In the case of Stroud v. United States (1919), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a defendant could be tried twice for the same crime if new evidence was discovered after their initial conviction, without violating the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The court's decision came in response to an appeal by Albert T. Patrick who had been convicted and sentenced to death for murder based on circumstantial evidence, but later found innocent when new evidence emerged proving his innocence. However, he was subsequently retried and again found guilty based on this new evidence which included letters written by him from prison implicating himself in planning another murder while incarcerated.

In the dissenting opinion for Stroud v. United States, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., joined by Justice Louis Brandeis, argued that the Fifth Amendment's protection against double jeopardy had been violated. They contended that when Stroud was retried and convicted for first-degree murder after his initial second-degree murder conviction was overturned on appeal, it constituted a second prosecution for the same offense. The majority held that since Stroud himself appealed his original conviction, he opened himself up to being retried on all charges related to the crime. However, Justices Holmes and Brandeis disagreed with this interpretation of double jeopardy protections under law; they believed an individual should not be subjected to increased penalties simply because they sought to challenge their conviction in court.