Death Case Raises Double Jeopardy Issue

Three years ago, Ronald Gillis walked out of a Delaware courthouse a free man, acquitted of murdering a friend over a $1,200 debt. Now he’s in jail in Maryland, charged with the same slaying.

Double jeopardy? Not according to a 1985 Supreme Court ruling allowing prosecutors in two states to try a Georgia man for the same killing.

That ruling paved the way for what some legal scholars see as an increase in cases that violate the constitutional protection against trying someone twice for the same crime.

“A lot of the impetus has to do with the death penalty,” said Richard Allen, a Northwestern University law professor who argued the defense position in the Georgia case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The person didn’t get a severe enough punishment in one state in one person’s view, so they bring another action in another state,” he said. “It’s a constitutional problem and it’s growing.”

The American Bar Assn. is forming a task force to study the double jeopardy issue, looking at successive trials in different states on the same charges and increasing attempts to try defendants in state and federal courts on similar charges.

Richard Kuh, a former New York district attorney who suggested the ABA panel, offers the Rodney G. King beating as an example. In that case, white police officers acquitted in a California state court in the beating of the black motorist are on trial in federal court.

“I’ve been offended by it,” Kuh said in an interview. “It violates the concept of double jeopardy, if not the very technical application.”

Tom C. Smith of the ABA’s criminal justice section in Washington said several federal cases have raised concerns about double jeopardy, including that of former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford.

Clifford was indicted in federal court in Washington and in state court in New York on similar bank fraud charges connected with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandal.

The state trial is set for March. The federal trial has not been scheduled. “It raises the issue of fairness,” Smith said. “Most people believe there is something fundamentally wrong or fundamentally unfair about trying someone twice for the same crime.”

The Gillis case in Maryland is unusual for several reasons.

The trial for the murder of Byron Parker was the first in Delaware in which authorities did not have the victim’s body. The state’s only evidence was that blood matching Parker’s was found on a door handle inside Gillis’ car.

Delaware requires that crimes be tried in the county where they occurred. A key question in the first trial was how the state determined where Parker was killed since there was no corpse.

Prosecutor Timothy Barron said the case was tried in Kent County, Del., because “that was our best guess at the time.”

Seven months after a Delaware jury acquitted Gillis, Parker’s body was found in a shallow grave just over the state line in Kent County, Md. Gillis remained free until July, when a grand jury indicted him on a first-degree murder charge.

Kent County Circuit Judge J. Frederick Price ruled in January that while double jeopardy is “a valid issue,” the state still can prosecute.

Public defender Stefan Skipp appealed this ruling on grounds that a second trial was unfair and Maryland was obliged to abide by the Delaware verdict.

Prosecutor Susanne Hayman argues the state’s right to try Gillis by citing both the Supreme Court decision and Maryland law, which presumes the crime occurred there if that is where the body was found.