We’re grateful to Eric M. Freedman for drawing our attention to this paywalled story in the National Law Journal by Jimmy Hoover, on the publication of ‘The History of Double Jeopardy and Criminal Jurisdiction: US v Gamble (2019) and R v Hutchinson (1677)," Law Quarterly Review 139 (2023): 390-411, by Peter Alldridge, Queen Mary University of London, and Ann Mumford, Kings College London. A prepublication draft of the LQR article is here.
In Gamble, Justice Samuel Alito Jr., writing for a 7-2 majority, stated that the defendant, Terrance Gamble, could not rely on the seventeenth-century Hutchinson decision, which was said to have barred an English trial for murder after the suspect had been acquitted in Portugal, in arguing that double jeopardy barred his conviction for a gun possession offense in state and federal court. Justice Alito noted that the only reported decision Gamble’s lawyers had found was a denial of Hutchinson’s motion for bail before King’s Bench. Their evidence of the disposition of the case on the merits was, he said,“indirect and shaky.”
“As an American living in the UK, I had developed this faith that you could always find the case,” Professor Mumford recently told the National Law Journal. “I thought, well, I’m here. [Hutchinson’s case is] going to be in a box somewhere here, isn’t it? So let’s see if we can find it.” She enlisted Professor Alldridge in her quest. As he explained to the NLJ, “There is something about the tone in which Alito writes that makes you want to show him to be wrong."
The LQR article reports how the pair’s “Hunt for Hutchinson” ended in the manuscript law reports of Sir Edward Northey, where they found the following, written in Law French:
The judges certify, that a trial and acquittal according to the laws of Portugal, would in this instance be as available for the offender, as would a trial and acquittal here. Thereupon Hutchinson was now discharged nisi etc.--Dan Ernst
