Hameed v. Jones

OAKES, Circuit Judge:

This appeal from the district court’s denial of appellants’ habeas corpus petition presents the familiar question whether a state trial court’s declaration of mistrial was prompted by a “manifest necessity” sufficient to render a retrial constitutionally permissible. In this case, however, the familiar is framed in an unfamiliar context. In appellants’ criminal trial, after the case had gone to the jury and the jury had received an Allen charge, one of the jurors suffered a psychiatric episode that rendered her unfit for further deliberations. When this occurred, the…