Holding
The holding, as delivered by Justice Holmes:
| “ | The quashing of a bad indictment is no bar to a prosecution upon a good one, but a judgment for the defendant upon the ground that the prosecution is barred goes to his liability as matter of substantive law and one judgment that he is free as matter of substantive law is as good as another. A plea of the statute of limitations is a plea to the merits, and however the issue was raised in the former case, after judgment upon it, it could not be reopened in a later prosecution.... Where a criminal charge has been adjudicated upon by a court having jurisdiction to hear and determine it, that adjudication, whether it takes the form of an acquittal or conviction, is final as to the matter so adjudicated upon, and may be pleaded in bar to any subsequent prosecution for the same offense. In this respect the criminal law is in unison with that which prevails in civil proceedings. | ” |
Read more about this topic: United States V. Oppenheimer
Famous quotes containing the word holding:
“It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Talent alone can not make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which by birth and quality is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise; holding things because they are things.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“That big gun in your hand makes you look grown up—you think! I’ll bet you spend hours posing in front of a mirror holding it, trying to look tough!... You scum!”
—Richard Brooks (1912–1992)