Indiana Supreme Court Tweaks Double Jeopardy Law

I have been practicing law since 2003. Just before I entered law school, Indiana’s double jeopardy law significantly changed. From 1999 until 2020, we all learned the new framework for evaluating double jeopardy claims.

But in 2020, in a case I argued before the Indiana Supreme Court, the Court decided that the old framework was problematic, so it came up with a new one. Practitioners have spent the last few years wrestling with the new framework. The more we wrestled, the more it seemed we pushed to make the new framework look like the old one!

The Supreme Court saw that, too. So yesterday it handed down its opinion in A.W. v. State, a case involving a juvenile in possession of a gun with a Glock switch. The Court provided helpful clarification of new framework used to analyze double jeopardy claims.

I created a worksheet in 2020 explaining the new framework. I use the worksheet when I am drafting an appellate brief involving a double jeopardy claim. I have revised the worksheet based on the Court’s decision yesterday and thought I would share it here, for anyone interested.