What About Double Jeopardy? Decision May Send Murder Defendant Back for 3rd Trial After 2 Mistrials

By Robert Phillips  
Deputy District Attorney (ret.)  

Fifth Amendment Double Jeopardy Clause 

A criminal case dismissed due to insufficient evidence to convict may not be refiled under the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy clause. A case dismissed in the interest of justice may be refiled. The latter is presumed absent “clear evidence” to the contrary. 

In a case more of interest to prosecutors and defense attorneys than law enforcement officers (but necessarily important to all), an interesting issue was discussed by California’s Sixth District Court of Appeal in a case from Santa Clara County’s Superior Court. The issue dealt with when a previously dismissed case is subject to refiling despite the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy clause (applicable to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause; see Benton v. Maryland (1969) 395 U.S. 784, 794. See also see also Cal. Const., art. I, § 15.).  

The case is People v. Superior Court [Woodward] (Mar. 14, 2024), Cal.App.5th [2024 Cal.App. LEXIS 176].  

Background 

The problem arose after defendant John Kevin Woodward on Sept. 5, 1992, in Mountain View, Santa Clara County, strangled to death his roommate’s girlfriend, Laurie Houts. In an obviously weak case, two trials resulted in hung juries, each leaning toward acquittal, 8 to 4 and 7 to 5, respectively. 

After the second trial, at a hearing on Aug. 6, 1996, the judge dismissed the case orally on the record, as reflected in the written transcript, as well as in a written “minute order” (generally referring to the written entry of a court’s ruling into the minutes), and a separate, signed written order. 

Penal Code §1385(a) was cited by the trial court judge as the statutory authority for dismissal. Subdivision (a) of that section, as it read both before and after it was amended in 2014, lists “in furtherance of justice” as the legal grounds for a dismissal. All three documents (the judge’s transcribed statements, the minute order, and the court’s written order), however, reflected the judge’s intention to dismiss the case both “in furtherance of justice” and due to the “insufficiency of the evidence (to convict) as a matter of law.” Either way, the case was dead – or ....

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