In the case of Abney et al. v. United States, 1976, the U.S Supreme Court ruled that defendants could immediately appeal if they believed their constitutional rights against double jeopardy were being violated. The appellants, William Abney and James Dixon, had been indicted for bank robbery and conspiracy to commit bank robbery but argued that these charges constituted double jeopardy as they arose from a single act. They sought to dismiss the indictment before trial but were denied by lower courts on grounds that such appeals should be made post-conviction rather than pre-trial. However, in a unanimous decision led by Justice White, the Supreme Court held that delaying review until after conviction would deny defendants protection against facing multiple trials for same offense which is precisely what Double Jeopardy Clause seeks to prevent.

In the dissenting opinion for ABNEY et al. v. UNITED STATES, Justice White disagreed with the majority's decision to allow an interlocutory appeal of a pretrial motion to dismiss on double jeopardy grounds. He argued that this ruling contradicted previous decisions which held that defendants could not appeal until after their trial had concluded, and it would unnecessarily delay trials by allowing multiple appeals during proceedings. Furthermore, he believed that claims of double jeopardy should be reviewed only after conviction because they often depend on facts revealed during trial. Thus, pretrial dismissal might prevent relevant information from coming to light or result in premature rulings based on incomplete evidence.