By Peter Urban
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel appeared confident today as he left the U.S. Supreme Court after arguing the state should be able to retry a 2007 Little Rock murder case.

“It went as well as we could have hoped for. There were some tough questions but I felt a number of justices recognized the critical points we were making,” McDaniel said.

The attorney general argued the state’s case to retry Alex Blueford of Jacksonville on capital murder charges in the 2008 death of 20-month-old Matthew McFadden Jr.

Blueford’s first trial ended in a mistrial after jurors reached an impasse over manslaughter charges. The jury’s foreman had earlier told the judge the panel had voted unanimously to dismiss capital murder and first-degree murder charges.

The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled last year that Blueford should be retried on the original murder charges. Clifford Sloan, an attorney representing Blueford, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the Constitution protected Blueford from being tried twice for the same crime.

The hour-long oral arguments, split evenly between McDaniel and Sloan, provoked a lively exchange among the justices. All but Justice Clarence Thomas, who never speaks during such arguments, participated.

Most of the discussion centered on whether the forewoman’s disclosure of jury votes constituted a verdict.

Justice Antonin Scalia suggested the jury never reached a final verdict on capital murder or the lesser charges. The jury forewoman announced a vote, but the jury continued to deliberate and could have changed its mind, he said.

“The one characteristic of a verdict that seems perfectly clear to me is that it is final,” Scalia said.

Sloan argued that the announced vote was an acquittal because it was an explicit statement that was not contradicted by later statements.

McDaniel said the fact that the jury returned to deliberate meant jurors had essentially hit the restart button.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan seemed skeptical, pointing out that Arkansas requires juries to find reasonable doubt on the more serious charges before a jury moves to lesser charges.

“It’s clear that they all thought that they had to unanimously agree on something before they could go to the next crime. And, again, there is no suggestion in what anybody said that they could go back up,” Kagan said.

Blueford has been held without bond in the Pulaski County Jail since 2008 while his case has been on appeal.

The arguments were McDaniel’s first before the nation’s highest court. Aside from staff, his wife and father were in the courtroom.