurisdiction, upon an indictment or information which is sufficient in form and substance to sustain a conviction, and a jury has been charged with his deliverance. And a jury is said to be thus charged when they have been impanelled and sworn.</p> <p>2. The silence of a defendant on trial for crime, or his failure to object or protest against an illegal discharge of the jury before verdict, does not constitute a consent to such discharge, or a waiver of the constitutional inhibition against a second jeopardy for the same offence.</p> <p>3. The power of the court to discharge a jury who have been sworn in chief before verdict should be exercised only in case of a manifest, urgent, or absolute necessity. I£ the jury are discharged for a reason legally insufficient, and without .an absolute necessity for it, and without the defendant’s consent, the discharge is equivalent to an acquittal, and may be pleaded as a bar to any further trial or to any subsequent indictment.</p>