As you all know by now, the jury acquitted Helio Castroneves and his co-defendants of all counts, save for one conspiracy count. Technically the government has the ability to retry Helio on that count. But will they?
In the past, this U.S. Attorney's office has retried defendants after hung juries -- for example, we are on the third Liberty City trial, and the office retried the Joe Cool case after it hung. But this is different because the jury acquitted Helio of every substantive count. I would be really surprised if the feds chose to retry this one count. The sense is that Helio won the trial and was vindicated, so a retrial would look petty and vindictive. Plus, there's no reason to believe that the next jury would have any more reason to find Helio guilty after the first jury rejected almost the entire case. What say you readers -- should the U.S. Attorney's office retry Helio on the one hung count?
(p.s. Rumpole, let me know if you want to double down on your last bet).
The SDFLA Blog is dedicated to providing news and notes regarding federal practice in the Southern District of Florida. The New Times calls the blog "the definitive source on South Florida's federal court system." All tips on court happenings are welcome and will remain anonymous. Please email David Markus at dmarkus@markuslaw.com
2 comments:
"The sense is that Helio won the trial and was vindicated, so a retrial would look petty and vindictive."
As Scooby Doo would say: "HUGGHHHHH?"
The S.D. Fla. Office do something vindictive???
Come on. IF they do not retry the case, it will because in this trial they cannot prevent his attorney from testifying as to the advice he gave Helio...as they did in the last trial by trying the cases together, not because they are doing the right thing.
You can be sure, that until real change comes to that office, the decision to try or not try will not be made out of concern of being vindictive!
if acosta gets the FIU law dean position it just proves that FIU law will do anything to obtain credibility. The school sucks, despite bar pass percentages.
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