As far as I'm concerned, you've been lucky. I've served on one jury trying to decide the guilt or innocence of a gay-basher. IMO, he was guilty per the evidence. But an older man and woman, with illogical arguments against the facts, ultimately led to a hung jury. The then pregnant prosecutor said he'd be re-tried, given the evidence as had been brought out in the first trial. I don't know if that's fair or 'just.' I don't know if the prosecutor had a boy or a girl.

I just know that the act of gay bashing is repugnant to me. The fact that this was the last case heard by the judge before he retired, that he left it up to a further trial (maybe,) with a new prosecutor who wouldn't be able to introduce any evidence from the first trial also makes it repugnant to me.

I can only hope that the gay-basher was, in a later trial, found guilty. He should have been in his first trial.

When a jury is hung, the defendant can be tried again. Unlike a verdict of not guilty, a hung jury doesn't count either for or against the defendant. When a judge calls a mistrial because the jury can't agree, prosecutors are allowed to present the case again.

Whether they do so or not depends on many factors, including the strength of the evidence, the availability of witnesses, the political climate, etc.

Dax,

Are you sure that this applies in all states? (There is a recurring problem in FM of projecting local rules to the entire country. Sometimes US rules or values are projected to the whole world, too.)

In either event, there is the question of whether or not judicial procedural rules should be dictated by the Federal government to the lowest levels of the judicial process; a states' rights question.

Actually, I'm sure of this. A "hung" jury means that no verdict was reached, and the case is dismissed without predjudice and no jeopardy is attached to the defendant.

This is not a "state's rights" issue, this is a Constitutional rights issue. It's related to the concept of "double jeopardy". No double-jeopardy exists when no verdict has been reached by a "hung" jury. A mistrial is declared, and as Dax said, , prosecutors are allowed to present the case again based on some determining factors.

In the US, the prosecutor is free to bring the same charge again, and whether that happens is dependent on the availability of witnesses, strength of evidence and estimation of likelihood to prevail, public opinion, and the cost of prosecution.