Double jeopardy case: MD Supreme Court declines to answer key question

Listen to this article

The Maryland Supreme Court declined Tuesday to decide whether a defendant can be tried again after reckless conduct by prosecutors leads to a mistrial.

In a rare 4-3 ruling, the court did not answer the key question before it — prompting the dissenters to ask why the court granted review of the case in the first place.

The prohibition on double jeopardy protects defendants from being tried multiple times for the same offense, Justice Angela Eaves wrote, but a second trial is generally allowed if the first ends in a mistrial.

The court was asked whether prosecutors can try again when the mistrial was their fault.

The petitioner was Miguel Angel Santana, who faces a third trial in Charles County Circuit Court after two mistrials. Santana is serving a life sentence for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. He was convicted of that and a firearm charge in his first trial, in 2019, but the four other charges resulted in a hung jury, and the court declared a mistrial on those charges.

The second time, in 2023, he successfully moved for a mistrial after a law enforcement officer testified about evidence that wasn’t allowed to be mentioned. Prosecutors initially argued that the jury could be instructed not to consider that testimony but later did not object to the requested mistrial. When they brought the case back, Santana filed a motion to dismiss, which the court denied on the basis that the error wasn’t intentional.

The Maryland Supreme Court assumed — without deciding — that under Maryland’s common-law prohibition on double jeopardy, a defendant can’t be tried again if the state’s reckless action prompted a mistrial.

But it ruled that the trial court’s finding that prosecutors’ conduct wasn’t reckless, and its denial of his motion to dismiss, were “not clearly erroneous.”

“(I)t remains to be seen whether, under Maryland law, a mistrial triggers double jeopardy protections for a defendant at all,” Eaves wrote.

“Because we can resolve this case without deciding that issue — which was not thoroughly briefed — by utilizing Mr. Santana’s desired standard, we choose to do so and leave for another day the issues of whether mistrials, solely under Maryland common law, trigger double jeopardy protections and, if so, the parameters of those protections.”

Eaves also assigned some blame to the defense, noting it was not clear that they “took any steps to bring the agreement about the excluded evidence to the forefront” before the second trial.

She was joined by Chief Justice Matthew Fader and Justices Brynja Booth and Peter Killough. They upheld an unreported February 2025 ruling by the Maryland Appellate Court.

The Maryland attorney general’s office declined to comment.

Santana was represented by attorneys from Covington in Washington, D.C.

“We are disappointed with the 4-3 decision which took a pass on (1) clarifying an important issue of criminal procedure in Maryland that needs clarification, and (2) policing reckless conduct by prosecutors that results in mistrials,” Covington partner Kevin Collins said.

Justices Jonathan Biran, Shirley Watts and Steven Gould dissented. They wrote that the state’s high court should have ruled on the main question before it and that the trial court’s decision, on its own, didn’t merit its review.

“I would hold that retrial after a mistrial is barred where the prosecution recklessly injects error into a trial that is so unfairly prejudicial that it leaves the defense with no real choice except to move for a mistrial and leaves the trial court with no real choice except to grant a mistrial,” Biran wrote.

“One is left to wonder why the Court granted certiorari in this case,” he wrote.

“In my view, whether the circuit court clearly erred in finding a lack of recklessness, standing alone, would not have warranted this Court’s review. We had an opportunity in this case to decide important questions concerning Maryland’s common law of double jeopardy — questions for which, as the Majority notes, this Court serves as the final arbiter. Unfortunately, the Majority decided not to answer these questions.”