Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784 (1969), argued 12 Dec. 1968, reargued 24 Mar. 1969, decided 23 June 1969 by vote of 7 to 2; Marshall for the Court, Harlan and Stewart in dissent. The issue in
Benton was whether the Due Process Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment prohibits a state from subjecting a person to
double jeopardy. The Court had confronted that precise issue thirty years earlier in
Palko v. Connecticut (1937), where it ruled that the double jeopardy standard of the
Fifth Amendment did not apply to the states. Rejecting the doctrine of
incorporation,
Palko applied the principle that the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause incorporates only those rights that are “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” (p. 324).
In
Benton the Court overruled
Palko in part, holding that the double jeopardy prohibition applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. Most significantly, the Court rejected the
Palko notion that states can deny rights to criminal defendants so long as the denial is not shocking to a universal sense of justice. Instead, the Court ruled that states must extend those guarantees in the
Bill of Rights that are fundamental to the American scheme of justice.
With respect to the guarantee against double jeopardy, the Court observed that its origins can be traced to English
common law, which was adopted in our country's jurisprudence. Every state has some form of the prohibition in its constitution or common law. Accordingly, the guarantee against double jeopardy is clearly among those rights that are deeply ingrained in the American system and thus made applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.
See also
Due Process, Procedural;
Incorporation Doctrine.
Daan Braveman
