WASHINGTON, D.C. — A unanimous Supreme Court has refused to rein in the government’s power to indiscriminately pick and choose the laws by which it will abide, especially as it relates to the rights of the accused in criminal cases.
In a ruling that defies the very safeguards put in place by America’s founders to guard against prosecutorial misconduct, the Court held in Smith v. United States that a defendant who faced trial in the wrong location can simply be prosecuted again in another location without triggering the Double Jeopardy Clause, which prohibits the government from prosecuting someone twice for the same crime. In weighing in before the Supreme Court, a legal coalition made up of The Rutherford Institute, Cato Institute, and the National Association for Public Defense had warned that failing to hold the government accountable for filing criminal charges in improper locations could give rise to a situation in which the government is effectively allowed to circumvent Double Jeopardy protections by perpetually retrying an accused in one unfair district after another.
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