The Supreme Court delivered a remarkable victory for the rights of criminal defendants on Wednesday, applying the constitutional bar against double jeopardy to prohibit a sneaky end run around a jury’s acquittal. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s unanimous, uncompromising opinion for the court doubled as a strong endorsement of the right to trial by jury—including a jury’s unquestionable authority to acquit a defendant for any reason it chooses, including a belief that the charges are unjust.
What they might not recognize, however, is that a jury can acquit for any reason it wants, or for no reason at all. “An acquittal might reflect a jury’s determination that the defendant is innocent of the crime charged,” Jackson noted. But it might also reflect “the result of compromise, compassion, lenity, or misunderstanding of the governing law.” For the purposes of double jeopardy, the basis of the verdict is irrelevant; “an acquittal is an acquittal.