Word: mistrials
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Words are the trigger of action." In the end, no amount of words could trigger the jury to action. Last week, after seven days of wearying deliberation, the nine women and three men confessed that they were hopelessly deadlocked on the conspiracy charges, and the case was declared a mistrial...
...main thoroughfare of four bullet wounds. Charged with his murder was Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the then fledgling, largely unknown Black Panther Party. In the intervening years, Newton was convicted, spent 33 months in prison, had his conviction overturned on appeal, and had hung juries force two mistrials. With the last mistrial, Alameda County authorities dropped all charges against Newton. The radical chant "Free Huey!" has at last passed into history...
...women and two men of the jury were filing out of the Alameda County courtroom in Oakland, Calif. After six days of wrangling over the case, in which Newton was accused of killing a police officer, they were so firmly deadlocked that Judge Harold B. Hove declared a mistrial and dismissed them. "This shows that with at least one black person on the jury I can get a fair trial," Newton said. "A hung jury keeps me out of jail...
While it fell short of acquittal, the Oakland mistrial added to the growing list of Panther cases in which the prosecution has so far failed to win a conviction. Most notable among those freed: seven Panthers tried in Chicago after a Shootout with police (the state dropped its case for lack of evidence); the "New York 13," who survived an eight-month trial that set records for riotous disturbances and duration; Bobby G. Seale and Ericka Huggins, charged with ordering the murder of a fellow Panther in Connecticut; and twelve New Orleans Panthers found innocent by an all-male jury...
Disrupting courtroom decorum is an occasional tactic of defendants and even defense lawyers willing to risk violating the canons of their profession. Often with the help of an intemperate judge, they manage to raise a legal ruckus that may very well provoke a mistrial or a judicial error likely to be reversed on appeal. Though the U.S. Supreme Court has not yet laid down rules for obstreperous lawyers, it held last year that a judge has broad powers in dealing with unruly defendants. He can have them gagged or bound, expelled from his courtroom or cited for contempt...