Utah Supreme Court hears arguments over whether opportunity-to-object rule made Court of Appealserror in mistrial double-jeopardy case

The Utah Supreme Court on oral argument was asked to overturn a Court of Appeals ruling that relied solely on whether parties had an opportunity to object when reviewing whether a midtrial disqualification and resulting mistrial was "legally necessary" for double-jeopardy purposes.

Connor Nelson, counsel for the State of Utah, told the court that "the Court of Appeals broke from this pattern and only considered whether there was an opportunity to object." He asked the justices to "reverse and remand for the Court of Appeals to conduct the court's holistic test." Nelson argued that Utah precedent requires a multifactor, holistic review and that treating a single factor as dispositive was error.

The question centers on how to apply State v. Harris and related Utah decisions such as Ambrose and Manaway when a trial judge is disqualified in the middle of trial and a presiding judge declares a mistrial. Under Utah precedent, the court explained in argument, a mistrial that allows retrial must meet two prongs: (1) the trial judge has carefully evaluated the…