County of Los Alamos v. Tapia

OPINION

MONTGOMERY, Justice.

In the trial of a criminal case, after jeopardy attaches,1 one of three outcomes is possible: The trial may be completed and the defendant acquitted; the trial may be completed and the defendant convicted; or the trial may not be completed at all, in which case it will have been aborted by some ruling of the trial court. In the first situation, it has been settled for almost a century that the Double Jeopardy Clause of the United States Constitution2 preeludes further prosecution of the defendant. United States v. Ball, 163 U.S. 662, 669, 16 S.Ct. 1192, 1194, 41…