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225 La. 74

72 So.2d 265

State v. Roberson

Supreme Court of Louisiana

Decided November 9, 1954

Supreme Court of Louisiana · decided 1954-11-09

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1954-11-09

How this case has been cited

Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently June 1991

14 state decisions

8019541960197019801990decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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LE BLANC, Justice.

¶1In the course of trial of this defendant before a jury on an indictment for aggravated battery, one of the jurors, according *77to the minutes of Court, “manifested a serious illness and was removed from the jury box.” On motion of the District Attorney, the district judge ordered a mistrial and the case was reassigned for trial at a later date. The jury that was sitting on the case was then discharged.

¶2When the case was called for trial on the date of re-assignment, counsel for the defendant filed a plea of former jeopardy which was heard and overruled, whereupon he applied to this Court for writs of certiorari, prohibition and mandamus.

¶3On representations made in the application, based on common-law authority to the effect that there had to be a judicial determination of the necessity for the discharge of a jury and that a court could not arbitrarily determine such a question, the writs were granted.

¶4Our attention was never directed until later to a provision of our Revised Statutes, LSA-R.S. IS :283, one of the sections of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which controls us in reviewing the action of the lower court on an issue of this kind. The section reads as follows:

“No court, before sentence, shall, either under its appellate or supervisory jurisdiction, review any ruling made on the trial of any plea of former jeopardy.”

¶5Under this statute it is clear that the defendant cannot have his plea considered by this Court prior to his conviction, if ever he is convicted, and prior to the imposition of sentence by the trial judge. It is evident that if he should be acquitted there will be no necessity or reason for him to persist in his plea of former jeopardy.

¶6The writs were improvidently and inadvertently granted and they must now be recalled.

¶7For the reasons stated it is ordered that the writs of certiorari and prohibition heretofore granted herein be, and they are hereby recalled and set aside and it is further ordered that the case be remanded to the district court for further proceedings according to law.

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