manifest necessity
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 400 U.S. 470 - United States v. Jorn · 1971Most cited · 4,213 citing opinions
the standard governing a trial judge's power to discharge a jury without defendant's consent: courts have 'authority to discharge a jury from giving any verdict, whenever, in their opinion, taking all the circumstances into consideration, there is a manifest necessity for the act, or the ends of public justice would otherwise be defeated'; the power 'ought to be used with the greatest caution, under urgent circumstances, and for very plain and obvious causes
How the Supreme Court has restated “manifest necessity”
Each Supreme Court definition of “manifest necessity,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “manifest necessity”
Court decisions citing the 4 opinions that defined “manifest necessity” — 9,552 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 4 definitions, chronological · 1824–1971
- ORIGINAL
in all cases of this nature, the law has invested Courts of justice with the authority to discharge a jury from giving any verdict, whenever, in their opinion, taking all the circumstances into consideration, there is a manifest necessity for the act, or the ends of public justice would otherwise be defeated. They are to exercise a sound discretion on the subject; and it is impossible to define all the circumstances, which would render it proper to interfere. To be sure, the power ought to be used with the greatest caution, under urgent circumstances, and for very plain and obvious causes.
discharge of jury; double jeopardy
the law has invested Courts of justice with the authority to discharge a jury from giving any verdict whenever, in their opinion, taking all the circumstances into consideration, there is a manifest necessity for the act, or the ends of public justice would otherwise be defeated. They are to exercise a sound discretion on the subject; and it is impossible to define all the circumstances, which would render it proper to interfere.
a trial can be discontinued when particular circumstances manifest a necessity for so doing, and when failure to discontinue would defeat the ends of justice
mistrial