California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Harris, A131757 (Cal. App. 2013):
At the outset, we also reject the Attorney General's contention defendant forfeited his double jeopardy argument by failing to enter a plea of former jeopardy to the amended information charging voluntary manslaughter. In our view, a plea of former jeopardy would not have made sense here. Where a jury deadlocks and a mistrial is declared, there is no former jeopardy because "the second trial does not place the defendant in jeopardy 'twice.' [Citations.] Instead, a jury's inability to reach a decision is the kind of 'manifest necessity' that permits the declaration of a mistrial and the continuation of the initial jeopardy that commenced when the jury was first impaneled." (Yeager, supra, 557 U.S. at p. 118.) Here, defendant's motion to preclude litigation on a discrete issue implicitly acknowledged he could be retried on the deadlocked charge of voluntary manslaughter. If " ' "[t]he purpose of the general doctrine of waiver is to encourage a defendant to bring errors to the attention of the trial court, so that they may be corrected or avoided and a fair trial had . . . ." ' " (People v. Saunders (1993) 5 Cal.4th 580, 590), then defendant's motion accomplished that purpose. No waiver or forfeiture occurred. (Id. at p. 592.) We, therefore, turn to the merits of defendant's claim.
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