eding in a Federal District Court saying that there convictions had been unconstitutionally obtained because the second trial violated the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment guarantee against double jeopardy. The federal court denied the petition maintaining the Montana statute saying that jeopardy does not attach until the first witness is sworn in. Cline and Bretz appealed pursuant seeking review only of the holding of the Court of Appeals that Montana is constitutionally required to recognize the constitutional guarantee against double jeopardy.The questions placed on the reargument is that the rule that jeopardy attached in jury trials when the jury is sworn is constitutionally valid since the double jeopardy prohibition of the Fifth Amendment applies to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court held that the Double Jeopardy Clause prevented a second prosecution after a first trial had ended. The reason for maintaining when the jury was selected and sworn lies in the need to protect the interest of an accused in retaining a chosen jury.The federal rule as to when the jeopardy attaches in a jury trial is not a settled part of the constitutional law. It is a rule that both reflects and protects a defendant's interest in retaining a chosen jury. It was ruled that the application of the Double Jeopardy Clause through the Fourteenth Amendment, as said by the Court, was attached when the first jury was selected and sworn.In the United States v. DiFrancesco (1980) case, Eugene DiFrancesco was convicted of conducting the affairs of an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity, and of conspiring to commit that offense in a jury trial in 1977. At another trial in 1978, he was convicted of damaging federal property. He received eight years on the charge for damaging federal property, five years on the conspiracy charge, and one year on the unlawful storage charge. DiFrancesco appealed the conviction to the Court...
